Editorial: Quebec rises, BC sinks in Fraser Institute survey

Once again we see politics playing one of the biggest roles in jurisdictional rankings for the Fraser Institute’s newly unveiled “Survey of Mining Companies 2014” by Taylor Jackson.

The survey tallied 485 responses, which provided enough data to evaluate 122 mining jurisdictions around the world, including provinces and states in Canada, the U.S., Australia and Argentina.

The survey’s key “Investment Attractiveness Index” considers mineral and policy perceptions, with the Fraser Institute giving a 60-40 weighting with respect to a jurisdiction’s mineral potential versus government policy.

Finland takes top spot in the Investment Attractiveness Index, moving up three spots from last year. The rest of the top 10 is a romp by the North American jurisdictions: Saskatchewan, Nevada, Manitoba, Quebec, Wyoming, Newfoundland & Labrador, Yukon and Alaska. Both Saskatchewan and Manitoba moved up in ranking, while Greenland and Sweden slipped out of the top 10.

Last in class was Malaysia, which ranks as the least attractive mining jurisdiction in the world, followed (beginning with the worst) by Hungary, Kenya, Honduras, Solomon Islands, Egypt, Guatemala, Bulgaria, Nigeria and Sudan. All of these countries are new to the bottom-10 list, with Kenya and Bulgaria having dropped the most in ranking.

Quebec enjoyed one of the most dramatic improvements, having leaped to sixth spot from eighteenth and eleventh in 2013 and 2012, after ranking second and third place in 2011 and 2010.

Those with an eye on provincial politics in La Belle Province will see the pattern right away: the two depressed years coincide with the ascension of Pauline Marois’ regressive minority Parti Quebecois government, which in September 2012 defeated Jean Charest’s pro-mining Liberal government.

For decades, miners have enjoyed great support from the Quebec government, no matter whether a federalist or separatist party was in charge, as both groups saw the virtue of a strong mining industry in creating economic activity in the province’s northern towns and Far North.

But this time in government, the PQ rolled back many Liberal initiatives, including sidelining Charest’s ambitious Plan Nord northern infrastructure development plan. But for various reasons — including the PQ’s divisive Quebec Charter of Values proposal and its renewed emphasis on separatism — the PQ’s minority rule only lasted 19 months, as new Liberal leader Philippe Couillard scored a decisive majority government last April.

As detailed in Emmanuel Sala and Jean-Philippe Latreille’s article in this issue, the Couillard government’s re-introduction of a modified Plan Nord and its reformation of the province’s Mining Act has already gone a long way in restoring a predictable and stable framework for miners in the province.

At the other end of the country, B.C. plummeted to a twenty-eighth spot in the global rankings from sixteenth in 2013, and only trails Nova Scotia and Nunavut among Canadian jurisdictions.

In B.C., having a pro-business provincial government is not enough to outweigh strong local opposition to resource development in large swathes of the province. This opposition is for reasons of environmental activism as well as First Nations’ opposition to specific mining projects, compounded by their frustration over the lack of signed treaties covering much of the province, which makes B.C. the outlier among Canadian jurisdictions.

The landmark June 26, 2014, decision by the Supreme Court of Canada declaring that the small Tsilhqot’in First Nation holds aboriginal title over 1,750 sq. km in central B.C. is a precedent-setter that effectively remakes the regulatory environment in B.C.: The old regulatory era of provincial and federal governments only having a vague “duty to consult” aboriginal groups with respect to development on “traditional land” has been replaced with a “requirement for consent” by the governments from an aboriginal group when it comes to “title land.”

As the unsuccessful proponents of the Kemess North, New Prosperity and Northern Gateway projects found out, the rules for developing resource projects have changed in B.C., and that has clearly been reflected in B.C.’s diminished ranking in the survey.