Understated

Kathy Blunderdale boasts today:

The mining success and mineral prospects of Newfoundland and Labrador figured prominently at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada international mining conference in Toronto this week…

The value of the province’s mineral shipments is expected to reach a record $3 billion this year – a 400 per cent increase in just three years. A significant part of this comes from the province’s long-standing ore producers – the Iron Ore Company of Canada and Wabush Mines. However, with Voisey’s Bay just completing its first full year of production that mine now accounts for about half of the province’s mineral production.

“A significant part”, to be sure. IOC and Wabush Mines have, in recent years, accounted for 90% of the value of the provincial mining industry. However, since 2005, their share of the industry has plummeted dramatically.

It’s not because iron ore is in a slump – quite the opposite. The estimated value of Labrador’s iron ore industry doubled between 2004 and 2005, from $600-million in 2004, to over $1.2-billion in each year since. (Handy-dandy statistical source #1.)

But at the same time, Voisey’s Bay has come on stream. Nickel and cobalt production from VBNC, together valued at over $1-billion for 2007, now account for nearly 40% of a greatly enlarged provincial mining industry. Copper production accounts for several hundred millions more, although the copper figure for the entire province is aggregated, and with other copper in production in Newfoundland, the VBNC-only copper figure is hard to extract. It is a fairly safe bet that Labrador still accounts for upwards of 90% of the mineral production of the province.

Newfoundland and Labrador as a province accounts for a fairly small fraction of the Canadian mining industry, notwithstanding all the rhetoric about all the resources We brought into Confederation (and which Canada supposedly covets). For a while in the 1970s, the iron ore boom, coupled with a slump in many other sectors in other provinces, pushed the provincial share to nearly 10%, but for most of the 1980s and 1990s, the share was closer to 5%, give or take. (Handy-dandy statistical source #2.)

With production now under way at Voisey’s Bay, that share has bumped up again, to 9.3% in 2006. Depending on what happens elsewhere in the country, that share could easily top 10%. Or, who knows, it could go down, even if mineral production goes up, if the industry grows at a faster clip in the rest of the country.

For most of the province’s recent history, including that portion of recent history in which nationalists and crypto-separatists have railed against Canada and moaned about Our massive resource contribution, Our Fair Share, blah blah blah… Our contribution to the value of the Canadian mining industry has, until very recently, averaged at about a steady 5%.

Among the ten provinces, that puts NL in fifth spot in 2006. Since 1977, NL has never ranked higher than fourth, and frequently as low as seventh or eighth. NL’s mining sector is smaller than those of Quebec, Ontario, and B.C., and has been for as long as there are statistics. In most of the past three decades, it’s been smaller than Manitoba’s or Saskatchewan’s.

Heck — for nine of the past 19 years, even New Brunswick has had a higher-valued mining, as did the NWT, thanks to diamonds, for most of the current decade.

And remember: This is with Labrador accounting for 90% of the province’s mining industry as a whole.

So, for fun, just for pure badness, imagine now: what would the volume of outraged rhetoric be from the Newfoundland nationalists and crypto-separatists if Newfoundland. And Labrador accounted for 90% of Canada’s total mining output, just as Labrador accounts for 90% of their beloved Nation’s?