Will mining finally make a comeback in New Brunswick?

New Brunswick’s Minister of Natural Resources, John Herron, got up in the Legislature today and made a statement about the province’s mining opportunity. He talked about mining as a ‘key growth opportunity’ and reminded us that the province has North America’s largest undeveloped resource of manganese and the world’s largest undeveloped resource of indium. The Sisson tungsten-molybdenum deposit is one of the largest deposits of its type in the world. We have antimony and the largest proven potash reserves on the eastern seaboard of North America. He tells us several exploration companies are exploring for other commodities such as gold.

Will mining finally make a comeback in New Brunswick?

For much of the 20th century, New Brunswick had a fairly large mining sector. We mined for copper, zinc, potash, coal, among others. Even as close as 1997, mining was responsible for over 5% of GDP - not including supply chain impacts. That year, New Brunswick ranked 4th out of 10 provinces for the share of GDP from mining. Since then no other province has seen such a decline (except PEI but there isn’t much opportunity there). If it wasn’t for peat and and maybe some lime/gypsum, we would have no mining at all right now.

I will remind you that I live in ‘theory land’ and Minister Herron lives in ‘reality land’ but over here in the riskless land of theory, I would proffer free ideas:

New Brunswick ranks 23rd on Fraser’s mining investment attractiveness index (out of 86 jurisdictions -not bad considering Nova Scotia ranks 75th). But Saskatchewan ranks 3rd. See what we can duplicate from our friends in the land of the living skies.

Work with the feds to massively speed up the process. Don’t short change it - we need a rigorous process but we need to be able to get things done faster.

Find ways to derisk projects - is there any way - financially, through the tax system, the taxpayer doing more of the upstream work (like was done in the 1950s)? Remember that mining development is in the public interest. We are not passive bystanders waiting around for investment to show up. We need to be more proactive. One big mine would support hundreds of high paying jobs and tens of millions in tax and royalty revenue.

Remember that the resource belongs to New Brunswickers (or the King?) - not the developer who may be squatting on a claim. We want to be a top location in Canada for mining but not for locking up a resource for years without moving on it.

Maybe the engineering/pickaxe types at DNR need to be paired with the snake oil salespeople at ONB. After all, we are ‘selling’ the province and that takes the development of a value proposition and clearing obstacles out of the way.

You need public support for mining now more than ever. New Brunswick has a large rural population but most mining deposits are within a moderate commute to population centres/concentrations. We have seen in the past that NBers will go all "Twisted Sister”* if they feel they are being railroaded. At the same time, government needs to insist - if you want properly funded health care we need these good tax paying industries.

I am happy the department is developing a mining plan. I am encouraged by the Minister’s statement and crossing my fingers that we finally might get some traction.

*We’re not gonna take it, no we ain’t gonna take it….. yadda, yadda, yadda.