Category Archives: Resource Based Economy

By Christopher Okidi

In Africa, we have chosen to turn ploughshares into swords for tired old men we elevate as kings like Don Henley said in his 1989 song, The End of the Innocence. This is contrary to the Bible in Isaiah 2:3-4 and plethora of other scriptures. Ronald Reagan speaking at the 42nd UN General Assembly emphasised that we should turn our swords into ploughshares because of our shared humanity. However, it seems as Africans, we are not listening. Mary Miche in The Vine and Fig Tree and Michael Jackson in Heal the World reminded us in song too. In Africas youngest nation South Sudan, two politicians - Salva Kiir and Dr Riek Machar - who control the means of violence hold its future. Last week, the duo who lead the warring factions of SPLM and SPLMA-IO respectively, met President Museveni in Entebbe. The purpose of the meeting was to avert a relapse to violence because of the failure to meet the November 12 deadline for the formation of a Revitalised Transitional Government of National Unity. Since 2013, the political dispute between the two has overshadowed any other conflict in the region and crippled the countrys economy. Focus on militia groups that spring up almost on a daily basis in the country like the White Army and the issues in the broader Sudan in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan and Blue Nile State conflicts referred to as Sudans third civil war, Abyei which equally claimed colossal sums of lives have been put off from international attention.Away from South Sudan, the whole of Africa is a hot-bed of conflicts. From teargas canisters on the streets of Kampala to quell demonstrations, to resource-based warlordism in Africas sick man, the DR Congo, Somalia, religious-based conflict between Muslims and Christians in Central African Republic that has limited government presence to the capital Bangui, the collapse of a once robust economy in Libya, insurgency in the northern Muslim-majority Cabo Delgado Province of Mozambique, which has claimed more than 300,000 lives, and to the Gulf of Guinea where Boko Haram seeks to create a caliphate in north eastern Nigeria, point to a fact that Africa is at war with itself and spending heavily in munitions than investing on the quality of life of her citizens.Adam Smith wrote many years ago that war is the work of men who understand nothing about the laws of political economy. Studies on the economic impact of wars in sub-Saharan Africa have revealed low GDP per capita income in countries experiencing war as opposed to countries with relative peace as well as destruction of physical and human capital. Africa accounts for two thirds of global conflict-related deaths.Other costs include reduced revenue, investment, trade and productivity, increase of public debt to finance the war, the emergence of grand scale corruption by those who seek to profiteer from the continents war economy, pressure on public finance and shift of focus from capital to military spending. The wars also have spillover effects to host countries of refugees in terms of social, economic strains.Thus the continent has been chronically at war to her own detriment and to the benefit of a few international corporations that control global military industry. If Agenda 2063 is to be realised, AU has to find a robust regional security strategy that offers durable solution to her conflicts. It is sad that some conflicts happen in Africa with AU being a bystander. Today, other regional blocs like EAC, still lag behind Ecowas in having a standby force. This process should be reinforced by fast tracking African human rights courts envisaged in the Malabo Protocol. This may be that magic bullet to address conflict profiteering and reports like the AU High Level Panel by Thabo Mbeki so the same may not gather dust any more.

Mr Okidi is a lawyer and researcher focusing on conflict, security and development Nexus. chrisokidi1986@gmail.com

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Conflicts point to a fact that Africa is at war with itself - Daily Monitor

PCS The Moving Game illustrates complexities of the process Credit: Navy infographic

For years, Ive privately advocated for the US Army to create some British-style regiments to provide greater personal stability for officers and enlisted, increase unit identification and morale, and build units that include organic capabilities so they can go to war without drawing on lots of specialized support units. One aspect of the regimental system is that troops dont rotate to a new post every 18 months to two years, as do many US military personnel. This op-ed by a Foreign Area Officer (FAO) my favorite breed of Army officer currently a military fellow at CSIS, addresses the issue of stability in a clear and compelling fashion. Read on! The Editor.

For decades, the U.S. Army has insisted that most of its soldiers move every few years. That should stop.

Given the changing demographics of the force, contemporary societal pressures, and practical resource constraints, it is prudent to re-examine thisindustrial-age process of building generalists. It comes at a cost to the Army not only by forcing soldiers to cyclically shed specialization but also in the instability and uncertainty borne by the soldier.

Moving soldiers every two to three years come at a high cost.Moving causes enormous strain on the family unit.In todays increasingly polarized U.S. culture, it is important to reconsider ways the Army can encourage more physical community-building at its bases. While more study is required to assess the overall impact of a PCS (Permanent Change of Station), it is hard to argue that it helps stability.

Col. Jason Gresh

Moving every few years is especially tough on children, who often attend several schools in the span of a few years.Stabilization would also reduce the inevitable hassle of temporary housing concerns.Undoubtedly, a move can be positive: It gives the soldier a chance to redefine himself, start fresh, and learn a new skill in a new environment.But it also involves making new friends and integrating into a new community. Given todays renewed focus on mental health issues, it seems reasonable to provide more stability for soldiers and their families.

With the recent focus on the Army Talent Management Task Force, the Army has a great opportunity to offer more stabilization a move that aligns well with the focus on talent. Now is the perfect time to reassess the need for the PCS.

Yes, the PCS is often seen as a rite of passage in the Army and other services; many Army families boast of the number of places theyve been assigned to. But a lifetime of multiple station changes may not be attractive to the new post-industrial workforce the Army is now trying to recruit and retain. Numerous studies have pointed to what millennials and Gen-Z desire in a career and the prospect of moving every two to three years certainly is not one of them.New recruits value purpose and belonging, the chance to build expertise, as well as some choice about their career paths.Offering the choice to remain in one place for longer periods may be attractive.

If the Army is serious about harnessing skills in the knowledge-based economy, this same workforce is more likely to have spouses who are also seeking a professional career and work prospects.Regardless of a soldiers skill set, traditional notions of the Army spouse staying at home, taking care of the kids, and managing the household are rarer in todays knowledge-based economy.Frequent moves strain the spouses ability to improve their professional credentials, should they choose to do so.

