Premier Dalton McGuinty reportedly met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper to tap Ottawa for money to develop the chromite-rich Ring of Fire in the James Bay lowlands.
The Toronto Star reported McGuinty met with Harper May 22 in a downtown Toronto hotel for an hour to discuss federal infrastructure funding to build roads, extend transmission lines and about training money for First Nations.
When Cliffs Natural Resources announced May 2 it was placing its ferrochrome processing plant in Sudbury, northern development and mines minister Rick Bartolucci was vague on what the province was willing to commit by way of infrastructure spending.
Cliffs senior vice-president Bill Boor said the company has an agreement in place to work with Infrastructure Ontario to jointly develop an all-weather road to access its Black Thor chromite deposit.
Last February on a visit to Thunder Bay, McGuinty told local media that the Ontario government is committed to spending $35 billion over three years on infrastructure in the province, and that the Ring of Fire would get a sizeable chunk of it. However, no such expenditure was listed in this past spring's Ontario budget.
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