Gino Donato/The Sudbury Star Paul Parisotto, chairman and director of Noront Resources, makes a point at the panel discussion portion of the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce’s Ring of Fire event at Dynamic Earth on Thursday evening.

Executives with two companies with the largest stakes in the Ring of Fire say they would rather live with decisions by the Government of Ontario they disagree with than have the province make no decisions at all about transportation and other key issues.

Frustration over the slow pace of developing the Ring of Fire boiled over at a meeting Thursday at Dynamic Earth at which a report was unveiled highlighting the economic benefits of mining the chromite deposits in the James Bay Lowlands.

The report, Beneath the Surface: Uncovering the Economic Potential of Ontario's Ring of Fire, was presented to an invitation-only crowd at an event sponsored by the Greater Sudbury Chamber of Commerce.

The report by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce shows the Ring of Fire would generate up to $9.4 billion of gross domestic product in the first 10 years, create up to 5,500 jobs annually and generate $2 billion in government revenue.
The executive director of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association, Dick de Stefano, asked a panel of five people, including executives from Cliffs Natural Resources and Noront Resources, if they were ready for the province to decide what type of transportation system should be built.

A disagreement between Cliffs and KWG Resources, which favours a rail system and has staked claims over eskers that would make the best route for the all-weather road proposed by Cliffs, is stalled in an appeal by Cliffs of a decision by Ontario's Mining Lands Commissioner that favours KWG.

Noront favours an east-west route.

"At what point and who and how will you accept a (resolution) from the outside?" de Stefano asked Cliffs director of furnace technology Matthew Cramer and Noront chair and director Paul Parisotto.

Both men said while they have their preference for a transportation route, the important thing is the province make a decision, and that it be funded with provincial and federal money.

Both Cramer and Parisotto said they are not in the infrastructure business, but they will pay toward building transportation to get to their ore deposits.

What has been holding up their projects is the lack of decision-making, particularly on the part of the province.

Parisotto said his company wants to get something done "as soon as possible," and is in negotiations with several stakeholders to "get something done ASAP."

De Stefano said Sudburians have been listening to that for three years.

He warned that the companies' fundamental differences are going to be "awkward" for investors and the public when the benefits of mining the Ring of Fire are clear as pointed out in the Ontario chamber report.

"If you fundamentally have differences, let's resolve it with somebody from the outside arbitrating. Can you live with that?"

Cramer said his company would like to be sitting at the table with the province and other stakeholders in the Ring of Fire, rather than having indefinitely suspended its work on its project in the Ring and its $1.8-billion ferrochrome processing plant near Capreol.

"Let's have a look at the road for an example," said Cramer. "If the government ... came in and said, 'Look, enough of this between the two of you, we're going to build an east-west road.' What's Cliffs' approach? Well, we evaluate our project on the ability to service it by the east-west road, we present that to our investors, they either invest or they don't."

What is holding back Cliffs' development is a lack of decisions on a whole range of options, "and we made that clear in four areas specifically that we believe we are owed, and as a result we've suspended our project," said Cramer.

Cliffs' vice-president of global ferroalloys, Bill Boor, has said those four issues are unresolved land claims, environmental assessment issues, and lack of government support for infrastructure and power needs.

A member of the audience asked Cramer what Sudburians could do to help move the Cliffs project forward while it's waiting for the government to make decisions in those four areas.

"Keep the pressure moving up," said Cramer.

He asked the audience to "spread the word and to keep the pressure on various officials, outside of Sudbury primarily, to keep things moving through events like this ... to spread the word that the Ring of Fire is something that needs to be pushed."

carol.mulligan@sunmedia.ca

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