Gov't partnerships needed to aid mining growth.

• Author: Migneault, Jonathan

The high cost of doing business in Canada, especially in the Far North, is the biggest challenge the mining sector faces nationally, said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada.

Gratton, who was the keynote speaker at a Sudbury Chamber of Commerce event for the North America Mining Expo, Sept. 9, said according to his association's research, it can cost up to two and a half times as much to build a remote mine in Canada's North, than a mine near a populated urban centre in the south.

"The fact is, while a vast country rich in resources, Canada has lost ground," Grafton said. "We were a top five producer of 14 major minerals in 2007, but today of only 10, with mineral reserves for most commodities plummeting since the 1980s."

To address the high cost of doing business in remote regions, like Ontario's Ring of Fire mineral deposits, mining companies need to partner with government, he said.

Building infrastructure in those regions, which often benefits remote First Nations by connecting them to transportation routes and electrical grids, constitutes a public good, Gra-ton said.

And providing a public good, he added, is primarily the responsibility of government.

"Should the mining company be paying for all of that, or should there be a partnership?" he asked.

Social licence, or how mining companies exercise corporate social responsibility when they dig minerals out of the ground, is another important challenge in Canada, Gratton said.

In his speech he addressed the Mount Polley tailings pond breach in British Columbia that sent millions of cubic metres of waste into waterways on Aug. 4.

"Let me be very clear," Gratton said. "A failure of this sort is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to communities across the country. And it is unacceptable to the...