Chamber of Mines News Briefs – January 3 – 4, 2013 [Note: News headlines are hyperlinked to their stories in this document.] ABORIGINAL NEWS ....................................................................................................................................... 1 Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces meeting with First Nations leadership ................................ 1 Idle No more movement could become challenge for Stephen Harper ................................................... 1 NUNAVUT NEWS ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Nunavut in 2012: a look at the year that was ........................................................................................... 3 Resource Development and Energy News .................................................................................................. 11 Important year for Prairie Creek Mine.................................................................................................... 11 Review free entry staking system, NDP urges ........................................................................................ 12 ABORIGINAL NEWS Prime Minister Stephen Harper announces meeting with First Nations leadership Ottawa - January 4, 2013 Prime Minister Stephen Harper today issued the following statement on a planned meeting with a delegation of First Nations leaders coordinated by the Assembly of First Nations: “On January 24, 2012, I was pleased to participate in the historic Crown-First Nations Gathering. On that day, the Government of Canada and First Nations committed to making progress in the following areas: Improving relationships and strong partnerships between Canada and First Nations respectful of Aboriginal and Treaty rights as recognized and affirmed in the Constitution Act, 1982; Building effective, appropriate, transparent and fully accountable governance structures; Empowering success of individuals through access to education and opportunity; Enabling strong, sustainable, and self-sufficient communities; Creating conditions to accelerate economic development opportunities and maximize benefits for all Canadians; Respecting the role of First Nations’ culture and language in our history and future. “The Government and First Nations committed at the Gathering to maintaining the relationship through an ongoing dialogue that outlines clear goals and measures of progress and success. While some progress has been made, there is more that must be done to improve outcomes for First Nations communities across Canada. “It is in this spirit of ongoing dialogue that, together with Minister Duncan, I will be participating in a working meeting with a delegation of First Nations leaders coordinated by the Assembly of First Nations on January 11, 2013. This working meeting will focus on two areas flowing from the Gathering: the treaty relationship and aboriginal rights, and economic development. “The Government of Canada and First Nations have an enduring historic relationship based on mutual respect, friendship and support. The Government of Canada is committed to strengthening this relationship.” Idle No more movement could become challenge for Stephen Harper Toronto Star – January 2, 2103 Chantal Hébert Chamber News Briefs 1 MONTREAL—At first glance, Chief Theresa Spence — the hunger-striking Attawapiskat leader who has become the de facto face of the Idle No More movement — and Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois — the fiercely articulate Quebec student leader who was cast in a similar role last spring — have little in common. But first impressions are often misleading. Yes, Spence is as soft-spoken as Nadeau-Dubois was fiery and yes, their causes could not be more different. She is starving herself in the name of one of the poorest constituencies in the country. By virtue of their education opportunities, the students who Nadeau-Dubois led in a crusade against higher tuition fees last year make up the most privileged contingent of Quebec youth. But like Nadeau-Dubois, Spence has attained a stature emblematic of a larger struggle and in this, they are flip sides of the same coin. It is one that has the demonstrated potential to alter the power equation between governments and the governed. A year ago today the student crisis that was about to take Quebec and its Liberal government by storm was not on anyone’s radar. Most of the early 2012 political analysis focused on opposition leader Pauline Marois’ uphill battle to hang on to her job. If the proposition had been put to the Quebec punditocracy or its ruling political class that a trio of student leaders was about to accomplish what a decade of Parti Québécois attacks on premier Jean Charest had failed to achieve and mobilize the street against his government, it would almost certainly have been shrugged off. Fatigue with Charest’s three-term government played a large part in the making of Quebec’s printemps érable. But the movement also featured a more fundamental rejection of the system itself. To this day a disquieting number of its participants believe that the traditional democratic channels — including the ballot box — have failed them. That feeling has long been widespread among Canada’s First Nations. Over the past decade, it has spread to ever-expanding pockets of politically engaged Canadians. It does not help that so many of them have consistently failed to find an effective opposition outlet for their aspirations. Charest’s government was the main target of the student strife that eventually festered into the pot- banging Quebec maple spring, but the province’s season of social unrest was also part of a larger grassroots pattern from which stems the Occupy movement on the international scene and, on the national stage, the momentum-gathering Idle No More movement. It may not move the 99 per cent of Canadians that the Occupy movement claims to speak for but the Idle No More spirit has the capacity to resonate with the more than 60 per cent of voters that consistently opt for federal options other than the Conservative party. On the societal role of government, the gap between the various non-Conservative constituencies in this country has always been smaller than the gap between those who support the current government and those who don’t. The ranks of those who sympathize with the activist goals of the Idle No More movement stretch from Joe Clark, a former Tory prime minister on whose foreign affairs watch Canada embraced free trade with the United States, to the likes of Peter Julian, a former executive of the nationalist Council of Canadians, who is now energy critic for the NDP. Against significant odds, social peace has mostly prevailed in Canada since Harper came to power. But over that period his government has hardly gone out of its way to expand its tent. Chamber News Briefs 2 If anything, it has been more content than its predecessors to draw lines in the sand between its tent and the comparatively smaller ones of its squabbling rivals. A risk in to that approach is that the number of people who feel left out in the cold tends to keep growing. On that basis, the Idle No More movement — if left unattended — could snowball into the biggest challenge Harper has encountered since he was first elected as prime minister seven years ago this month. NUNAVUT NEWS Nunavut in 2012: a look at the year that was Mary River moves forward, food price protests grow Nunatsiaq News - January 03, 2013 BRIELLE MORGAN One of the biggest highlights of the year was the growth of the Feeding My Family Facebook group, which attracted 20,000 followers and inspired food price protests across Nunavut throughout the summer. But as the year drew to a close, there were no clear answers on how to fix poverty in Nunavut. On resource development, the Newmont Mining Corp. dealt a big blow to the economy of the Kitikmeot region when they put their Hope Bay gold project into suspended animation. But after getting a project certificate for the Mary River iron project on the last working day of 2012, the Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. is on track to start construction this year. January • Polar bear, wolf and fox pelts from Nunavut sell for record-high prices at the Fur Harvesters Auction in North Bay, Ontario. • As part of their ongoing investigation into the First Air crash that killed 12 people on Aug. 20, 2011, the Transportation Safety Board releases a report that classifies the incident as a “controlled flight into terrain.” • GN officials announce that Nunavut’s commercial fishing industry will get $4.4 million — half from the federal government and half from the territory — for a pre-training program intended to increase Inuit participation. • The GN held kicks off an anti-smoking campaign called “Tobacco has no place here” with a country food feast at Inuksuk High School in Iqaluit. The campaign is part of a five-year action plan to curb Nunavut’s smoking rate. • Prime Minister Harper meets with First Nations leaders in Ottawa to talk about “resetting” the relationship between aboriginal peoples and the federal government and creating economic opportunities. Meanwhile, ITK president Mary Simon pushes for a similar meeting with Inuit leaders. • A new Statistics Canada report shows that a third of people living in Canada’s territories reported being victims of crime – half of which were violent – in 2009. • The CCGS Amundsen, the big red icebreaker at the heart of Canada’s Arctic science programs, is sidelined by