Sustainable Development: A Smarter Approach to Ontario’s Ring of Fire

This is the third in a series of 1000 word (or less) articles championing sustainability as a governance model for Canada. In the first, we established that Planet, People and Prosperity are the three sustainability pillars followed by detailing how my own commitment to the Triple Bottom Line lead me to becoming a candidate for the Green Party. Using a current example, this article intends to demonstrate how sustainable governance leads to increasing prosperity by focusing on people and planet.

Most of you are likely aware of Ontario’s ‘Ring of Fire’. As a quick refresher, it’s a massive mineral deposit located about 550km north west of Thunder Bay. The topic of development has again come to the fore given other, current events. Recently, one of our Federal party leaders indicated he’d support Federal investment of roads to the site. If you’ve read my previous articles you’ll know that while I think this is a good thing it does not meet the sustainability standard and here’s how.

Roads are almost exclusively, an economic input using tax payer dollars. Sure there will be jobs (people) but, the roads suggestion basically ignores people and the planet not to mention falling short of the economic goal it strives to achieve. Please stay with me here. First, the concept of sustainability has the cost of roads included in the project development. Ultimately, this cost should be captured in the price of resources mined from the site and NOT from the tax payers pocket. At this time, please be reminded that in my second article, I asserted sustainability increases the well being of 99% of us and that I will absolutely demonstrate later the positive results accruing to the most wealthy, 1 percenters. A commitment to roads funding also does not address the people or planet pieces.

Consider please that when a mine is developed, work camps are built to accommodate onsite labour requirements. Admittedly, I don’t off hand know the number of jobs estimated in this example. But, work camps are usually 5000 people and sometimes more. Statistics around mining demonstrate that most of these jobs are filled by men who work on location for extended periods of time with some exiting the site for extended off-work periods and others not. These people typically leave their families behind or are already single. Statistical data also tells us that drugs, alcohol and criminal activity not limited to prostitution closely follow and surrounding communities experience undesirable outcomes as a result. There are other legal, social and health issues on site. Furthermore, addiction treatment programs, social service work, counselling and mental health treatment are also activated for a percentage of these people. These examples do not include cost consideration for the broken families resulting from this style of work or the out of work labourer who suffering from addiction. These programs are traditionally funded by. you guessed it…The taxpayer, you!

A sustainable approach would include (but not limited to) preventative programs such as education, recreation and other community oriented supports included in the project development costs and in place at the onset. Preventative programs are known to be more cost effective when compared to treatment programs and these costs should be recovered in the sale price of the mineral and not be borne by the tax payer. Noting only that this is an example and I’m not listing in this short article all of the people elements related to mining. Similar logic must be applied to the planet elements effected by the resource extraction when viewing sustainable development here. There are indigenous people living in this area and their existing and future rights need accounting for. Electricity delivery to site, carbon production, waste treatment of the extracted earth, natural resource restoration of those things that are not minerals and the list goes on. These are all project costs and a sustainable approach would have these costs recovered in the sale price of the minerals.

It is at this point that most of my business focused friends begin to stop listening to me with the singular conclusion that a sustainable approach would increase the cost of mined minerals to the point of lost competitiveness. We’ll dispel this myth immediately. First, I will point out that as a society, we’ve proven over and over, preventative programs are more cost effective than reactive ones. Second, as a society we’ve generally accepted that addiction treatment programs, law enforcement, education and many other community services are already funded by the tax payer. So, the costs are being incurred whether they are included in the mineral price or not. It only is a matter of where are those costs being recognized and recovered. Third, the costs of these items are so small relative the enormous quantity of resources spread over the life of the mine so as to immaterially effect the actual commodity sale price. However, I will concede that at initial glance one might reasonably conclude that there could potentially be a corresponding reduction in profitability. Please recall my commitment to addressing the one percenters (next article). Please also recall that this article is intended to demonstrate that commitment to the environment and people increases prosperity for 99% of us.

In this example, investing in roads to the Ring of Fire is not nearly enough. The Green Party and I will champion for much greater investment via a secured loan to be paid back over the life mine. Thereby, respecting the environment, reducing income taxes, increasing the well being of humans AND contributing to the economic well being of all Canadians. Please join me in championing Sustainability for Simcoe North and for Canada.