The Army could enact some changes now.Certain high-density skills and grades can advance in certain geographic locales without the price of multiple PCS moves. Assignment policies at Army Human Resources Command do not necessarily look for advancement or broadening opportunities in the locale where that soldier is stationed.

To be fair, the Army has a few initiatives, including measures to stabilize the family when the soldier is deployed, or for school-age stabilization. But these are exceptions to the rule. Stabilization should be offered as a choice.Especially in high-density operational and combat support communities, these opportunities exist now.Certainly, stabilization chances decrease as the type of specialization increases, but it would be wise for the Army to offer stability to the soldier when considering her for a new job. Challenges remain; the Army would have to reconcile stabilization with career timelines that include continuing education, not to mention senior leader preferences.

Finally, theres the financial argument. Decreasing the number of PCS moves could save money and ease the logistical burden required to move and support our soldiers, while eliminating the all-too familiar moving headaches for soldiers. The Army is projected to spend approximately $1.7B in fiscal 2020 alone on PCS related travel expenses.Over the last five years, PCS travel costs for the Army have hovered around $1.75B per year.

Soldier moves are so frequent that DoDs database management systems have trouble handling the workload.DoDs moving database crashed for several days in fiscal 2019, creating long delays for the approximately 80,000 moves that it had to process that summer.Leadership has taken notice.Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville has already cited the need to improve the quality of PCS moves by holding moving contractors more accountable.

Reduce the number of moves so a soldier stays in one place for four to five years.Offering stabilization as a choice will help, not disrupt, the formation of the post-industrial force. Creating an attractive environment for recruiting will also help the Army realize its increasingly difficult goal of retaining talentwhile imparting stability to the Armys workforce.

Col. Jason Gresh is a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Gresh has been serving for the last 12 years as a Foreign Area Officer. He specializes in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. The views expressed above are Greshs alone and do not reflect the views of the US government.

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Reassess The PCS: Stop Moving Soldiers Every 2 Years - Breaking Defense

Fifteen years ago a national survey named Tommy Douglas, the father of universal, single-payer healthcare in Canada, the greatest Canadian of all time. Today, we Canadians continue to hold up our high-quality, publicly funded healthcare system as a point of national pride.

Among other ethical priorities, our system values the principle of non-maleficence, or avoiding needless harm. Physicians order tests even when the chances are slim that they might diagnose a dangerous disease, because one missed cancer in one hundred is too many. Prescription medications are similarly vetted. Researched extensively in laboratory and animal models, they must pass three phases of human trials before going to market. 9.3 per cent of prescription medications are subsequently withdrawn during a minimum two-year surveillance period, when dangerous side effects become evident during wider population use. In fact, after $2.1 billion of sales, the diabetes medication troglitazone was pulled from the market in 2000 when it was linked to 63 liver-failure deaths.

In other words, our healthcare system is designed to be rigorous and evidence-based. When it becomes apparent that a drug or intervention may be harmful, we have historically prioritized human health over billions of dollars of profits for corporations.

Its time Canadians cared for our climate the same way we care for our health.

Prior to and during the recent election, the Government of Canada repeatedly emphasized that climate change is a serious public health issue. Thousands of hospital visits and deaths each year are linked to climate-change-driven phenomena like air pollution and heat waves. Scientists estimate that over half of global temperature rise can be attributed to fossil-fuel use. Indeed, if oil were a prescription drug it would be taken off the market immediately. And yet, our Prime Minister recently said, No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there. Now we may be more dependent on fossil fuels than we were on troglitazone, but this does not justify our lackluster response to the climate emergency.

So why has it been so challenging for us to take decisive action on climate change to date?

For one, the human mind is ill-equipped to think ahead to future environmental challenges. In January 2018, mudflows in Southern California triggered by erosion from wildfire-induced deforestation killed 23 people. Though Santa Barbara County was aware of the risk, since these events occur only every few decades little had been done to prevent them. Similarly, over 100,000 people were displaced during the 2013 southern Alberta floods, which overwhelmed the province due to inadequate preparation for extreme weather conditions.

Second, human nature can make us poor stewards. This tendency is famously depicted by the economic theory the Tragedy of the Commons, which notes that humans, when given unrestricted access to a shared resource, will overexploit it out of self-interest. This was exemplified by the real-life collapse of the Canadian Newfoundland cod fishery in 1992, or the ongoing deforestation of the Amazon rainforest for cattle farming.

Third, human impacts on the environment can be complex and unpredictable. For example, when the Cane Toad was introduced to Australia in 1935 to control sugar-cane beetles, a massive, unexpected decline in biodiversity followed. And you dont need to be a Cane Toad specialist to understand that the environment can be similarly unpredictablehail on a summer day in the Canadian Plains when the weather forecast is for sunshine provides ample evidence.

Anthropogenic climate change finds all three of these factors at play. Global warming, a disaster occurring in slow motion, is occurring on a timescale that confounds our ability to perceive and prepare for it. Our atmosphere is a shared resource that we are polluting out of individual and corporate self-interest. Unpredictable environmental effects, like the increased frequency of powerful hurricanes, record-breaking wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, as well as downstream effects of increased carbon emissions like ocean acidification, are devastating terrestrial and marine life. Climate change is already resulting in environmental challenges that our current system of slow change is not equipped to handle.

Meanwhile, much of the population is numbed by doubt. In the 1950s, tobacco companies did a valiant job of protecting their profits by casting doubt on the science behind the health risks of smoking. Smoking has since been deemed the number-one preventable cause of death in America, responsible for approximately 500,000 deaths per year in the US. Fossil-fuel companies have cast similar doubt around the science of climate change to promote inaction. During the election period, the leader of the Peoples Party of Canada declared that while the climate may be changing, this is not primarily due to human activity. Only 35 per cent of Conservative voters believe that climate change exists, and is caused by emissions from vehicles and industry. Will we continue to take only incremental steps and doubt science until climate change becomes the number-one preventable cause of death in Canada?

