What Ontario needs to unlock Ring of Fire’s mineral wealth is a Marshall Plan

Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” mineral belt, located in the province’s remote James Bay Lowlands, is believed to carry a lot more than $60 billion of geological riches. Once the belt was discovered in 2007, it was designed to usher in a new era of prosperity for Northern Ontario, especially for the impoverished First Nations communities in the region.

Almost a decade later, the ore remains in the ground and seem to be being released in the near future. Thanks to the Ontario government’s ineptitude, dysfunctional mining policy, insufficient promised infrastructure spending and (to a much lesser extent) a broader commodity slump, American miner Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. left the province in frustration in 2013, permanently halting its proposed US$3.3-billion chromite project.

The ultimate indignity for Ontario came this past year, when Cliffs sold its US$550-million investment in the Ring of fireside to junior miner Noront Resources Ltd. – the only significant player left in the region – for a bargain-basement cost of US$27.5 million.

Many analysts state that Ontario missed an exceptional chance to establish a chromite industry throughout the commodity boom, and that it is going to be at least five years before any possible development occurs.

While the provincial Liberals shoulder most of the blame for delaying Ontario’s best mineral discovery in on the century, they had the best complaint: the previous authorities under Stephen Harper was not at the economic table inside a meaningful way.

With the election from the Trudeau Liberals, who have a powerful mandate to ease living standards of Canada’s First Nations communities, hopes for the development of the Ring of fireside and also the enormous mineral potential of the entire northwestern region of Ontario happen to be renewed.

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The mining companies within the Ring of Fire need infrastructure, and so perform the isolated aboriginal communities. When the Trudeau government worked along with Ontario and adopted something akin to a “Marshall Plan” – the name of the American initiative to rebuild war-torn Europe after the World war 2 – to build up and modernize infrastructure in the isolated northwest, it would kill two birds with one stone.

The quality lifestyle for First Nations communities would dramatically improve, and a new round of mineral exploration and development would take place that would generate billions of dollars in tax revenue to repay the government’s investment. And then some.



Let’s begin with the potable water crisis in Northwest Ontario. Within its first 100 days at work, the Trudeau government hit a home run by announcing it might fix water problems at Neskantaga First Nation, a residential area near the Ring of Fire that has been on the boil water alert to have an astonishing Two decades.

However, three of the other four isolated communities in the area are also on a boil water alert. In fact, 35 of the 49 aboriginal communities in Northern Ontario had h2o advisories essentially as of May 2015.



A 2011 report discovered that it might cost about $1 billion to upgrade or switch the water and wastewater needs of these communities. As Trudeau himself would say, “It’s 2016.” It’s about time we gave these communities the potable water that many Canadians takes for granted.

Another require is roads. Ontario Regional Chief Isadore Day has required the making of permanent roads towards the many isolated First Nations communities in Northern Ontario, which may replace winter roads that are struggling with global warming. It comes with an old saying in the mining business the best way to find new mineral deposits is as simple as building roads.



The first road that should be built is definitely an east-west corridor between your Ring of fireside and Pickle Lake, which may link up with four isolated First Nations communities. This would not just provide a cheaper method of bringing food, building supplies and diesel fuel towards the communities, but would also allow Noront to proceed with development of its Eagle’s Nest nickel-copper project in the Ring of fireside.

Developing this road really should not be difficult. In early 1880s, it took Canada less than five years to build the Canadian Pacific railway from Ontario to Vancouver