Mining in Ontario: Companies take SCR to heart

Almost every mining company in Ontario is a partner in society. In fact, it would be very difficult to find a mining company anywhere in the province that doesn’t care about the community where it’s located. They do more than find, extract and process minerals essential to our modern lifestyle. Mining companies of all sizes are community builders.

For instance, they volunteer, donate and add great value to the quality of life in the communities where they operate, as well as invest, and employ people in their neighbourhood.

The phrase “Corporate Social Responsibility” is backed up by words and actions. Over the past year, the Ontario Mining Association, for example, has reported on some – but far from all – of the activities of its members in communities across the province.

To better illustrate OMA’s recent contributions to communities, here’s a quick look at just a few examples of where mining companies and others associated with the mining industry have worked with their neighbours to help ensure a better environment for everyone.

Working Together

Dec. 7, 2011 . . . Sudbury-based BESTECH is a young company that combines providing high-tech services with a high level of commitment to the community. Recently, two BESTECH employees – Amy Fortier, Marketing Coordinator, and Trang Tran, Manager Research & Development and Commercialization – were named among Sudbury’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2011 by Northern Ontario Business. This honour acknowledges their leadership and contribution to the community. An earlier OMA e-news item noted BESTECH’s $3,500 donation to support CPR training in Sudbury area high schools. Recently, the company has also contributed to the local arts scene through funding of the production of the play “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett at the Sudbury Theatre Centre. The company and its employees support local groups through donations, volunteering and becoming part of the organizations. Some of the local groups supported by BESTECH include Big Brothers Big Sisters, Special Olympics, Sudburnia Soccer, Sudbury Food Bank and the United Way. The President of BESTECH, Marc Boudreau, volunteers and serves as Chairman of the Board of the mining research organization MIRARCO and as President of the Sudbury Area Mining Supply and Service Association.

October 31, 2011 . . . A recently released best employer study rates employee engagement as a key indicator for success in attracting and retaining workers. Aon Hewitt’s Best Employers in Canada study, which looked at 261 employers with a total of 112,000 employees, said the average engagement score for the top 50 companies was 78% while the average engagement score of the other companies was 58%. Employees are engaged, according to Aon Hewitt, when they speak positively about their employer to others, are committed to staying with their current employer and are motivated by their company’s leaders, managers, culture and values to go above and beyond normal duties to contribute to their company’s success. This is the thirteenth year Aon Hewitt has carried out its best employers in Canada study. One OMA member – consulting engineering firm Hatch, which is based in Mississauga – seems to have discovered many of the secrets of successful employee engagement and has made this top 50 employers list. In fact according to this study, engineers are more engaged in their work than any other industry in Canada.

October 20, 2011 . . . Six members of the OMA have gained recognition in the “Canada’s Top 100 Employers for 2012″ competition. In alphabetical order, the companies are Agrium, Cameco, Cementation Canada, Goldcorp, Golder Associates and Stantec Consulting. “Canada’s Top 100 Employers” project is now in its thirteenth year. It strives to determine which companies are leaders in their industries in offering exceptional workplaces to employees. The eight criteria used is assessing employers are the physical workplace, work atmosphere, health and financial benefits, vacation policy, communications, performance management, training and community involvement.

September 16, 2011 . . . Osisko Mining Corporation is reaching out to incorporate Traditional Knowledge into the Environmental Assessment of its Hammond Reef gold property in Northwestern Ontario. The company recently held an Elders Forum on site. More than 65 Elders from neighbouring First Nations, company staff and government officials participated. Nine First Nations communities were represented at the Forum. Chiefs and councils of these First Nations made hearing from the Elders about this project a main concern. Elders, while not always the most senior residents of First Nations communities, are generally respected for their wisdom, patience and understanding. They value traditional teachings and passing them along to younger generations.

September 16, 2011 . . . Vale Canada has taken a big step to strengthen Sudbury’s social safety net with a $500,000 donation to the Banque d’aliments Sudbury Food Bank Capital Campaign. The company and its employees have been supporting initiatives of this nature in the community for 23 years. This half-million-dollar contribution boosts the Sudbury Food Bank’s level of funds raised to $1.5 million — closer toward the $1.8 million capital campaign goal.

September 15, 2011 . . . Terry MacGibbon, Chairman of OMA member Quadra FNX, has taken on the volunteer role as chairman of Laurentian University’s Next 50 campaign. This fundraising effort, to date, has reached $39 million of its goal of $50 million. Also a donation of $1 million made by Quadra FNX to Laurentian University is being designated to the Laurentian School of Mines.