Healthcare and climate change were consistently noted as top priorities for all political parties in Canada during the election. Yet human-made climate change, a habit-formed drug, is already causing more deaths than we would accept in our regulated healthcare system. Even if at current emissions trajectories climate disaster were ten times less likely to occur than experts project, this would still translate to an unacceptable level of risk. Treating the climate like our health thus means taking every step possible towards a carbon-neutral economy, even if fossil-fuel industry profits suffer.

Public health policy has long shown that one of the most cost-effective paths to better health starts with preventative measures at home. If we want to minimize societal harm, it is imperative that all parties in our new minority government work together to maintain the health of our planet, our collective home. Its time that we recognize climate change as the greatest threat to human health of the twenty-first century and prioritize it accordinglybecause our health, and our very survival, depend on it.

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IN OUR OPINION: It's time we treat the climate like our health - National Observer

Business News of Wednesday, 20 November 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

The think tank made the assertion based on analysis of the 2020 budget

The economy will continue to grow, especially in the long term, due to the sustainable and inclusive policy stances of the government, an analysis of the 2020 Budget by the Danquah Institute (DI) has indicated.

The think tank based its assertion on the assumption that the government will maintain its current fiscal responsibility posture and intensify its policy initiatives to drive production.

A statement signed and issued by the Executive Director of the DI, Mr. Richard Ahiagbah, gave the antecedents of the budget, saying the year 2015 witnessed a textbook collapse of the Ghanaian economy when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) assumed a supervisory role under former President John Mahama.

He said the institute came to the conclusion after a review of the 2020 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the Government presented to Parliament last Wednesday.

Meanwhile, two other think tanks prefer a more ambitious outlook for the budget that will be stronger on revenue mobilization.

The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) has described the 2020 Budget as cautious and not sufficiently ambitious.

Policy impulse

Addressing the press in Accra on Tuesday after its analysis of the budget, the Director of Research at the IEA, Dr John Kwakye, said after three years of virtual fiscal consolidation, a strong policy impulse was needed to stimulate growth, while addressing social challenges such as unemployment, hardships and poverty

This required an ambitious revenue mobilization effort to support higher capital and social spending, he said.

The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, presented the 2020 Budget to Parliament last Wednesday. Since then, many think tanks, accounting, and advisory firms, civil society groups and individuals have analyzed the economic policy document and shared the results with their stakeholders, such as we have on pages 24 & 25 of this paper.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), for its part, said the governments revenue mobilization strategies, which included digitization to improve taxpayer identification, as well as revenue administration reforms to enhance efficiency, seem inadequate to achieve a significant increase in domestic revenues in both the short and the medium term.

It proposed a number of revenue mobilization actions, including the passage of the Tax Exemptions Bill to address the excesses of the countrys over-generous exemptions regime.

The IFS also called for a review of Ghanas natural resources fiscal regime to broaden the revenue base.

This call supports the stance of the IEA for the government to go after more resources locally to expand its expenditure in order to reduce its deficit.

In doing that, you will achieve your stability goal and your growth goal, the IEA said.

The government should look towards the natural resources sector, including gold, oil, manganese, bauxite, gas and iron ore, where Dr Kwakye said the IEA had assembled credible evidence that Ghana has resource reserves that are worth over $12 trillion.

When we go in to exploit part of these resources, we sign colonial type of concession contracts that cede mining rights to companies and then we take just a small portion for ourselves, when we could have gone in for product sharing contracts, he stated.

If we were to exploit our vast natural resources well under contracts that provide us with maximum benefit, we would not need the foreign borrowing that we often resort to and Ghana Beyond Aid would become a true reality, he added.

The 2020 budget and medium-term policy are cautious and guarded, as the minister endeavours to walk a tight rope between stabilisation and growth. The revenue, capital expenditure and growth targets are not sufficiently ambitious, he said.

Revenue Dr Kwakye indicated that the revenue effort of the government was rather tepid, adding that domestic revenue as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) was 16.5 per cent in 2020 and averaged 15.9 per cent for 2021-2023.

On the other hand, the IEA Director of Research said, the tax component to GDP was 12.4 per cent in 2020 and averaged 12.9 per cent for 2021-2023.

The comparable figures for middle-income countries are about 30 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively. The minister (Mr Ofori-Atta) stated support for Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) reforms, largely targeted at tax administration. However, the reforms do not reflect in significantly better revenue outcomes, he said, adding that the minister could have taken bolder steps to mobilise revenue, including the reduction of the spate of exemptions.

Danquah Institute According to Mr Ahiagbah, in spite of the presence of the IMF in 2016, the NDC administration left a weak and troubled economy.

The March 2017 Budget of President Akufo-Addos government took disciplined measures to commit to fiscal responsibility, and as a result, it reversed a troubled economy to growth and reclaimed Ghanas policy-making control by exiting the IMF programme, he added.

In the 2020 Budget, Mr Ofori-Atta stated distinctly that the government intends to be fiscally responsible after the IMF. This means that, barring eventualities, Ghanas economy will typically continue to grow, he said.

Fiscal responsibility According to the DI, fiscal responsibility was a critical enabler of economic growth and cited a recent IMF report that used The Philippines as a case study to underscore the growth-inducing potential of fiscal responsibility, particularly when the rule-based regime is adopted.

Ghana has adopted a five per cent deficit rule with the passage of the Fiscal Responsibility Act. Given the governments stated commitment to adhere to the law, it is reasonable to expect that the economy will benefit exponentially.

The DI said the economy President Akufo-Addo inherited required an urgent stimulus to induce economic activities and it achieved that by removing more than 10 nuisance taxes and implemented the free senior high school (FSHS) policy.

By eliminating the nuisance taxes and implementing the FSHS policy, both industry and citizens retained money in their pockets, cash they would have spent to meet tax obligations and school fees, it argued.

