'biznes Volume 1 - Greater Sudbury's #voiceofbusiness

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