Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” mineral belt, found in the province’s remote James Bay Lowlands, is thought to carry more than $60 billion of geological riches. When the belt was discovered in 2007, it was supposed to usher in a new era of prosperity for Northern Ontario, especially for the impoverished First Nations communities in the region.
Almost ten years later, the ore remains in the earth and doesn’t appear to be being released in the near future. Because of the Ontario government’s ineptitude, dysfunctional mining policy, insufficient promised infrastructure spending and (to a much lesser extent) a broader commodity slump, American miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. left the province in frustration in 2013, permanently halting its proposed US$3.3-billion chromite project.
The ultimate indignity for Ontario came last year, when Cliffs sold its US$550-million investment in the Ring of Fire to junior miner Noront Resources Ltd. – the only real significant player left in the region – for any bargain-basement cost of US$27.5 million.
Many analysts state that Ontario missed an exceptional opportunity to set up a chromite industry during the commodity boom, which will be at least five years before any possible development occurs.
While the provincial Liberals shoulder the majority of the blame for delaying Ontario’s best mineral discovery in over a century, they had a legitimate complaint: the prior federal government under Stephen Harper was not at the economic table in a meaningful way.
With the election from the Trudeau Liberals, who have a strong mandate to alleviate living standards of Canada’s First Nations communities, hopes for the development of the Ring of fireside and the enormous mineral potential from the entire northwestern region of Ontario happen to be renewed.
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The mining companies within the Ring of fireside need infrastructure, and thus do the isolated aboriginal communities. When the Trudeau government worked in conjunction with Ontario and adopted something similar to a “Marshall Plan” – the specific American initiative to rebuild war-torn Europe following the Second World War – to build up and modernize infrastructure in the isolated northwest, it would kill two birds with one stone.
The standard of living for First Nations communities would dramatically improve, along with a new round of mineral exploration and development would occur that will generate vast amounts of dollars in tax revenue to pay back the government’s investment. And then some.
Let’s begin with the potable water crisis in Northwest Ontario. Within its first 100 days in office, the Trudeau government hit a house run by announcing it might fix water problems at Neskantaga First Nation, a community near the Ring of fireside that has been on a boil water alert for an astonishing 20 years.
However, three of the other four isolated communities in the area will also be on the boil water alert. Actually, 35 of the 49 aboriginal communities in Northern Ontario had h2o advisories in effect as of May 2015.
A 2011 report found that it might cost about $1 billion to upgrade or switch the water and wastewater needs of all these communities. As Trudeau himself would say, “It’s 2016.” It is about time we gave these communities the potable water that many Canadians takes for granted.
Another require is roads. Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day has called for the making of permanent roads to the many isolated First Nations communities in Northern Ontario, which would replace winter roads that are struggling with climatic change. There is an old saying within the mining business the the easy way find new mineral deposits is by building roads.
The first road that needs to be built is definitely an east-west corridor between the Ring of Fire and Pickle Lake, which may connect with four isolated First Nations communities. This would not just provide a cheaper way of bringing food, building supplies and diesel fuel towards the communities, but would also allow Noront to proceed with development of its Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper project in the Ring of fireside.
Developing this road shouldn’t be difficult. In early 1880s, it took Canada under five years to construct the Canadian Pacific railway from Ontario to Vancouver C a distance of roughly 4,200 kilometers. The length between the Ring of fireside and the provincial highway product is about 280 kilometres.
However, connecting the rest of the First Nations communities throughout the northwest may be done economically through the construction of forestry roads. Hartley Multamaki, vice president of Green Forest Management, said a rough estimate for primary forestry road construction, which is solid enough for huge trucks, would be around $250,000 per kilometre. The best cost could be higher due to obstacles like river crossings, swamps and access to aggregates.
So by taking your estimate, the cost of building 1,100 kilometres of forestry road through standard Canadian Shield geography in Northwestern Ontario could be about $275 million. Include an additional $60 million for the earlier mentioned obstacles. So for $335 million, you can connect a large number of isolated communities, specially in the geologically rich greenstone belts to the west of the Ring of fireside. Not an earth-shattering sum!
The final hard infrastructure need that should be addressed is access to grid power. The vast majority of Northwestern Ontario’s isolated First Nations depend on costly diesel-generated power, which is heavily subsidized by governments. Electricity costs can run three to Ten times greater than grid power. It is also environmentally risky and limits expansion and work at home opportunities during these communities.
The Ontario Power Authority estimates that grid connection would save roughly $1 billion within the next 3 decades compared to diesel generation. The capital cost for any current aboriginal-led project proposal is estimated at $1 billion. It basically pays for itself. The four communities nearest the Ring of fireside – Webequie, Nibinamik, Neskantaga and Eabametoong – might be easily connected to this initiative with an acceptable rise in cost.
The aboriginal communities in Northwestern Ontario are among the most impoverished in the united states, but their territories contain billions and billions of dollars of untapped mineral wealth. Jim Franklin, the former chief geoscientist at the Geological Survey of Canada, predicted at least $140 billion price of chromite and base metals is going to be discovered within the Ring of fireside, as well as an additional $140 to $190 billion of gold are lying in the many greenstone belts to the west of the camp.
By providing potable water, road access and grid capacity to these communities, the Trudeau government may also be benefiting the mining industry, which will discover, explore and make the next generation of mines, providing the jobs and tax revenue to repay these strategic infrastructure investments in a short time span.
Stan Sudol is a Toronto-based communications consultant, mining policy analyst and publisher/editor of www.republicofmining.com.