The government reversed a $1.8-billion trade deficit in 2016 to a trade surplus of $2.6 billion in 2019. This is a firm indication that the governments policies are working and will yield growth in the future, it added.

To the DI, there was every expectation that domestic production and jobs would increase, especially considering the forward impact of some agricultural initiatives such as Planting for Food and Jobs, Rearing for Food and Jobs and Planting for Export and Rural Development.

The code to unlocking the growth potential of these and other initiatives is citizen participation and implementation efficiency by government officials, the institute said.

IFS

On other recommendations, the IFS wanted the governments revenue mobilization strategies to undertake a comprehensive review of the tax system to identify the strong and weak segments of the system, in terms of the design, bases, rates, revenue potential relative to actual receipts and pursue corrective measures to strengthen tax mobilization.

It reminded the government that since 2020 was an election year, the issue of fiscal discipline cannot be overemphasized. Election year fiscal overruns have become a characteristic feature of Ghanas public financial management culture and it will be a feather in the cap of the government if it avoids a fiscal overrun in 2020.

The IFS also wanted the government to cut back on consumption-based expenditures, saying: This should include minimizing the size and avoiding the introduction of new initiatives while directing the savings into additional public investment and a reduction in borrowing.

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Economy will grow beyond 2020 Danquah Institute projects - GhanaWeb

In 2018 The Companies (Directors Report) and Limited Liability Partnerships (Energy and Carbon Report) Regulations 2018, Statutory Instrument 1155, was passed which made changes to the level of reporting required within the Directors Report with effect for financial years commencing on or after 1 April 2019. We are therefore in the first reporting period.

This legislation implemented the consultation work carried out by The Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy, BEIS, which resulted in the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting policy, commonly referred to as SECR. This was required after the end of the Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme and widened the scope to include many more organisations and types of organisation as well as specifying performance reporting in the Directors Report. The SECR reporting has not replaced other required reporting regimes such as ESOS, GRG and sector Climate Change Agreements.

The increase in scope over the CRC Energy Efficiency Scheme, has brought in many companies who are currently reporting under ESOS, widening the catchment to broadly 11,900 organisations. As the title implies LLPs are within the scope. All quoted companies need to comply but other limited companies or LLPs will also be obliged to do so if they hit two of the following criteria:-

There is a de-minimis hurdle but this is set at a very low figure of 40 MWh that it is difficult to see it coming into play.

The situation with group reporting is interesting and different to CRC reporting in that subsidiaries may be excluded if they do not meet the criteria in their own right. It would be worth checking the detail on this before reporting though as the rules are complex. It is thought there may be a tendency to overreport for marketing purposes.

Rickard Gustafson, who heads up Scandinavian Airlines (SAS), tells Financial Director how he is adapting the carrier to a fast-changing environment.

Dr Anne-Marie Coles,of the Institute for Political Economy, Governance, Finance and Accountability (PEGFA), University of Greenwich, says the link between finance and climate change needs to be understood.

All companies will need to develop their sustainability strategy to survive and prosper, says Mike Rosenberg, associate professor of strategic management, IESE Business School.

What is needed to be reported depends on whether the organisation is a quoted company or not. All companies in scope will be required to report usage of Gas, Electricity and direct Transport, plus the greenhouse gas implied within the usage and at least one measure of intensity relevant to the industry.

These measures could be similar to those used in activity-based costing, such as floor area for retail, or output for manufacturing, and in many cases more than one could be used as long as they are consistent over time. In addition quoted companies are required to include global emissions in tonnes of Carbon including other gases as required by the Kyoto protocol, and if possible Scope 3 emissions from the supply chain. A narrative on steps to reduce emissions is also required in the Directors report. The requirement for the reported figures to be externally verified is not mandatory, but it is expected consistency will be applied.

Although there is no direct penalty for not complying with SECR specified it could result in Companies House rejecting the Directors Report and a subsequent late filing penalty. We will not know how this is enforced until accounts are filed in late 2020. BEIS have not (so far) put in other non-compliance penalties such as exist with the ESOS scheme.

During the initial year of reporting a prior year comparison is not required, but will be from then on.

The inclusion of many more organisations within scope has brought tracking of energy use, and KPIs on energy into the routine accounting arena rather than periodic exercises on annual or periodic compliance reporting. This could result in duplication within an organisation as Sustainability Managers are also capturing much of the data required to comply within their systems. In larger organisations some of this data can reside within an Enterprise Resource Management system, but LLPs and mid-sized organisations may have not invested in that level of shared data and may have a major data collection and aggregation task in linking consumption to intensity drivers.

One solution to this is to look at what systems are being applied in the energy sector that have been built around reporting and recording energy usage. By utilising this type of system, where energy usage is directly feeding off meter readings, KPIs aligned to SECR reporting can be brought in as part of the monthly report. With some systems it is also possible to combine this data collection and consolidation with billing validation allowing consistent data between usage recording and the accounts.

About the author: Martyn Young ACMA is a director of ZTP, an energy software and management consultancy.

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SECR Reporting Are you recording and reporting? - Financial Director

Toronto-based EQ Bank, the digital arm of Equitable Bank, has announced it is migrating its entire core banking system to the cloud. The bank claims this would make it the first licenced bank in Canada to be fully hosted in a public cloud architecture.

Our recent move to the cloud means were not only ready for the future of banking in Canada, were driving it.

EQ Bank, which was launched as a full-service digital banking solution in 2016, said this migration will reduce overhead costs, make its system more flexible, prepare itself for innovations like open banking, and strengthen its security foundation. Equitable Bank chief information officer and senior vice president Dan Dickinson said the company is attempting to ditch the traditional industry approaches of what he called armchair technologies, meaning traditional banking philosophies.

According to a report on cloud banking released by Deloitte, a cloud architecture would allow financial institutions and enterprises to synchronize, by allowing them to share data and drive more integrated decisions. Accenture worked with a bank on its cloud architecture, reporting that the bank was better able to support development efforts, simplify its operating environment, and increase productivity.

