Proposal to bring 400 Chinese miners to B.C. raises alarm

Vancouver — The Canadian arm of a Chinese coal mining company is proposing to bring in 400 Chinese workers to run a new underground mine in northeastern British Columbia. Privately held Canadian Dehua International Mines Group hopes to have the Gething coal mine up and running in 2009 and, citing a lack of labourers skilled in underground mining, has proposed to import the mine’s entire workforce.

In a project description filed with the provincial government’s Environmental Assessment Office, Dehua said about 400 employees would be required to staff a mine at Gething.

“There are few underground coal mines in Canada,” the report states. “Management at Dehua have extensive experience and ties to operating underground coal mines in China. Dehua will likely source skilled labour from China to meet staffing requirements.”

The proposal is attracting considerable attention, but reactions are mixed. Media reports have largely slammed the idea, including strongly worded editorials in major Canadian papers arguing it would be unfair to B.C. for all the coal and wages from Gething to be sent overseas.

But those who live near the mine site view the idea differently. Evan Saugstad is the mayor of Chetwynd, a town of 2,600 about 100 km southeast of the mine site and the closest major settlement.

“We’ve been in talks with Dehua for almost two years and we’ve never disagreed with the fact that attracting underground coal workers would be a major challenge,” he says. “When I see the rhetoric in the media and see everyone up in arms about bringing in foreign workers I say, ‘Who’s going to come up from Vancouver to work in an underground mine?'”

“I don’t know anyone here who would want to work there,” he says.

Unemployment in Chetwynd and the surrounding area is “pretty much zero,” according to Saugstad. The local mill has trouble finding enough workers, and wages start at $25 an hour.

And in response to charges from labour union leaders that Dehua is neglecting its role in developing the region, Saugstad says Dehua spent many hours in talks with local communities, including the three First Nations groups in the area. In fact, Saugstad writes in an e-mail that Dehua has spent more time consulting with communities that did either Western Canadian Coal (WTN-T, WXJXF-O) or Pine Valley Mining (PVM-T, PVMCF-O), when those companies were starting nearby projects.

“Generally speaking, those who have come from Dehua to visit Chetwynd have shown a greater respect and reverence to our local governments than North American companies,” he writes.

Saugstad acknowledges there are numerous issues that would have to be worked through before the proposal could become a reality, such as whether workers would immigrate or come to Canada on temporary foreign worker permits, and whether mine workers would stay in camps or in town. But he also says that no one in the area is getting too concerned about the details yet.

“They’re looking at more than two years before opening, and that includes getting a number of permits,” Saugstad says. “So far, no one has gotten too excited about it. We look at it similarly to Tumbler Ridge — when that area was discovered there were twenty or thirty mine proposals, and only two were ever built. So whether they will even open is still a wild card.”

Despite Saugstad’s measured support for the proposal, the concept of importing an entire work force is not sitting well with many others involved in B.C. mining. Michael McPhie, president of the Mining Association of B.C., is surprised and a bit concerned about the proposal.

“I was not aware until recently of the scale of importation of workers that is being considered,” he says. “It made me wonder if they’d really thought through what they were proposing.”

McPhie points out that a workforce of 400 includes many different positions, from administrators to welders to engineers. While he conceded that it would be difficult to find a sufficient number of miners with experience underground, he argued that Dehua could find Canadians skilled in other necessary trades to work at Gething.

“There are a lot of displaced workers from the forestry industry because of mill closures and beetle kill impacts,” he says.

Jim Sinclair, president of the BC Federation of Labour, is angered by the proposal.

“The government and this company have lost sight of the idea of Canada — how this country grows,” he says. “Most of our wealth comes from the ground, and the way we share that wealth is that we do the work.”

Sinclair does not think Dehua would have difficulty finding people to work the mine, given the high hourly wages for such work. And he finds the alternative — Chinese workers — unacceptable.

“We should just leave the coal in the ground, if it and all the money are going back to China,” he says. “Why bother destroying the environment when the benefits to us, to our country and province, would be minimal?”

Interestingly, the mainstream media has only covered opposition to the proposal. Saugstad said that he discussed the issue with the major Canadian paper that broke the story, but the reporter did not include his perspective in her story.

“I guess my comments weren’t controversial enough,” he says.

Canadian Dehua International Mines Group, a subsidiary of Canadian Dehua International, is a Vancouver-based company backed by Chinese coal and steel producers. The company holds coal properties in B.C.

The company was established by Beijing Shuailing, a major Chinese coal supplier to the steel industry owned by B.C. resident Naishun Liu, and Taylor Wu, a Canadian citizen.

Dehua’s two partners in developing the Gething coal project are Shougang Group, a major Chinese steel producer, and Shandong Feigheng Mines Group, a large government-owned coal producer. Shougang will be the mine’s main client and Feicheng Mines will provide technical support for mine development. Both companies are also Dehua shareholders.