Consultation and engagement the new mining norm: Noront CEO: AI Coutts shares learned experience during student workshop.

AuthorKelly, Lindsay
PositionMINING

Al Coutts was working as chief geologist for Falconbridge at Kidd Mines in Timmins when he got the big break he had been waiting for: a promotion to mine manager.

It had been his goal to work in Sudbury where the big mines were, and Coutts felt like he had finally made it. But he hadn't been celebrating long when his boss, Warren Holmes, broke the news that Coutts wouldn't be posted to Sudbury, but to Raglan Mine, situated on the Ungava Peninsula in remote Quebec.

He was visibly disappointed, until his boss delivered some sage words of advice.

"It's one thing to earn your opportunity," Coutts, the current president and CEO of Noront Resources, recalled Holmes saying. "And it's another thing to see it and take it when it's staring you in the face."

Sure enough, Holmes was right, Coutts said, and he later recognized the post as the gift it was.

"That operation shaped the entirety of my career," Coutts said. "Learning French, working closely with Indigenous partners, working in remote operations--this had a profound effect on everything I did after that."

Lessons learned from more than 30 years in mining were imparted by Coutts to a group of post-secondary geoscience students gathered in Sudbury on May 3 for the 2019 Student-Industry Mineral Exploration Workshop (S-IMEW).

Hosted annually by the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), the workshop sponsors 26 students who spend two weeks going on field trips and mine tours, undertaking mapping exercises, and listening in on lectures as an introduction to the workforce.

At each step of his career, which took him across Canada and around the world, Coutts said he learned a valuable teaching.

In Sweden, at Boliden's Kristineberg Mine, he was inspired by the company's thoughtful approach to development, which focused on protecting the environment. The company used rubber-tired equipment in the forest--a novelty at the time--preserved trees where they could, and collected contaminants to avoid polluting the water, he noted.

At Kidd Creek, Coutts said, he learned what it means for a company to be a good corporate citizen. The mine operators, Texas Gulf, and later Falconbridge, valued their employees, treating them well, and they were actively involved in the community, sponsoring a wide variety of charitable events and causes.

When he got to New Caledonia, Falconbridge (which later became Xstrata) had been tasked with developing a nickel latente operation in partnership with the...

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