All of North should benefit from Ring of Fire

The Federation of Northern Ontario Municipalities (FONOM) wants all of Northern Ontario to benefit from the Ring of Fire.

Alan Spacek, president of (FONOM), expressed his best wishes to the City of Greater Sudbury where Cliffs Natural Resources will be processing its chromite, but “all interests need to be taken into account as we move forward.”

The Ring of Fire region is located 500 kilometers northeast of Thunder Bay in the Hudson Bay Lowlands.

“We are pleased that a decision has been made concerning one of the jewels of the North,” he said. “In a deal as big as this, the devil is in the details. We want all communities to benefit from this mammoth find – First Nations, adjacent communities and communities right across the North.”

Spacek said the availability of inexpensive hydro electricity will be key to this development.

“The future potential for expansion of value-added resource extraction-related operations will depend on a lower and more stable energy cost for their operations. Reliable, affordable electricity supported by modern infrastructure will allow for expansion in Northern Ontario’s resource sector at a time when Ontario needs industry to propel provincial growth and revenues,” he said.

FONOM would be pleased to work with the provincial government to have the upgrading of the north-south energy transmission capacity re-introduced as a priority as part of the province's integrated power system. This would be a major positive step to unlock a number of important mineral discoveries in the North including the Ring of Fire.