Mining Sustainability Working Group

A Career in Mining is something worth talking about!

Despite current economic conditions, the Canadian mining industry is facing a substantial workforce shortage due largely to its aging workforce. According to the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR), 60 000 to 90 000 new workers will be needed to meet anticipated Canadian production targets through to 2017. We also know that the general public has a number of misperceptions of the mining industry that may deter new and non-traditional workers from exploring career opportunities in mining.

To attract workers to the mining industry, MiHR has launched the ‘Explore for More’ attraction, recruitment and retention campaign, and an important part of this campaign involves community outreach through speaker presentations.

To facilitate these presentations, MiHR has developed an online Speakers Bureau where representatives can register to speak about the exciting careers in mining. Teachers, community groups, and others can then search for a speaker who fills their need for a career presentation in mining, and request the speaker through the online portal.

We need your help!

MiHR is currently looking for volunteer speakers to facilitate these presentations!

Speakers must:

• Have knowledge of and/or experience in the mining industry
• Be passionate about the industry
• Be willing to share their enthusiasm and insights

They play a vital role in raising awareness about the mining industry and steering interested individuals to appropriate career and educational resources. As a speaker, you may be invited to give presentations at schools, community centres, industry organizations or career fairs.

What you will gain:

• Relevant volunteer experience for your resume, and scholarship applications
• Experience in presentation facilitation – to a variety of audiences
• Sense of well-being that comes from being a role-model – you will be introducing the industry to many people/youth who may have otherwise never considered a career in mining. You will be helping to shape the future workforce of the industry.
• Great conversation starter for your next conference J

Volunteer Details

When you register as a speaker (by setting up an online profile), you can select which types of groups you are comfortable speaking with. You can also determine the regional presentation radius, and indicate scheduling that works best for you.

Presentation requests will be sent to you by email, at which time you can decide whether to accept it or not; you set your own schedule. We ask that speakers commit to a minimum of 2 presentations per year.

Regional Resource Providers (RRPs) are available across Canada, and they have free resources to support presentations. These resources include:  pop-up banners, mining videos, and career tools kits. You can contact the RRP closest to your presentation location; they will ensure resources are delivered to the presentation location on the required dates.

To become a speaker, visit www.acareerinmining.ca and click on Speakers Bureau where you can register online. There, you will also find downloadable versions of all the materials you will need to make a presentation, and links to all relevant resources and contacts.

If you have any questions, or would like assistance in registering, please contact Jen Clark – Outreach Coordinate MiHR – jclark@mihr.ca For more information on these resources please visit www.acareerinmining.ca.

Blow is an article from the Vancouver Sun.

It outlines some of the debate that surrounds the bill, particularly around the question on monitoring and investigation activities that would be undertaken by the government in order to ensure that companies are complying with the guidelines.

Sat Jan 16 2010
Byline: Fiona Anderson

As long as Canadian mining companies work in emerging markets, complaints about adverse effects on the local community are going to arise. But how can Canadians be sure that local companies aren’t misbehaving?

MiningWatch Canada is advocating the passage of Bill C-300 — “An Act respecting Corporate Accountability for the Activities of Mining, Oil or Gas in Developing Countries.” The private member’s bill, brought forward by Liberal MP John McKay, passed second reading and was before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs when the prime minister recessed Parliament until March. The prorogation order allows reinstatement of private members bills and, if passed, the bill would force the government to create corporate guidelines consistent with Canada’s international commitments on human rights and environmental sustainability. Companies that fail to comply with the guidelines would be ineligible for funding from Export Development Canada.

But the mining industry is against the bill, not because it doesn’t want to comply with the standards, it says, but because the bill doesn’t provide for funding — no private member’s bill can — and the guidelines that need to be followed are too vague. On top of that, three years of roundtable discussions have led to a four-pronged approach that includes developing guidelines and appointing a corporate social responsibility (CSR) counsellor, who was appointed in October.  “The problem with C-300 is it really sets all of that aside,” said Laureen Whyte, vice-president of sustainability and operations at the Association of Mineral Exploration British Columbia.

“It’s not based on the outcomes of those roundtable discussions. It instead offers up a pretty punitive way of investigating complaints, and it frankly doesn’t, and it can’t, provide for the resources that’s needed to do proper investigations.”  The CSR counsellor, on the other hand, has the funds needed to do the necessary investigations, which can be costly.  “It’s really hard from afar to identify what’s really going on, and so you need to have local information that you can rely on,” Whyte said. “You also need to have some ability to assess the factors that are at play. And it takes a huge amount of resources to do that.”  Without the ability to investigate, the situation remains as it is now, a media play, Whyte said.  It’s easy for people to complain that companies are making them sick or poisoning their water, especially to the media, Whyte said.  The CSR counsellor can take those complaints and “create a space for constructive dialogue,” to try to find a resolution.
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Here is an interesting short article in Science on the impact of mountaintop mining. This may have a significant impact on coal mining policy in the eastern US.

Abstract

There has been a global, 30-year increase in surface mining (1), which is now the dominant driver of land-use change in the central Appalachian ecoregion of the United States (2). One major form of such mining, mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF) (3), is widespread throughout eastern Kentucky, West Virginia (WV), and southwestern Virginia. Upper elevation forests are cleared and stripped of topsoil, and explosives are used to break up rocks to access buried coal (fig. S1). Excess rock (mine “spoil”) is pushed into adjacent valleys, where it buries existing streams.

Link:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;327/5962/148?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=coal+mountaintop&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT