RINGS of DEVELOPMENT: Maximizing Ring of Fire benefits requires simultaneous planning at local First Nation, tribal council and NAN levels – by John van Nostrand (Onotassiniik Magazine – Winter 2014)

posted in Aboriginal and Inuit Mining, Northern Ontario/Canada Regional Media, Ontario Mining, Ontario's Ring of Fire Mineral Discovery |

href="http://www.replan.ca/">http://www.replan.ca/

John van Nostrand is the Principal at rePlan Inc., a company that provides social assessment, advisory and management services to natural resource companies and financial institutions around the world.

Mines are like the proverbial pebble in the pond – they have profound circles of influence. Their impacts range from the economic to the environmental to the social. They affect national, regional and local economies, entire watersheds and ecosystems, and the towns, farmlands and hunting grounds that communities around them occupy.

The Ring of Fire is one of the largest pebbles ever to be dropped in the pond we call Ontario. It will create an economy estimated at more than $50 billion. It will have a broad impact on over 60 per cent of the province, and a direct impact on an area four times larger than the Timmins/Sudbury Mining Region in northeastern Ontario.

Development of that region began more than 100 years ago when major ore, nickel and silver deposits were exposed around Sudbury and Cobalt during the building of the railway to the Clay Belt. But with the Ring of Fire, there is a very real opportunity to prepare and plan – ahead of development – in order to maximize the benefits for not only for the mining companies and our provincial coffers, but also the 49 communities of Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) and other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal populations that currently live in the region.

For those who don’t think that planning is necessary, let’s remember what happened within the Timmins/Sudbury Complex. When first announced, it attracted an enormous influx of prospectors, large and small mining companies, and inexperienced labourers. Many lives were lost at Cobalt and elsewhere before an immigrant family walked to Toronto to protest the death of loved ones, forcing the provincial government to create its first Mines Act in 1906. Today, as fascinating and dynamic as the great communities of Timmins and Sudbury are, they are also among the most expensive cities to run in Canada.

This is because they grew up as clusters of separate mine-heads and associated mine towns that now cover enormous land areas that are difficult and expensive to service within a single municipal boundary. Moreover, pre-existing Aboriginal populations had no say in, and did not benefit in any significant way, from the mines.

Development of the Ring of Fire will require the planning, design and construction not only of the mine sites themselves, but also the extensive infrastructures required to serve them – including power supply, telecommunications, roads, and railway lines. Housing and community services will need to be built for existing populations, estimated at 50-60,000 predominantly Aboriginal residents, as well as the estimated 40-50,000 new residents who will come to The Ring to construct and operate, or provide services to, the new chromite mines.

In order to maximize the benefits of the Ring of Fire, planning will have to take place both “bottom-up” and “top-down.” In other words, First Nations, mining companies and the provincial government will need to work from the centre of the Ring (the pebble) outwards, and from the edge of the region it will create (the pond) inwards – simultaneously.

This will require not simply local plans for the First Nation communities located closest to the mines and for the mining sites themselves, but also an overall regional development plan for the pond as a whole, as well as tribal council (district) plans for the nine tribal councils that exist in-between. Above all, mining companies and the Province will need to establish round tables with local First Nations, tribal councils, Nishnawbe Aski Nation, and other stakeholders to establish a shared vision and set of principles on which all subsequent plans will be based.

Like the mines themselves, these round tables and plans cannot and will not be created overnight. But it is important that planning begin to take place as soon as possible, starting at a local level but in ways that will make sense for the growth and development of the region as a whole in the longer term. For example, while early work on local First Nations plans must start – and indeed is starting – with individual communities within the Matawa First Nations area, it is also very important that work begin simultaneously on a tribal council plan for Matawa, and a regional development plan for the NAN region, so that each scale of planning can inform – and be informed by – the others.

The importance of this approach is demonstrated by other similar planning processes in Mid Canada that have been developed for comparable resource regions, through the collaboration of Aboriginal peoples with provincial and local governments and resource companies. These include the recent Thompson Economic Diversification Plan, which includes the Thompson and Region Infrastructure Plan (see href="http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/Initiatives/3224.asp">http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/Initiatives/3224.asp).

It will likely be difficult enough to start the local First Nation plans within communities that, after living under The Indian Act of 1867, and Treaties 5 and 9, are either no longer used to dreaming about their future and projecting themselves forward, or are simply suspicious of planning and of what their neighbours might be negotiating separately with other mining companies.

Nor are the mining companies used to thinking that their mine plans will need to be developed in close collaboration with the communities within or near which they will be located. But it is essential that while these local First Nations plans are being prepared and negotiated, work starts on the Matawa district plan that will identify the overlay of new infrastructure that will be required to serve the mines. Its location and design can in turn serve the infrastructure and housing needs not only of future mine sites but also those of expanding local First Nation communities.

The preparation and negotiation of local First Nations and tribal council plans is of necessity an iterative process, within which each informs and assists the realization of the other. The local mining and community plans will show where local growth, influx and housing development can best be located, and the tribal council plans will show where local infrastructure and employment areas can best be located to serve both the mines and the First Nation communities.

The larger NAN regional development plan is required not only to ensure that growth and development of each of the tribal councils benefits from mining operations through access to regional infrastructure, but also to create a framework for regional growth over the next 100 years. The regional plan will begin to address the impacts of growth and development on the more than 5,000 square kilometres of natural environment that will be affected by the Ring, including one of the largest wetland areas in the world.

It will also deal with the Ring’s relationship to other pending regional development projects, including the development of other mining and resource sites, and development of the James Bay Coast in response to the opening up of the Northwest Passage. At the same time, it will present a framework for the development of the secondary, tertiary and even quaternary economies – such as construction, transportation, energy supply and transmission, tourism, agriculture, and forestry – that can be developed alongside chromite extraction, in order to cushion the inevitable ups and downs of resource prices and to create a longer-term sustainable economy.

Finally, the NAN regional plan should be suitable to serve as an amendment to the province’s current Growth Plan for Northern Ontario (2011), and as such should show the relationship of the emerging region with the major urban hubs of Thunder Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, Kapuskasing, Timmins and Sudbury.

Recently, the provincial government described its approach to planning for the Ring of Fire as one that was being developed “in parallel” with the mining companies and First Nations. The problem with parallel planning processes is that like parallel lines it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to arrange for them to meet. Better we jump in the pond together, and make very sure that the ripples these new mining activities create are of benefit to all.