I don't agree. In fact I think it's the worst idea I've seen in a long time. There's something completely wrong with the numbers, and the idea as a whole.

Excerpt from the article: Noront now owns 63 per cent of the Ring of Fire with their new purchase. What if Noront sold half of their claims to the Matawa Tribal Council for $50-million? The Matawa would borrow the money with government-backed loans, similar to the taxpayer investments we’ve seen with auto companies, oil fields and infrastructure projects.

Let's agree that the claims are the primary asset of Noront. By giving away half of them, we're basicly giving away half of NOT. The market cap of NOT is roughly 100 million C$, so that would be roughly the same. Based on the claims package my assumption is that in 20 years NOT will be a 5 billion C$ market cap company if everything goes well, which we are assured it will if we hand half of NOT to the natives now, right?

It's simply too rich a deal for the natives!

Having nothing better to do during easter, I read up on how many natives that actually live in the communities. The link was provided by another poster (can't remember who - but thank you!) http://community.matawa.on.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/.

*) I'm unsure about the number.

So my very rough calculation is to devide 2,500,000,000 C$ between 4,000 natives living in the communities, consequently writing a 625,000 C$ cheque (I know I forgot about the 50 million C$ loan and rounded the number of people down, so let's say 600,000 C$ as an even number) for every man, woman and child in the Matawa communities in 20 years.

On top of that they'll get all the things they rightfully should have, such as roads, electricity, broadband, training, job opportunitites etc.

I think it's only fair that a lot is done to lift the Matawa natives out of despair and poverty. In fact I think it's wrong only to be thinking/talking about doing something about it now, after private mining companies have found minerals in the ground. It should have been done allready (or at least there should have been coherent plans about what to do), and I'd like to add that all the problems are probably not only an issue for the 9 Matawa communities, but all of the northern FN communities, and consequently they should all be part of the same masterplan.

BUT my point is that taking care of Canadians and the communities they live in, whether they are natives or not, is an issue for the government, not private companies! And subsequently private companies shouldn't be subject to blackmail because the government isn't doing what it's supposed to.

GLTA NOTlings

DRA