EQ Bank will base its system on Temenos T24 Transact, a core banking software that is cloud-native and cloud-agnostic. Temenos software is built using API-first and DevOps principles and is available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. EQ Bank will be using Azure.

Dickinson said the scalability and flexibility is the whole premise of the cloud. If the bank hits high volumes, for example, it can change its resource capability and scale up to hold demand without customers experiencing a slowdown.

That kind of flexibility helps us a lot, and that leads to the cost [benefit], because in an old world, what youd have to do is buy the hardware that would support you for your busiest time of the year, he told BetaKit. The rest of the year, maybe youre not fully utilizing that hardware.

Not all attest to the cost-effectiveness of cloud banking, however. Frank Wasson, CEO of First Entertainment Credit Union, told Forbes the idea that cloud banking is cheaper is a myth, and that his organization found it was sometimes more expensive than would the organization could do for itself.

RELATED: CIBC launches new banking platform for small and medium-sized business

Dickinson argued that the benefits of cloud banking are pretty widely documented, but he agreed that cloud banking is not necessarily less expensive, contrary to EQ Banks argument that the cloud will reduce overhead costs.

I think originally, people thought itd be much less expensive just out of the gate, he said. What youre doing is youre actually paying for more flexibility, agility, and security, which is maybe a little bit different than what the story has been on cloud for years.

A 2017 report from Accenture Consulting found that while banks and firms are exploring or using the cloud on some level, many are still hesitant to undertake a full-scale transformation.

Wed love to see more competition in the market and more Canadians needs being met.

Dickinson said the security aspect of the cloud has raised a big question mark among firms who are concerned about the potential risks, and affirmed that financial institutions should have the right controls and processes to ensure security is well looked after. Cloud providers are already known for having have rigorous security standards, Deloitte noted in a report.

Dickinson also touched on the clouds ability to help EQ Bank with open banking. If open banking goes the way that we really are hoping that it does go, and over time, theres huge consumer demand for this, then we want to be ready for that, Dickinson told BetaKit. We believe its the customers data, its theirs to look at and we didnt want infrastructure speed or lack of scalability to stand in the way of them being able to get to their data.

Open banking is a system intended to offer consumers more control of their data, by allowing their banks to distribute their personal information to third parties through the use of open application programming interfaces (more commonly known as APIs). It would allow, essentially, for more of EQ Banks startup competitors to emerge on the banking scene, but Dickinson said EQ Bank doesnt have a problem with this.

RELATED: Department of Finance Canada launches consultations on open banking

We dont try to be everything to everyone, Dickinson said. Were actually excited at the idea of other software players, payments players, or advisory players being able to come into that space. Wed love to see more competition in the market and more Canadians needs being met.

EQ Banks parent, Equitable Bank, has also shown its support for challengers to financial incumbents, injecting capital into Toronto-based startups Wealthsimple and Borrowell, as well as partnering with a number of FinTech startups.

We challenge ourselves to innovate every day, which is why weve built our digital infrastructures not only to provide state-of-the-art digital experiences for today but also in anticipation of open banking, said Andrew Moor, CEO and president of Equitable Bank. Open banking will transform and modernize our industry enormously, benefitting consumers, businesses, and the economy alike. Innovation is in EQ Banks DNA, and our recent move to the cloud means were not only ready for the future of banking in Canada, were driving it.

Image courtesy EQ Bank

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EQ Bank migrates core system to the cloud as it gears up for open banking in Canada - BetaKit

Foreign policy issues were not prominent during the election but there are now significant challenges ahead especially on trade, national security, climate change and relations with the U.S. and China that present opportunities that would enhance the national interest. As a general principle, instead of proclaiming smugly that the world needs more Canada, the government should assert clearly how and why Canada needs more from the world.

On trade, we need to concentrate on ratification of the USMCA. While Canadas influence on Congress will not be significant, we should not hesitate to register firmly with all American interlocutors in government and business that early ratification is very much in Americas interest, as well as that of Canada and Mexico. As demonstrated by the cut and run from northern Syria and the chaos that ensued, President Donald Trump may become even more impulsive should impeachment threats intensify in coming months. Any threat to abrogate NAFTA in the absence of ratification should be firmly resisted recognizing that ultimately this is a matter for Congress to decide.

The best way to temper our excessive dependence on the U.S. market and our vulnerability to the proclivities of American politics is trade diversification, not as a substitute but to provide more balanced and more certain opportunities for economic growth. Specifically, Canada should broaden its trade footprint in markets like the EU, Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and others in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, where we have preferential trade agreements. We should also move swiftly to negotiate a free trade agreement with a post-Brexit Britain emulating as much as possible the provisions of the Canada-Europe Trade Agreement. As well, a new strategic priority on trade should be given to India and to the fast-growing economies of Africa.

On national security, we should explore the prospects of joining the U.S. ballistic missile defence system for North America. In todays world that would provide the essence of security and is an advantage on defence that many other countries would envy. It would also serve to rejuvenate the otherwise rather dormant NORAD. Canada should bolster its military in order to strengthen its commitment to NATO and give us needed credibility to help reposition NATOs purpose.

We should explore the prospects of joining the U.S. ballistic missile defence system for North America

Recognizing that cyber security is, according to many experts, the most serious threat to global stability, Canada needs to overhaul our strategy and our organizational capacity to manage this unrelenting challenge one posed against us most provocatively by China and Russia. In a similar vein, we need to repair serious breaches in our intelligence operations so as to deny further degradation of standing within the Five Eyes alliance exclusive intelligence sharing with the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Britain.

