Did the government tax Cliffs Natural Resources out of Ontario? Provincial MPP discloses Ring of Fire chromite tax.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: NEWS

Nipissing MPP Vic Fedell is accusing the provincial government of counting its chromite chickens before they hatched.

Fedeli said the McGuinty-Wynne government was proposing to introduce a specially created chromite royalty for the Ring of Fire and claims the new tax was a factor in Cliffs Natural Resources selling off its James Bay properties and departing Ontario earlier this year.

Fedeli said details of the royalty were uncovered in the document dump the Ontario government was forced to release related to the $1.1-billion gas plants scandal.

One section with a header entitled "Confidential and Commercially Sensitive Material" projected revenues from a chromite royalty as ranging between $6.6 million and $34.4 million annually.

"A major mining discovery is made and the very first thing this Liberal government thought about is how can we tax them more?," said Fedeli. "Well, they taxed them right out of Ontario."

He drew parallels to the diamond royalty imposed on De Beers Canada in 2007 when its Victor diamond mine was under construction west of Attawapiskat. After spending $1 billion on development, Fedeli said the mine owners were "literally in too deep" to cancel the project.

Fedeli's question to finance minister Charles Sousa if a chromite royalty was being implemented was directed to northern development and mines minister Michael Gravelle who dodged the question, focussing instead on the "extraordinary positive" relationship the...