July 8, 2011 . . . Sifto Canada is joining forces with the Town of Goderich and the Goderich Port Management Corp. in a public-private partnership to expand and enhance the local port. The three parties have signed a memorandum of understanding for the anticipated $47 million project. The plan envisions the creation of six hectares of new industrial land at the harbour, new docks for ships carrying salt, aggregate and agricultural products, new storage facilities, repairs to existing port infrastructure and the installation of new breakwalls. The project will create more than 500 construction jobs. The plan will be finalized following the completion of satisfactory environmental assessments, engineering studies and feasibility evaluations. The Goderich port improvement project will be funded through a $15.7 million grant from the provincial government, funds from the Goderich Port Management Corp.’s major maintenance account and port usage fees. Sifto is expected to pay about $19 million in additional port usage fees over a five year period.

July 6, 2011 . . . Goldcorp has won the Tom Peters Memorial Mine Reclamation Award for its work on the Coniaurum property in Timmins. The company earned this prestigious honour for cleaning up and transforming an old mine site and tailings area into flourishing habitat for the bears and the bees. The award was presented last week at the “Mining and Environment Conference” in Sudbury.

June 29, 2011 . . . Barrick Gold and the family of the late Greg Wilkins, former company president, have donated $5.5 million to advance global health. Toronto General and Western Hospital Foundation will be using this gift to combat brain diseases and improve medical training for surgeons and nurses in developing countries.

June 16, 2011 . . . Six First Nations members, who graduated recently from an underground miner training program, hav
e found instant employment with OMA members Northgate Minerals and Dumas Contracting. A partnership between these companies and the Matachewan First Nation under the Matachewan Aboriginal Access to Mine Jobs Training Strategy (MAATS) created these employment opportunities. The second group of graduates under this MAATS program included David Batisse, Dustin Roy, John Cloutier and Chad Larkman from the Matachewan First Nation, Katlin Maurer from Beaverhouse First Nation and Kohl Porter of the Mattagami First Nation. Three of the graduates have been hired by Northgate Minerals and three have been hired by Dumas Contracting.

May 30, 2011 . . . Vale, Xstrata and Barrick are all supporting the development of the next generation of politically knowledgeable and responsible citizens and even civic leaders through their sponsorship of the Ontario Legislature Internship Programme (OLIP). This programme was established in 1975 and it welcomed the first group of interns at Queen’s Park in September 1976.

May 19, 2011 . . . Gold producer Barrick is taking a leadership role in revitalizing the Native American language Shoshone in the Western United States, where it has operations. Barrick has provided funding annually since 2007 for the Shoshone Language Project at the Univeristy of Utah’s Centre for American Indian Languages. Barrick, which is the sole corporate sponsor, has contributed more than $700,000 to this program, which is also supported by the university and government grants.

April 29, 2011 . . . Community leaders, environmentalists, painters and award-winning folk singers all applauded the announcement by Vale to surrender portions of its aggregate license near Willisville, located south of Espanola. The subsequent result is that historic Willisville Mountain will be untouched by the company’s future operations in the area. Vale and predecessor company Inco have operated a quarry in the area since the middle of the past century, which supplies silica to the nickel producer’s smelting operations in nearby Sudbury. “This is a great example of co-operation between the company and its neighbours,” said Angie Robson, Manager of Corporate Affairs for Vale’s Ontario Operations. “It’s been a very positive experience working with the community and we’re happy that we’ve been able to act on their concerns in a way that benefits us all.”

April 5, 2011 . . . Goldcorp has produced a set of four safety videos for all employees that bring the importance of safety on the job closer to home – and the heart. These videos were filmed at Goldcorp operations in Canada, the United States and Mexico and they are trilingual – English, French and Spanish. They all emphasize the Goldcorp safety motto – “Safe Enough for Our Families” — and they deal with each component of Goldcorp’s program Care, Think, Act. So far, the safety DVD package has been distributed to more than 8,000 employees across Canada, the U.S.A., Mexico and South and Central America. It is provided to all new hires, and further distribution to contractors, partners and communities is planned.

March 10, 2011 . . . Vale has donated $75,000 to support the fifth Canadian Francophone Games, which are being held in Sudbury July 20 to 24, 2011. Vale is the official presenting sponsor of the event, which will involve about 1,200 francophone youth from across the country.

January 20, 2011 . . . Barrick Gold’s gift of $150,000 to Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and the Northern Ontario School of Medicine (NOSM) will enhance health care services in Northwestern Ontario. Matching support for some components of this donation by the Ontario Trust for Student Support increases the size of the gift to $235,000.

January 5, 2011 . . . Xstrata Nickel is supporting the efforts of College Boreal in Sudbury to step up regional re-greening efforts and create a local tree and shrub seed bank. The Xstrata Nickel Biodiversity Applied Research Centre at College Boreal is a 5,000 square foot greenhouse complex, which is the springboard for a local biodiversity program. This involves the company, students and community representatives including the Sudbury Vegetation Enhancement Technical Advisory Committee (VETAC).

As mentioned at the outset, mining companies work closely with their communities, and there’s no question after reading this Report that the phrase “Corporate Social Responsibility” is taken very seriously by the mining industry in Ontario.