On climate change, we should not allow our position to become a prisoner of inflexible, hyperbolic rhetoric. Canada is 1.6 per cent of the global emissions problem. We are and will continue to be a resource-based economy. Unless there are serious commitments by such major emitters as the U.S, China and India, there will be no realistic solution on a global scale. That is why it would be economic suicide for Canada to act unilaterally. A better tactic would be to encourage U.S. re-engagement as the first step towards timely and more realistic commitments from the U.S., China and India, among others. Instead of more self-congratulatory global conferences that do little to move the needle, the climate challenge calls for hard-headed negotiation by credible negotiators who can gauge the economic as well as the environmental implications of commitments, and not activists whose efforts may generate headlines but tend to be more aspirational than consequential.

Management of relations with the U.S. will always be a top priority for Canada

Management of relations with the U.S. will always be a top priority for Canada. Along with ratification of the USMCA and exploration of participation in the anti-ballistic missile system, we should seek to negotiate with the U.S. a more comprehensive Safe Third Country Agreement on refugees. The ultimate test of sovereignty for any country is the ability to control its borders. With the Trump administration there may be little scope for any pragmatic negotiation and even less in an election year but staunching the flow of illegal refugees into Canada is a key responsibility for the federal government.

Relations with China are deadlocked in the face of outright bullying by the Chinese authorities actions that contravene basic tenets of international law. Canada cannot avoid searching for ways to break the current imbroglio and return to a level of civility but we should never sublimate our fundamental concerns about human rights in order to curry favour with China. Nor should we adopt a rose-coloured view of Chinese behaviour. We have to learn to deal with the ascending and increasingly arrogant global giant as it is rather than as we would like it to be. That is the essence of diplomacy.

Given the lopsided nature of our trade relationship, we do have some leverage with China. If the U.S. succeeds in negotiating bilateral agreements on trade to curtail theft of intellectual property and to prevent forced diversification of foreign technology, Canada should move to secure similar assurances from China as well as improved prospects for access to the worlds second largest economy.

The fundamental pillars for any Canadian government are prosperity, security and national unity. Concrete foreign policy moves as suggested above would serve Canadian interests on each of these pillars and, at the same time, reinforce our basic democratic values.

Derek H. Burney, a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S. and chief of staff to Brian Mulroney, is the co-author of a new book: Braver Canada: Shaping Our Destiny in a Precarious World, published byMcGill-Queens University Press.

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Derek H. Burney: Good luck with these foreign policy challenges, Mr. Trudeau - National Post

Ibrahim AlHusseini, thefounder and CEO of the investment firm FullCycle Energy Fund, which aims to scout and back those companies most likely to solve the climate crisis, never thought his career would take an environmental turn. The Palestinian-American businessmanan early investor in Tesla and Ubergrew up as a refugee in Saudi Arabia. But after coming to America for college and realizing he had a knack for entrepreneurship, he found himself increasingly alarmed whenever hed travel back home to visit his parents. Saudi Arabia was a fast-deteriorating desertfull of dusty palm trees and locusts, whereas in the eighties it was super lush, AlHusseini told Sierra. Id go scuba diving in the same spot year after yearthat spot, too, over time went from lush, colorful, rich, and inspiring to barren, full of plastic, and devoid of life. It really woke me up.

He got to thinking, Whats the point of accumulating wealth if the things I care most about are fading away from the planet? I wasnt a politician or activist, but I knew how to build businesses and I knew how to invest, says ALHusseini, who in 2003 decided to take a year off and study climate science. When I went back to work, I decided that since the decisions that were made 30 years prior had resulted in the world I was then living in, I would make investment decisions thatll impact the world 30 years from now, based on my understanding of what the world needswhich is largely based on IPCC [UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] reports.

Sierra recently sat down with AlHusseini (a new friend of Jane Fondas!) to learn more about promising clean-tech ventures, the private sectors power to reverse the planetary crisis, and why the immigration issue is really a climate issue.

***

Sierra: Tell us about your inspiration for launching FullCycle in 2013.

Ibrahim AlHusseini: Growing up in the 80s as a Palestinian refugee in Saudi Arabia, I felt very unsafe geopolitically, and the idea of having a little power and respect in the world was very appealing. Most people dont realize how ubiquitous American media isI grew up watching Miami Vice, Dallas, Dynasty, and Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. As a child I was kind of indoctrinated in the idea that if you want to be validated/respected, that somehow is correlated with your net worth. So that was my goal, and it was only after moving to the US that I realized our modern world is built on systems. And many current structures were built at a time when we thought the world was infiniteits why weve been extracting old fossil fuels and cutting down trees, why we ended up with a generation that has to reconcile that: ours. So how do we quickly replace old, crummy infrastructure with new infrastructure that was designed in the 21st century, by scientists who understand we live on a finite planet with finite resources? And how do we make it profitable? Those are the questions that brought my entrepreneurial investment journey into the realm of climate.

What kinds of companies and technologies are you most excited about right now?

Tech that turns waste back into the elements that we can turn back into whatever the market needs. Im excited about Synova Power, which breaks down hydrocarbons to their component elements, so you can recombine them to create almost anything you wantyou can create virgin plastic out of plastic, and not use fossil fuels, so theres no more downcycling. There are also opportunities to turn component elements into biofuels, or into renewable natural gas. The point is that youre getting the efficiency of turning something that the world is currently burying in the ground or throwing into the ocean into a valuable resource that can perpetually be part of a closed-loop system thats taking us closer to a sustainable society.

You know and I know that sometimes we use the word we and that we is not really the encompassing weMalaysia has no idea about any of these narratives were considering, nor do India and Indonesia and almost the whole continent of Africa. So we have to work for the overall we and not just for the rich progressive bubble weand thats what I like again about this technology: It makes modern civilization less burdensome on the planet without trying to elevate the behavior of 11 billion people. Because the best that you and I can do as conscious, aware individuals is to have a lower carbon footprintby our existence we wont be carbon neutral, but we can reconcile that by making sure that modern civilization itself gets closer to carbon neutral.

There are also exciting probiotic mixtures that you can put into irrigation systems that make plant immune systems so much stronger, so they need 60 percent less herbicides and fungicides. It makes the soil sequester way more carbon without any big fancy technology. Using natural soil remediation in a natural mixture of probiotics.

