Goldhunter,

Great work, solid post and insight as usual.

I have every reason to believe that the road in the leaked Liberal budget is the East-West Road;

1. It follows the agreement between Ontario and all nine chiefs of the affected Matawa-member First Nations groups. If you look on a map, the east-west road connects the most number of communities and must have been promised as part of the agreement that was signed last week.

2. Noront and KWG were both advocates of the east-west road and surely expressed such in their submissions to Gravelle for the Deloitte Report; Noront is at the most advanced stage of all ROF companies and can start extracting and shipping nickel by the east-west road thereby showing ROF progress to Ontarians in relatively short order while KWG advocated for the east-west road at this early stage so that materials and equipment could be shipped to construct the railway in a more efficient manner.

3. The road in the leaked budget cannot be a north-south road since the Mining Commission upheld and confirmed KWG's surface land rights - Cliffs challenged it and was sent on their bike and the Ontario government was anxiously observing this from the sidelines. I can't imagine that a black-eyed government accused of 'bungling' the ROF, the gas plant scandal, email deletion, etc is looking for another fight - to do so would be to look for yet another sharp object to run into and would spell the end of them in an upcoming election.

4. Chromite has to be shipped by rail as it was the transportation method that minimized cost. To develop anything else along the precious north-south route would be to completely hamstring the business opportunity of the only known North American chromite deposit in a price fluctuating market. I don’t expect the Liberals to get this but I have more faith in the recommendation coming from Deloitte.

I think this leaked item spells good news for KWG and the railway. It is a beginning rather than an end.

All the best to all KWG Longs!

Keep Digging