EDITORIAL PAGE — Qualifications please

“It’s no secret that the mining industry hasn’t been very forceful in pointing out its contribution to our economic well-being.” So says federal Natural Resources Minister Anne McLellan. There is some truth to this statement. The industry was caught flat-footed as the era of environmentalism dawned. Only in the past few years has the mining lobby begun fighting back.

But her comments, which were made following her speech last week at the annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada in Toronto, could be interpreted as an indictment of her own ministry. It’s no secret that the federal government itself has been less than forceful in helping the industry maintain its position.

For years, the ministry’s own experts have been warning the politicians that base metal reserves in Canada are declining, that exploration spending in the country is falling and that if something isn’t done soon, Canadian mining will continue to slip, relative to the mining sectors of other countries. For a sobering insight into how other countries view us in terms of political risk, McLellan would be advised to read a recent issue of Australia’s Mining Monthly. The publication surveyed 24 of that country’s leading mining and petroleum companies to gauge which are the 15 most desirable countries in which to invest.

We were shocked to learn that Canada ranks sixth — behind Chile, Argentina, the U.S., Indonesia and Mexico. We were only slightly ahead of Vietnam, which was in seventh spot. The specific country-risk factors identified as especially worrisome in Canada were red tape, “green tape” (read environmental regulations), land claims and social risk.

Most of these negative factors were not issues less than a decade ago. And we suspect that, less than a decade ago, such a survey would have ranked Canada at least in the top three.

In the words of one Aussie mining executive: “(Mine exploration) is a competitive process; those mining-oriented countries which are no longer willing to compete for the investment dollar will, over time, see a steady diminution in the number of defined economic resources that might be developed into mines.”

But this message, delivered by the Canadian industry to successive ministers of the last government, fell on deaf ears. No mines minister of recent vintage has done anything useful to try to halt the decline. Should we put faith in McLellan?

Her c.v. mentions no connection with mining. She is a lawyer whose career has gravitated toward academia — as an assistant professor of law at the University of New Brunswick and, later, as an associate professor at the University of Alberta, before becoming acting dean at the latter institution. Her focus has been the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and related issues such as pay equity, affirmative action and sexual harassment. But mining is an important revenue-producing industry and we would feel more comfortable if the cabinet minister governing it had some experience with the mining constituency itself. One could argue that pay equity, sexual harassment and so on are all topics of concern to mining because it is a business like any other in Canada, but that misses the point entirely. The point, as we see it, is this: The industry needs a knowledgeable, committed minister with clout at the cabinet table so that the industry’s concerns will finally be championed.