"We have to work for the overall we and not just for the rich progressive bubble weand thats what I like again about this technology: It makes modern civilization less burdensome on the planet without trying to elevate the behavior of 11 billion people."

What are the advantages of coming at these issues from the private sector, rather than from a policy standpoint?

Youre making choices that are based on economic sustainability as well, so we can look at things for both carbon math and financial math, and only do things that work for both. Were not going to get the traction and scale we want if things are not profitablewe have to make it more profitable to reverse the climate crisis, so that investors are not giving us tiny little amounts of their portfolio, but rather big ones. You also dont have to have ideological debates in this space, because no one can deny that we need more fruits and veggies, or that waste management is not a net positive. Its a conversation that makes a lot of sense, and I always emphasize that technology inflection points are massive wealth opportunitieswhether were going from horse-and-buggy to car, or from paper to digital, or from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy. Its not just a nice-to-have; were talking about the sustainability of life itself on the only home that we know. But who are the people who are going to benefit financially from that transition? Its amazing how amicable people are once dollar signs are involved.

Can you talk more about the return potential when it comes to climate-smart tech?

First, I want to make one important distinction, given the venture capital mindset in urban Californiaits too late for venture! The climate has no timeline for venture; were already there. And remember, low-carbon infrastructure isnt an app; were talking about a power plan! This is very complex hardware that is going to need to be built on a municipal scalein order for that to go from a lab to a pilot to demonstration to being commercially viable, were talking about 12 years. So Full Cycle only focuses on market-ready stuffwere here to accelerate the deployment of market-ready tech.

Climate is a race against time! How quickly can we transform our relationship to waste worldwide? Take waste managementit starts with closing landfills, because if we can turn garbage into money, no one throws money away! Were here to quickly condense the business plans of all these climate-smart technologies so they can replace existing systems. Were not VC; were a Private Equity firm investing in sustainable infrastructure. We back companies so they can build on RFPs [requests for proposals] quickly so they have the financing ready to go once they win those RFPs. That way instead of having, like, eight clean waste management plants by year 5, they have 48 plants by year 5and hopefully 850 by year 12, and then by year 20, they have 5500 plants all over the world, and in our lifetime, weve transformed our relationship to waste, and were saying things like, Can you believe people used to throw things away and itd end up in whale stomachs.

Where do you project well see the most growth in the clean energy sector?

The technologies that have to explode are in agricultural techits one of the biggest carbon-contributing industries. As we knew would happen, the electrification of transportation is upon us; its happening. We just have to make sure we create better infrastructuremake sure theres more places for us to plug in our carsso people cannot have that range anxiety. And of course, the more autonomous vehicles there are, the less people need to own cars. Waste is a huge one, too, especially because waste breaks down into methane and short-lived climate pollutants like HFCs (which are refrigerants) that are far more heat-trapping than CO2. We have to focus on those initiallyand because the supermarket doesnt have an incentive to fix those leaks, we need a new business model there.

What should consumers expect of businesses in the age of climate change, and whats a sign that a business is truly going above and beyond to address the climate crisis?

First of all, theres not enough time left for the Trump administration to lull businesses into thinking that all of the regulation reversals are going to show up in their bottom lines, and not enough time to take advantage of that before we correct it. Look at big car companieseven though Trump is trying to fight California in federal court, getting them to roll back their mileage emissions regulations, a lot of companies are saying, Listen, were not going to play along, because theyre smart enough to know that this is an anomaly, not the standard. So my advice to businesses is, dont change the trajectory of your business based on a year-and-a-half-left administration. And stop pretending youre an eco-hero for some kind of incremental behaviorits way too late for incrementalism; the house is on fire.

Speaking of the Trump administration, youve been a vocal critic of its immigration policies. A lot of self-proclaimed environmentalists are anti-immigration; can you talk about immigrations connection to the climate crisis?

Forty percent of the worlds population lives in the subtropicsand if you look at climate models, the subtropics are all going to have permanent droughts. Itll be virtually impossible to grow food there, and these are poor countriesthey wont be able to make up for it. Either theyll starve to death or migrate north. And when you have billions of people who need to migrate north, a steel barrier is not going to stop them. And you know whos going to break down that steel barrier? There are going to be enough people in America and Europe who are not going to let children starve to death and pretend this is not happening. We are going to break down that barrier from our end to let them in. Your only pragmatic solution is to keep nations stable by investing in clean infrastructure in their countries.

Immigrants are painted as these pariahs who are here to suck on the resources of wealthier, more developed nations. But I can speak for myself and the fellow immigrants I knowwe come from nations that do not have rule of law, that have dictatorships, that are not a meritocracy, that dont provide a system where anybody can be rewarded according to the degree that theyre willing to work and think and contributeand that contrast actually gives us a true appreciation of America.

Excerpt from:

Yes, Reversing the Climate Crisis Will Be Profitable - Sierra Magazine

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has talking points hes fond of repeating over and over again and one of his favourites is a pledge to build a billion-dollar road to a boggy, remote region of Northern Ontario known as the Ring of Fire.

When asked about the promise by a reporter at a plowing match in September, Mr. Ford repeated almost verbatim an infamous tweet from last years provincial election campaign: "If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, were going to start building roads to the Ring of Fire.

Youre going to see me on that bulldozer, Mr. Ford declared, with a confident chuckle.

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The declaration by the Ontario premier is just one example of the big talk over the past decade by politicians of all stripes about the Ring of Fire.

DeBeers Victor

diamond mine

JOHN SOPINSKI/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

SOURCE: noront resources; geology.com

DeBeers Victor

diamond mine

JOHN SOPINSKI/THE GLOBE AND MAIL

SOURCE: noront resources; geology.com

DeBeers Victor

diamond mine

JOHN SOPINSKI/THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: noront resources; geology.com

The Ontario government has repeatedly played up the prospects for the region with breathless assertions about the supposedly stratospheric value of minerals in the ground, and an apparent bonanza of jobs and economic benefits that lie in wait for locals.

