Editorial: Go west, even to BC now

The bumbling reign of the socialist New Democratic Party in British Columbia during the 1990s did such deep damage to the mining sector in the province that it’s still not fully recovered, even five years after voters finally came to their senses and kicked the NDP out of office.

Thank goodness then, that Gordon Campbell’s centrist, pragmatic B.C. Liberal government, which was swept to power in 2001 and re-elected last May, is going beyond removing bureaucratic barriers to mining and mineral exploration in the province and is actually out there hitting the pavement and promoting B.C.’s mining potential to outsiders.

In April, that earnestness took the form of a two-day, provincial government-led “investment and trade mission” to Toronto’s mining community, the second-ever such mission after one in London a couple of years ago, and certainly not the last.

Leading the delegation was Richard Neufeld, B.C.’s minister of energy, mines and petroleum resources since 2001, and Bill Bennett, B.C.’s minister of state for mining. Accompanying the ministers and their entourage were representatives from 14 B.C.-based mining and exploration companies, as well as the Mining Association of B.C., the Association for Mineral Exploration in B.C. and the Tahltan First Nation (a partner at Barrick Gold’s Eskay Creek mine).

The delegation opened the Toronto Stock Exchange and hosted a series of pro-B.C. speeches at a well-attended luncheon at the Toronto Hilton.

And the B.C. government has a great turnaround story to tell the world: spending on mineral exploration in the province soared to a 15-year high of $220 million last year, up 660 per cent from the nadir in 2001, and activity continues to be strong this year.

True, that’s partly the result of dramatically improved metal and coal prices, but the stats also show the political dimension in the recovery, in that B.C.’s share of exploration spending in Canada has increased substantially every year since 2001, even as Canada’s share of worldwide exploration spending has been on the rise, too.

The breadth of the exploration boom has also been healthy, touching every region of the province and almost every major commodity, save diamonds.

On the mining side, eight metal and 10 coal mines are now in operation in the province and 20 more are being built or are on the drawing board. Particularly heartening has been the roaring back to life of the once-moribund coal sector in southeastern and east-central B.C., and the reopening of the Mount Polley and Gibraltar mines in the Cariboo.

In the financial realm, the 850 mining and exploration companies based in B.C. raised $3.2 billion last year, or about half that raised by Canadian-listed companies, proving that good, old-fashioned capitalism is alive and well amid the latte bars and grow-ops of hippy-dippy Vancouver.

Today’s mining renaissance has very much been helped by the B.C. Liberal government taking big, decisive steps: restoring predictability to land tenure; cutting corporate income taxes and eliminating the hated corporate capital tax; chopping taxes on fuel as well as production equipment and machinery; reducing personal income taxes; instituting various flow-through-share and tax-credit programs; launching its “New Relationship” program with aboriginal groups, centred around a new $100-million trust fund; funding mining research and jobs training; and creating some excellent digital mining databases.

Anyone who witnessed the bitter struggles between miners and the B.C. government in the 1990s — epitomized by the government’s boneheaded decision to turn the multibillion-dollar Windy Craggy copper-cobalt discovery into a vast UN World Heritage Site — can only be a little disoriented listening to today’s B.C. miners publicly heaping heartfelt praise on the bureaucracy in Victoria.

As Bennett told the mining community attending the opening of the Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver in January: “We value what you do. That great wall of indifference (built in the 1990s) has come down, and it’s gone for good.”

These are comforting words to miners, and even more so knowing they’re backed up by the B.C. government’s real, hard-won accomplishments on behalf of the millions in the province who benefit indirectly from a healthy, home-grown mining industry.