In the News June 1

Ontario Election 2022

Doug Ford and the Road to the Ring of Fire

Prosperity Requires the Empowerment of the
Working and Indigenous Peoples

– Dave Starbuck –

Once again, Doug Ford, Ontario’s Conservative premier, has promised one billion dollars of public money to construct an all-weather road connecting the Ring of Fire mineral discovery to Ontario’s highway network. In the 2018 election, Ford promised to “jump on a bulldozer” himself. This election, he promises to “Get It Done.”

According to Ford, the development of the Ring of Fire will make Ontario a resource powerhouse and bring prosperity to both northern Ontario and the rest of Ontario. The metals contained in the Ring of Fire are said to be valued at $60-100 billion although Ford talks of “hundreds of billions.” “I want the minerals extracted here in the north and the clean steel produced at Algoma, to be part of the supply chain we are building here in Ontario,” Ford said, revealing his policy of limiting the economy of the north to resource extraction while developing manufacturing in southern Ontario.

Ontario is already a resource powerhouse and yet this has not brought prosperity to northern Ontario. The Sudbury Basin alone is one of the most valuable mineral deposits in the world, producing minerals and metals worth nearly a trillion dollars since the 1880’s. It is safe to say that World War I could not have been fought in the way it was if nickel hadn’t been discovered in Sudbury. In addition, Timmins, Kirkland Lake, Cobalt, Wawa and numerous other locations have produced huge wealth. Yet most of northern Ontario looks like it has not left the 1950s except that many people and buildings are gone. Recently, a survey by the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) revealed that eight (40 per cent) of the twenty worst municipal roads in Ontario were in Greater Sudbury which has only one per cent of Ontario’s population. Four other roads in Northern Ontario cities were on the list.

In northern Ontario, wealth produced has not resulted in prosperity for those who produced it. Mining in northern Ontario is controlled by the mining monopolies, most of them foreign owned and controlled. It is the mining monopolies which determine how the wealth is extracted and how the wealth is transferred to the imperialist heartlands. Many miners, known as pack-sack miners, move from job to job as opportunities present themselves. Some say that miners are well paid. If so, this is because of the huge wealth they create working in difficult and dangerous conditions, and their many struggles over the past century and more for wages and working conditions acceptable to themselves.

Workers create wealth through their physical and mental labour. The Indigenous peoples of northern Ontario have always been the guardians of the land and water. For there to be prosperity for workers and the Indigenous peoples and all the communities in northern Ontario, the people must be empowered to be the decision-makers in society and build a society fit for human beings.

Ontario Political Forum, posted June 1, 2022.