http://www.chroniclejournal.com/opinion/letters_to_editor/decade-of-ring-planning-begets-another-plan/article_564ba584-238d-11e6-a225-1b405eccdcf7.html
Decade of Ring planning begets another plan
Posted: Friday, May 27, 2016 6:00 am
Decade of Ring planning begets another plan Letter to the editor by Don Wallace chroniclejournal.com | 6 comments
Coming Soon: A Plan for the Ring of Fire . . . kind of. It appears that the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines will soon divulge something regarding the plan for the Ring. This comes almost a decade after the discovery of the Ring. It comes five years after the Toronto Stock Exchange suspended further Ring listings, blaming the absence of a coherent plan. It also comes after the recent severe reprimand by the auditor general for the efforts, or lack there of, by the MNDM’s Ring of Fire Secretariat.
So what is it going to be?
Most likely the “plan,” or whatever it’s to be called, will deal only with Noront’s Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper mine and its planned tote road from the mine some 400 kilometres southwest, via Pickle Lake, to a proposed transload facility at Savant Lake on the CNR mainline.
Nickel-copper represents less than 10 per cent of the value of Ring’s minerals which begs the question what about the other 90 per cent — i.e., chromite?
The word from Noront, which now controls most of the chromite, is that they are doing a “strategic analysis” — which I guess means that nothing is about to happen.
Hence, it looks like what we might be served with, at best, is a 10 per cent plan. This, after all these years, no wonder the auditor general is unhappy with the work of MNDM’s Ring Secretariat.
Don Wallace
London, Ont.
