Strategic Miner

It looks like the way to go, as described by Dale Booth...excerpt below:

"Public-private partnerships, also known as P3s, will be considered as a mechanism for building the power supply, roads and other assets needed to enable mining development in the Ring of Fire. Dale Booth, who has held senior positions with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and the department of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANDC), is sure of it.

“I can guarantee it, P3s are going to be … looked at very closely for the Ring of Fire, and not only for the power transmission, not only the transportation,” Booth predicted during a presentation on the topic at the Ontario Mining Forum in June."

Project could include other things such as schools, water/sewage facilities, etc...But let's keep it simple by considering only transportation (perhaps, next in line is power transmission, but let's leave this aside for now to keep the project simple.

So we have 2 active companies which have resources in the state where development can begin immediately, starting with NOT Ni mine, and KWG resources which could follow shortly, if there is some indication that there are government support for the development of the RoF.

Let's start with the E-W corridors. There are 2 proposals, one by NOT, the other (the Alternate E-W corridor proposed by KWG. There are merits in both proposals, but for the sake of a simple initial discussion, let's pick the Alternate E-W corridors which has the following advantages:

- Close proximity of several FN communities (two are quite outspoken and have strong feeling about development and desire to have some form of more permanent linkage to the outside world in the South). Reference, KWG diagram on proposed road structure to the RoF.

- The bottom portion linking to Hyw 808 to the Attawapsikat River would cost ~$60M, and the northern portion from the Attawapiskat River (including a car bridge) around ~40M.

- The northern portion from the Attawapiskat to the transportation hub at Koper Lake has the advantage of providing a partial transportation structure to the RoF along the Esker Corridor. Essentially, this proposal would assist future construction of the entire N-S service road (the northern portion is common with the Alternate E-W road.

- Some initial step for the N-S route: Prepare ground work for the rest of the N-S service road, starting with the preparation of the base for the corridor by building a gravel road from both ends: north from the Attawapiskat River and south from Nakina. A single lane in each direction would be fine for this service road. This initial gravel road could be also used, as it's being built, to prepare the groundwork for the RR at the same time, such as building RR bridges.

- Make the Alternate E-W road and (later, the N-S service road) a toll road to collect fees from users: mining companies, governments who would be paying on behalf of the FN communities (or some other form of subsidies, e.g. government paying the FN folks for maintenance of the structures)

The application for P3 money is relatively straight forward. Perhaps, the two leading companies, NOT and KWG should get together and draft an applications with inputs from the affected FN communities. It would be more productive to proceed in this fashion. Co-operation is much better than confrontation. It has to be a win-win situation for everybody, especially the business partners, since they are in the business of making some profits, not just spending the money blindly for charity or some woolly noble causes.

Just fill inthe forms and send the P3 applications to appropriate agencies to find out their responses. The value of the project is about right ~$100M. Make it ~200M if there are justifications for a larger project. The proposal could include the power transmission infrastructure to be built along the road corridors as part of the expande project. Mining companies should be willing to foot part of the costs, since they would not depend on diesel generation. Similarly, the FNs communities could persuade the government to chip in to get rid of the diesel generators. As part of the expanded project a communication infrastructure which could be built along the power corridor.

The options are endless, but to get something concrete going, the project should be simple, since you would want too much discussions on other options (to do it right) and further navel gazing.

goldhunter