Why We Shouldn't Pay $1-Billion for the Ring of Fire
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- Published on Monday, 12 September 2016 22:30
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1304 .... September 13, 2016
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Why We Shouldn’t Pay $1-Billion for the Ring of Fire
Matthew Corbeil
Hyped as "Northern Ontario's oil sands," the Ring of Fire mineral deposit is inching closer to development. Noront Resources, which now holds 75 per cent of the active mining claims in the area 400 kilometres north of Thunder Bay, has recently announced plans to begin mine construction in 2018. Developing North America's largest chromite deposit, the company claims, will create "jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for Northern Ontario."
To help things along, the provincial government has pledged upward of $1-billion in public funding for infrastructural development, including a permanent access road to the remote -- and ecologically sensitive -- James Bay lowlands site.
Nearby Matawa First Nation leaders, however, remain far... from convinced that Noront has earned the "social license" to begin operations. Last month, Neskantaga Chief Wayne Moonias, whose community is in its third consecutive year of a state of emergency over suicides, not to mention a near-permanent boil water advisory, ordered the company to "cease and desist" from exploratory drilling on traditional Indigenous territory. While Alan Coutts, president of Noront, expressed his desire to "reach out" to Neskantaga and other surrounding communities, the company made no plans to delay the drilling.
And yet the government's decision to provide such a massive subsidy to the mining industry has provoked little dissent from progressive circles in Ontario. Should we, in these times of austerity, really be doling out billions of dollars to big business? What can we expect from development in the Ring of Fire, anyway? Will the new mines really bring prosperity to the mostly Indigenous communities of the Far North?
There is, to be sure, good cause for skepticism. Successive Ontario governments have been remarkably accommodative to the mining industry's political agenda, and the province's mining policies have long prioritized company profits at the expense of community development and ecological integrity.