EDITORIAL PAGE (February 24, 1992)

The controversy over Ontario mines minister Shelley Martel, regardless of its final outcome, reflects how far the province’s mining industry has passed into decline.

An all-party legislative committee is investigating Martel’s conduct during a reception in Thunder Bay at which she allegedly divulged confidential information she was not supposed to have. Martel later said in the legislature that she had lied at the gathering and, in fact, had no such information.

The possibility of Martel’s resignation prompted Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) President Fenton Scott to write to Premier Bob Rae urging him to leave her at the helm of the mines portfolio. That letter, after being read by Rae in the legislature as evidence of support for Martel, triggered a debate among the association’s members. They asked whether Scott did, in fact, speak for them. Some felt strongly that the PDAC should not be involved.

Meanwhile Steve Parry, president of the Porcupine branch of the PDAC, notes that the industry can ill afford to educate yet another mines minister. Scott and Parry’s legitimate concern is the faltering support the industry is getting from government.

This government and its predecessors have shown an appalling disregard for an industry that directly employs 30,000 and contributes $7 billion to the provincial economy. Within five years Ontario has sported six mines ministers and the possibility of another depending on Martel’s future. At a time when the industry needs a strong, consistent voice at the cabinet table to counter anti-development factions, mining leaders seem constantly struggling to educate a new incumbent. Meanwhile the industry’s priorities are pushed down the political agenda in favor of restrictive land-use policies, native land claim issues, environmental overkill and interdepartmental rivalry.

If this reflects a philosophical outlook, we are in deep trouble. Raising taxes and spending money, it seems, are now the government’s primary roles, not fostering an environment to promote vital industries. Has the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines become the ministry of mine closures rather than of mine development?

Not long ago, Ontario’s mining industry was the envy of the world with an established body of law, a wealth of accumulated scientific and assessment data, a skilled workforce, a favorable and stable investment climate and immense geological potential. Names like Hollinger, Kidd Creek and Hemlo are known around the world as quality mines built on quality orebodies. Clearly, the future is not assured. Ontario’s existing zinc reserves will be gone before the year 2000 and copper by 2010 at current mining rates. To develop a new mine it takes, on average, eight years from discovery to full production, so the hope of maintaining zinc output into the next century is already remote.

Add to that the inability to bring Quebec into the constitutional fold and the effect the breakup of Canada would have on currency exchange rates, taxation levels and other costs of doing business, and it is obvious that Ontario has become almost indistinguishable from other jurisdictions when it comes to attracting capital.

The fact that Martel’s career should cause such consternation shows the extent to which Ontario’s mining industry is in disarray. Her story will unfold in due course during committee hearings. The industry itself, however, may be left to drift while its political support melts away and its leaders squabble among themselves.