Sudbury
April Forum: Canadian Nickel in the United States
Thursday, April 10 — 6:00 pm
South End Library, 1991 Regent Street
Join in person or by Zoom
For information: NoNickelForGenocide@gmail.com
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The No Nickel For Genocide Working Group has established that Sudbury is synonymous with nickel and nickel is synonymous with war; that the two world wars could not have been fought in the way they were if it was not for the discovery of nickel in Sudbury, the development of the metallurgy to separate nickel from copper, and the development of a market in the armour-cladding of the dreadnoughts which were the penultimate weapon of World War I. We also showed how war and war preparations distorted the economic, politics and social life of Sudbury and despoiled the environment.
We have also shown that, although the way nickel is used in modern armaments has changed, today nickel is used in the manufacture of a myriad number of parts for every modern weapon system, and that nickel is still an essential war materiel.
Today, nickel necessary for jet engines, landing gear and electronics of military aircraft such as the F-15, F-16 and F-35 and an important part of the casings of the MX-80 series of bombs, to name only two weapons systems employed by the U.S. and Israel.
In February we looked at the global nickel industry and showed how it has changed from one in which Canada was the dominant player to one where Canada only supplies five per cent of world nickel. Instead, nickel mining has shifted to South East Asia, to Indonesia, the Philippines and New Caledonia, and nickel refining has shifted to China where a large portion of its production goes to the manufacture of nickel-containing batteries for electric vehicles.
Next, we examined the Canadian nickel industry and found that it is dominated by two of the five Western global diversified mining monopolies, Vale and Glencore. Nickel production is exported: Glencore’s matte to Norway; Vale’s carbonyl pellets, briquettes and powder from Sudbury to the U.S. lower great lakes states which are the U.S. manufacturing heartland and where many of the U.S. weapons systems are manufactured; and nickel refined by hydrometallurgical processes in Long Harbour, Newfoundland is shipped to markets in Europe and Asia.
In April, we will examine how Canadian nickel is processed in the U.S. into stainless steel, nickel alloys and nickel shapes (rods, bars, sheets, plates, pipes, etc.) as the next step in the manufacture of U.S. weapons of war. The Canadian consul-general in New York recently said on U.S. TV that sixty per cent of the nickel consumed by the U.S. Department of Defence originates in Sudbury and Canada.
We shall also discuss developments in Trump’s tariff war against Canada and the role that Canadian nickel plays.
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