'biznes Volume 1 - Greater Sudbury's #voiceofbusiness

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THE FUTURE OF MINING IN ONTARIO Douglas Morrison President & CEO, Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation (CEMI) 12 #voiceofbusiness Volume 1 October 2016 finds the global mining industry in the grip of listless demand and depressed metal prices. In Ontario, we have been here before, we have survived and prospered, and we will do it again. A global demand for a higher quality of life means strong, long-term demand for metals and we live in a province that is blessed with many of the natural resources the world needs, many yet untapped. The recent strengthening of the gold price is a glimmer on the horizon and a sign that this may be the end of the downward trend and we should prepare to accelerate out of the downturn.
We also know that the way the mining industry has operated until now will not serve the needs of the future. We have to find better and more reliable ways to manage the waste and waste-water from mines, we have to find new ways to mine more productively and safely, we have to find new ways to find more orebodies and to share the value of these resources with local communities. These are tremendous challenges – but there are few places better able to address them than in Ontario, and across Canada. Many of the most important developments in mining over the last 35 years were as a result of Canadaand Ontario-based developments. For example, the International Guidelines on Tailings and Waste Management Facilities were largely developed by Canadian consultants and engineers, mines in Ontario pioneered the development of bulk mining techniques and tailings pastefill and, finally, the land and lakes around Sudbury provide possibly the best example in the world of remediating the impact of industrial pollution. Our research institutions have great strength in depth and the complexities of mining in the twentyfirst century requires the industry to call on many more scientific, engineering and social disciplines than ever before. The Ontario government is already investing in our universities to increase research capacity – but it also needs industry, collectively, to invest in people by funding research programs and foundations that will fund researchers long into the future. The government is also preparing to focus more investment in innovation, creating a stable ecosystem for innovation to thrive and accelerate increased productivity. It seems like everywhere we turn there is talk of innovation – and the Innovation Agenda announced by the Federal Government is perhaps the most prominent. Too often research and innovation are used inter-changeably as if they are one and the same thing. While both are focused on creating something new, the distinction lies in the final result; research creates new understanding of how things work and innovation creates a new business activity that allows the research results to find practical application to the benefit of everyone. Another distinction is the cost and risk of these two essential future-building activities. Relative to research, both the costs and the risks of innovation are much higher; a bench scale research experiment will always be much cheaper than either a pilot scale validation or full-scale operational trials – and successful innovation needs both. Research is almost risk-free - it always provides an answer, either the desired one or an alternative, each generating new questions to explore. Innovation is a more complex technical process with multiple ways to fail and it carries the additional burden of having to meet the often fickle demands of the marketplace. At every step along the journey the costs and the risks of innovation is high and gets higher. The only risk that bears a cost higher than innovation, is the risk of doing nothing. To suppose that things can continue as before, that we need only to wait patiently for prices to rise or for conditions that once favoured us to magically return is foolish. Doing nothing squanders the most valuable resource of all - time. It is sometimes possible to use more money and more effort to make up for lost time, but often businesses fail because they run out of time, not money. Canada is a high-cost society and in a global economy our success depends on increased productivity. Innovation is actually only the means to an end – the productivity agenda. This means becoming more costeffective, generating more value, more benefit, all while reducing the resources used to achieve it. Doing things cheaper and faster. And if the mining companies that had to make cut-backs to survive this long recession are unable to invest in the means of higher productivity, then it is up to government to make the investment – and this is one of the best job-creating investments around. When combining indirect service jobs and direct mine-site jobs, even a small mine can create 2,000 well-paying “The only risk that bears a cost higher than innovation, is the risk of doing nothing.” jobs that cannot be relocated abroad - and will last for 20 years. How much investment in software apps, pharmaceuticals and other industries can be relied on to deliver this level of secure employment? And in Ontario we have several such mines waiting to go into production. Yes, as the productivity of mining operations increases, direct employment in mines will decline - our future lies in expanding the service sector companies to serve a much larger portion of the global marketplace. We have the mineral wealth to support a vibrant industry, and we need only to invest in researchers to create the ideas of the future, in innovators to deliver them to a dynamic service sector that will then implement them at home and around the world. This is why mining is important to Ontario, why Ontario is important to mining, and why now is exactly the time to accelerate out of the downturn, into the future. #voiceofbusiness Volume 1 13
Page 1 and 2: 19 TH ANNUAL BELL BUSINESS EXCELLEN
Page 3 and 4: Laurentian University WHY STUDY ONL
Page 5 and 6: Contributors Tracy Nutt Karen Hourt
Page 7 and 8: THE IMPORTANCE OF THE NATURAL RESOU
Page 9 and 10: NETWORKING WITH PURPOSE Networking:
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Page 13: AN EXCITING TIME FOR GREATER SUDBUR
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Page 23: NG STING IN RTH David Anselmo CEO,
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Page 28 and 29: ADVOCACY WHO WE ARE: The chamber re
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Page 45 and 46: CAMbRiAn CAMBRIAN COLLEGE: 50 TH On
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'biznes Volume 1 - Greater Sudbury's #voiceofbusiness

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