Mining

TheBasic Issue

Canada has been an exporter of staples from its inception. Innes' view of Canadian history is that it is a sequence of exports to foreign markets with very little vale added to the raw materials. This situation has changed very little in the past few decades although concern about the situation has risen.

In the mining sector in Manitoba, northern towns have sprung up quickly, often as one industry "company towns" where the company put s up the infrastructure, often in combination with the government, and runs the town. When the ore body runs low, or the extraction costs exceed the market value at a given time, the mine closes down and the people move on to other towns, often abandoning perfectly good housing and facilities. The remoteness of location often militates against there being much salvage value for these facilities.

Attempts are often made by residenst who which to continue to live in the town to find some sort of diversified source of income so that upon mine closure, there will be some way to maintain income. This is not always possible.

Rural Development Institute Research Studies

• "A Stake in the North: Papers on Mining Forestry and Remote Tourism" - Ray Bollman and Richard rounds (eds.)
  

  This report is a collection of three papers from an international symposium o employment in rural primary resource sectors, mining, forestry and timber/tourism. The article on mining concerns evening out the boom-bust cycle. They speak of fly in-fly out options and the need for strong local government for increased resilience.

• "Navagating New Waters: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Sustainable Mining" -Mary Louise McAllister Chapter 14 in Changing Rural Institutions This paper on the state of theCanadian mining industry notes that times have changed over the past two decades:
  • Competition for land has increased
  • other interests ar now at the table
  • there is not as close a relationshiop wwith the government
  • non-economic values arenow in play.

  The author notes that tehurban population is indifferent to the impl;ications of mining's decline adn that we are a long way from having a tertiary economy to replace it in Canada.

  She advises caution when reading figures on the amounts of mineral supplies remaining in Canada, in that "reserves" and "natural endowment" are quite different. Reserves refers to the amount of minerals which are economically viable to extract. That figure is relative to the going world price at the tiem. Minerals are an undiferentiated good, so their sale is dependant on a good ratio of selling price to extraction cost. Cheap labor overseas can have a huge bearing on extrraction cost differentials.

  She ends with an examination of the positive and negative aspects of a pro-active discourse between all stakeholders prior to devellopment, and cites the Whitehorse Mining situation as a good examplle of such a dialogue.

Other Resources