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Tuesday » June 10 » 2008

Forget academia, the future's in mining

Lloyd Brown-John
Special to The Windsor Star

Monday, June 09, 2008

This is all about archaic mining rights legislation in Ontario and the almost desperate need for the provincial government to update a rights erosion law.

Coming from backwoods British Columbia, I studied geology in my early years. I've never lost interest in rocks and minerals so it was with enormous pleasure that I joined my cousin Jack Brown-John at his home near Horsefly, B.C. a few weeks ago.

Cousin Jack is nationally famous in as one of this country's top competitive loggers. Indeed, Jack travelled the world demonstrating his skills with a chainsaw and falling axe. But time and an accident slowed him down somewhat, so now he's turned to another of his loves, prospecting.

Horsefly, B.C. is in the heart of B.C.'s "gold rush country" and almost everybody has some nuggets cached away somewhere.

But Cousin Jack is different. "You can pan for gold any day, the real future is in minerals." So Jack prospects and registers claims. He has hundreds and many are rich in lead and zinc and copper and molybdenum. Jack explained details for staking a claim and registering it and even how to claim-jump.

So after some cultural upgrading in B.C., I returned to Ontario and started to explore mining legislation in Ontario. Well Lo! ... you can file mineral claims in Ontario even if somebody else owns the land.

Ontario's quaint 19th-century mining legislation allows a prospector to enter your land, stake out a claim, file and register that claim and even begin exploratory drilling on your land without your permission.

You see, in Ontario, your "property rights" are only superficial. You do not own the mineral rights beneath your own property.

I read through Ontario's Mining Act and realized there was an opportunity just itching to be taken.

Cousin Jack had demonstrated how to blaze and stake a claim and how to nail pink plastic ribbon on claim stakes and blazes -- so why not, thought I.

I bought a new axe and a file for sharpening the axe, a huge roll of pink plastic ribbon, donned my official old prospector's hat and set out around our neighbourhood in lovely rural Kingsville to stake my claims.

I consulted geological maps and discovered a possibility that oil and natural gas could be found in my backyard and ravine.

There is also potential for salt and, if worse comes to worse, I can always open an aggregate quarry and harvest sand and gravel. We may not have gold in the ground in Kingsville but by jimminey-crackers we still have resource exploitation potential.

Some of my neighbours have not been sympathetic to my prospecting. One complained loudly when I took my axe and blazed along the trees of his driveway. And, he's still fuming about the pink ribbons I've hung in his magnolia tree. But, I showed him the Ontario Mining Act and he cowered under my threat to call out Ontario's Mines Minister Michael Gravelle and troops to enforce my mining claims.

Another neighbour was upset simply because I explained to her that her in-ground swimming pool violated my sub-surface mineral rights now that I'd staked a claim around her red maple trees and hung pink ribbon on her forsythia bushes. I warned that her menacing shotgun would be no match for my right to call in the Ontario Mining Commission and its enforcement brigade. I adjusted my GPS, spat a wad of chewin' tobacco into her daffodils, and carried on.

Of course, with all my neighbours, I've induced them to my point-of-view with the prospect of big royalties they will surely earn once we bring in a few gas wells in their front and back yards. I suppose the prospect of being a petroleum baron in Kingsville has mollified their initial shock and turned it to awe.

We will know much better next year after our initial test well drillings are completed.

My neighbour with the greenhouse has expressed some concern about the drilling rigs operating between his greenhouses. I had to tape my pink ribbons on his greenhouse as the usual nails punched holes in the plastic sheathing.

My Cousin Jack would be so proud of me knowing that his instructions on staking a mining claim have been so assiduously followed -- well, maybe. You see, I'm just satirizing.

No, my immediate neighbors in Kingsville are safe from rapacious mining companies, but many folks in Ontario are not.

Many residents of Ontario who have bought that ideal piece of woodland acreage are almost annually finding themselves confronted by mining companies and prospectors staking claims on their land.

Ontario has an 80 year old mining law that more or less quietly encourages mining companies to stake claims on private land because Ontarians do not own the mineral or sub-surface rights on their own land.

It is long past the appropriate time for Ontario to bring its mining laws into the 21st century. One provincial ministry almost solely dedicated both to a region and an industry does not make for equity in rights for all Ontarians.

Lloyd Brown-John is professor emeritus, public administration, at the University of Windsor.