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The company is exploring for nickel deposits on its Langmuir property near Timmins, Ontario; for nickel-gold-copper on its Cleaver and Douglas properties; and for molybdenum and rare earth elements at recently acquired Desrosiers property.
Message: Sudbury Star article
Feds should buy nickel on the cheap (comment on this story)
Posted By CAROL MULLIGAN, THE SUDBURY STAR
Posted 3 hours ago
"The president of Mine Mill Local 598/CAW is calling on Natural Resources Canada to "take ownership of natural resources" to eliminate the "peaks and valleys" of selling a product such as nickel.
Dwight Harper will float that idea today when he meets with representatives of Natural Resources Canada who are in Sudbury on a fact-finding mission.
Harper said government officials contacted his union and asked for the meeting. He intends to use the opportunity to discuss his own ideas.
The union chief describes a scenario in which the federal government would buy large volumes of nickel for a set base price, for example $8 a pound, "a number out of the blue," Harper said.
When nickel prices are low, as they are now, nickel companies could still sell government the nickel for that price and the government would sell it later when prices are better.
"So it puts a nice even keel on producing the product for the people who are doing it," said Harper.
Laurentian University economist Jean-Charles Cachon has been proposing a similar idea for a national stabilization fund, which would do for nickel prices what the Central Bank does for the Canadian dollar.
The federal government would stockpile nickel in poor times and sell it in good times, as Mine Mill's Harper is proposing.
Harper said he is more optimistic now than he would have been six months ago that Natural Resources Canada may look favourably upon his recommendation.
"I think because of the sudden closures at the steel mills in the south and now with the layoffs at Inco, it seems to be snowballing. Initially it was just us, but now it is more than just us," said Harper of the 686 job losses at Xstrata Nickel earlier this year.
The federal government either has to "tighten up the way Investment Canada does business or they're going to have to look at their natural resources and say, 'We need to take control of them.' So I think they're going to be more receptive."
Cachon said the federal government experienced an "unexpected windfall" of billions of dollars in mining royalties when nickel was selling for record prices in recent years.
Mining companies such as Vale Inco and Xstrata Nickel pay billions in royalties to the provincial and federal governments for mining rights, and little if any of that goes to municipal coffers.
Cachon said a "good chunk" of the federal surplus is a result of those billions in mining royalties coming out of Sudbury so the federal government can afford to give back to the city.
Harper said a stable price for nickel would let companies know "right up front what they can work with because they know what income they're going to get based on how much they produce. They can use that to continue to operate and know that, a year from now or two years from now, the money's still going to be there," he said.
Harper said he "relished" the idea of a meeting with Natural Resources Canada and was eager to hear what its representatives had to say.
Natural Resources Canada spokesman Brian Smith said nickel expert Bill McCutcheon and mining expert Doug Panagapko are in Sudbury to visit Vale Inco, Xstrata, FNX Mining and the provincial government.
Natural Resources Canada does not come to Sudbury often and, when it does, it likes to pay a courtesy call to a union, said Smith.
Government officials sometimes grow frustrated after talking with mining company officials and turn to unions for a different view of the state of mining operations in Sudbury, he said.
Natural Resources Canada's mandate is promoting the sustainability of the nation's natural resources."
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