SIGNS OF THE TIMES
OCTOBER 1998
BY BARRY STAGG
INCO AND THE GLOBAL VILLAGE
It looks as if nickel mining at Voisey Bay will be delayed until the twenty-first century. Inco, the Canadian mining giant, wishes to confine its industrial efforts for the rest of this century to Sudbury, Ontario and Thompson, Manitoba. Evidently the billions paid to buy Voisey Bay from shrewd Vancouver stock promoters will have to stick in the Inco corporate craw for a few years to come.
How ironic that Inco, which provided employment for so many expatriate Newfoundlanders in Sudbury, is now embroiled in a vicious battle with the Newfoundland government. Inco, in Sudbury, was a wise and permanent career choice for many Newfoundlanders crossing the Gulf in the fifties and sixties. Now the well-being of the Sudbury industrial complex is evidently in peril because of the supposed intransigence of Newfoundland.
The reality of this dispute is a lot different from the public relations spin attempted by an Inco-friendly Toronto media. Inco is doing what many other multi-national mining companies have done for years. They are holding a deprived and economically deflated part of the world to economic hostage. Whether it is the nickel business or the copper business or the aluminium business, mining companies realize that poor countries or poor provinces will often succumb to the siren call of jobs in the here and now. Of course, the usual price to pay for quick fix jobs is a lack of any long term secondary industrial development. When Inco has quarried all of the valuable rock out of Voisey Bay, it will pack up its crushers and earth movers and leave Voisey Bay to the wind and snow.
Patience and courage are really the only significant weapons to wield against Inco in this situation. Just as oil and gas could stay underneath the Grand Banks until a Newfoundland-friendly deal was reached on development, so can the nickel of Labrador stay under the tundra until a deal can be had that provides some Ontario-style industry for the province. It is not too much to demand of Inco that it put the same effort into industrial development in Newfoundland that it has rendered unto Ontario in Sudbury for most of the twentieth century. Plainly and simply, arrangements for industrial development must be made now. Once mining begins without any contracts for secondary industrial development, be that a smelter or otherwise, there is absolutely no chance that such development will take place.
Mining history in Newfoundland is full of tales of abandoned mines that are little more than dangerous holes in the ground once the mining company extracts the valuable earth. An industry as basic as the Dosco limestone quarry at Aguathuna on the Port au Port peninsula serves as an exact template for Voisey Bay. Once Dosco, over the course of fifty years, had extracted all the limestone it wanted from the shores of Port au Port Bay, it packed up and moved back to Sidney, Nova Scotia where Dosco evolved into that state industry known infamously as Sysco. Voisey Bay would be no different from Aguathuna. Prosperity going beyond the employment of miners and quarrymen must be negotiated now or never.
Newfoundlanders need not apologize for caution and commercial selfishness. Past financial fiascos like Churchill Falls did more than injure the collective Newfoundland psyche. Failure of Newfoundland to maximize economic rent from Churchill Falls cost generations of Newfoundlanders a chance to live prosperously in Newfoundland as many now live in Brampton and yes, Sudbury. Playing industrial hardball with Inco is the only way to go.