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Getting ready

The development at the Ring of Fire has some residents worried that the city isn’t prepared for the expected boom. The city has hosted a number of public meetings on the Mining Readiness Strategy in order to get feedback from residents.
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John Mason speaks to some people at the Italian Cultural Centre on Sept. 18, 2012. (Jeff Labine, tbnewswatch.com)

The development at the Ring of Fire has some residents worried that the city isn’t prepared for the expected boom.

The city has hosted a number of public meetings on the Mining Readiness Strategy in order to get feedback from residents.  The main topic was how the city will handle the expected economic boom created by the mining development in the Ring of Fire area.

The city held a meeting Monday night at Fort William First Nation where 56 people attended.

Another meeting was held Tuesday at the Italian Cultural Centre.

Rocco Larizza, a homebuilder for 30 years, attended the meeting because he wanted to learn more about the impacts to Thunder Bay.
It’s expected that thousands of new homes will be needed to accommodate all the mining workers and their families. Larizza said there’s going to be plenty of work but not enough workers to get the job done and meet that demand.

The city simply isn’t prepared for a housing boom, he said.

“The workers aren’t going to be in Thunder Bay,” Larizza said. “I would think you would have to call Toronto. You have to start getting the young people the necessary skills. You can have a boom, but you’re going to have problems getting anything built. I can see that coming.”

In all his years, he said he has never seen this level of anticipation for a project.

Joe Ladouceur, who works in forestry and resource management, said he looked forward to developing the North but wasn’t confident that the city and other stakeholders in the Ring of Fire were going to meet their targeted deadlines.

“I think it’s going to take a longer time than they are anticipating,” Ladouceur said. “A lot more work is needed. As quickly as we would like to move and as attractive as the dollars are, we have a lot of work to do. We certainly need this plan.”

Annette Schroeter, the Aboriginal research facilitator at Lakehead University, said she hadn’t attended one of the public meetings before but wanted to learn more about the strategy.

Her main goal was to learn more about Thunder Bay’s plan to engage the mining industry as well as with Aboriginal communities. She said it’s important to make sure Aboriginal communities are involved in discussions between the city and the mining companies in order to develop and plans for the region.

“This kind of large project is going to have huge impacts environmentally, socially and economically,” Schroeter said. “I think the way we go about this is going to determine how dramatic these impacts are going to be. I think we have had warnings in regards to resource extraction like what we’ve seen in northern Alberta. We saw what was happening with some of the Aboriginal communities, the high cancer rates and the denial that followed. We don’t want to see this happen again.”

John Mason, project manager for mining service with Thunder Bay Community Economic Development Commission, said the meetings are to both give information to the public but also get feedback on what they should be looking at.

He said they were anticipating 150 to 200 people attend the event with the majority of people coming to the presentations at 7 p.m.
One of the biggest challenges Mason said it is to ensure that they make sure the public understands the messages they are trying to deliver given the Mining Readiness Strategy covers a wide variety of topics.

“This is broad because we cover transportation, energy, skilled trades, labour opportunities, value added and research,” Mason said. “We may have as many as 13 new mines within the next five years and the opportunity for not only labour but also business is monumental. One of the concerns might be do we have enough commercial and industrial land. We already know there’s a housing crunch residential housing. We’re going to be looking at all of that.”

Mason said they are looking into a variety of areas to make sure the city is prepared for the mining boom that’s expected to come. The study that they are conducting will look at a wide range of areas including if the Thunder Bay Port Authority can handle the demand if the mining development grows.

The Mining Readiness Strategy is scheduled to be completed by January.  It is expected to address transportation and infrastructure needs, workforce training, housing and community services as well as other needs.

 

 





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