In a throne speech nine years ago, then-premier Dalton McGuintys Liberal government zeroed in on the Ring of Fire as one of the keys to reviving Ontarios sputtering economy.

In 2013, his successor, Kathleen Wynne, started claiming the mineral deposits were worth upwards of $60-billion.

That same year, Tony Clement, then federal minister responsible for northern Ontarios economic development, likened the financial impact of the Ring of Fire to Albertas oil sands. In an interview with Huffington Post Canada, Mr. Clement claimed the riches could generate as much as $120-billion for the economy.

During the 2018 provincial election campaign, Mr. Fords Progressive Conservatives promised to "finally, open up the incredible resources of our North, starting by cutting through the special-interest and bureaucratic delays blocking us from developing the Ring of Fire.

Theres only one problem with all these grand pronouncements about this crescent-shaped mineral discovery about 550 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay: Its mostly aspirational hogwash.

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The financial case for heavily indebted Ontario to invest in the Ring of Fire has always been questionable.

In 2014, the Wynne government pledged to spend $1-billion of taxpayers money to build an access road connecting the deposits to a provincial highway 300 kilometres to the south. But at least another $1-billion is needed for added industrial infrastructure such as bridges and electrical power. At the moment, nobody is willing to pick up that tab.

More importantly, there is no evidence that minerals in the Ring of Fire mostly chromite, which is used to make stainless steel, but also nickel, copper, palladium and platinum are worth anything near $60-billion. In fact, there may not be much of anything worth mining, for that matter, beyond one moderately promising nickel project.

No comprehensive study has ever been done that analyzes the costs of extracting minerals from the Ring of Fire and, ultimately, whether there is an investment case to do so. Despite years of boosterism from politicians and regional business leaders, industry experts say its highly unlikely it will ever live up to even a fraction of the hype.

Global demand for new sources of chromite, experts say, ranks between low and non-existent. And the company that holds more than three-quarters of the mining concessions in the Ring of Fire, tiny Noront Resources Ltd., has raised concerns about its ability to continue as a going concern.

CHROMITE WORLD MINE PRODUCTION AND RESERVES

RESERVES (SHIPPING GRADE)

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:BARCHART;

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

WORLD MINE PRODUCTION AND RESERVES

RESERVES (SHIPPING GRADE)

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:BARCHART;

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

CHROMITE WORLD MINE PRODUCTION AND RESERVES

RESERVES (SHIPPING GRADE)

THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE:BARCHART; U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

Patrick Ryan, a mining consultant with Mining For Facts, who has followed the chromite market for four decades, says the world is awash in the commodity, with no need for any new product from the Ring of Fire, or anywhere else.

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Its incomprehensible that this was ever a viable project, says Mr. Ryan. No one in their right mind would put a dime into it.

This past summer, it became clear that neither Premier Ford, nor anyone else, will be jumping on any bulldozers any time soon. In August, the Ontario government announced that a five-year effort to reach a framework agreement with a large group of First Nations on the sharing of economic benefits and the construction of a road to the Ring of Fire had failed. The province will instead try to reach accords on a piecemeal basis with nine individual First Nations, a process that will likely bog down the project for years to come.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeaus government hasnt shown much enthusiasm for investing in the Ring of Fire, either.

But at Queens Park, Mr. Fords government insist that all systems are still go. Even more committed to the cause is teetering Noront, with CEO Alan Coutts vowing in an interview with The Globe and Mail that 100 years of prosperity lie ahead for Ontarians.

The key to unlocking everything is a gravel road that is about 300 kilometres long, he says.

Alan Coutts, CEO of Noront Resources, seen here on Oct. 24, 2019, vows that '100 years of prosperity' lie ahead for Ontarians.

Christopher Katsarov

Its hard to think of a more hostile place in the country to operate a mine than the dense boreal forest and vast swampland around the James Bay Lowlands in Ontarios Far North. There are no access roads to the Ring of Fire and no power, and the tiny First Nations communities in the vicinity rely on airstrips for access to the outside world.

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Due to the extremely remote terrain, the area had been largely unexplored for much of its history. In the early 2000s, geologists looking for diamonds accidentally stumbled upon a kind of rock that typically houses base metals. In 2007, Noront discovered a rich nickel deposit, and the following year found what appeared to be a vast chromite deposit.

The company christened the region the Ring of Fire because it vaguely resembled a ring, and Noront employees had an affinity for the hit song of the same name by Johnny Cash. The discoveries prompted a kind of hysteria, as scores of prospectors engulfed the area. In 2009, about 100 junior mining companies had staked more than 8,000 claims. It was the biggest staking frenzy in Canada since the diamond rush of the early 1990s in the Northwest Territories.

Mohan Srivastava, a Toronto-based geostatistician, remembers the hype in the late-2000s as a kind of breathless excitement about how Ontario was destined to become a world hub for a rare and strategically important commodity."

In 2009, a large U.S. mining company took a big swing. Cleveland-based Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. (now Cleveland Cliffs Inc.) outmanoeuvred Noront and paid $350-million to win a takeover battle for a junior producer with the three most promising chromite finds in the region.

Over the next few years, Cliffs invested a further $200-million on the development, and vowed to spend about $3-billion to build a giant chromite mine and a smelter to process the ore. The company planned to use the chromite in its core stainless steel business. But it was soon under pressure from all sides: escalating costs, falling commodity prices, a failure to score a cheap electricity deal and the inability to get environmental permits amid opposition from First Nations.

Cliffs had also hoped both the Ontario government and the federal government would participate in a public-private partnership to help fund the more than $2-billion needed to build the critical road link and infrastructure, but the funds never materialized.

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Five years in, Cliffs threw up its hands, and sold its Ring of Fire assets at a 95-per-cent discount to Noront in 2014. Cliffs CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, told The Globe and Mail he had no hope the Ring of Fire would be developed in the next 50 years, calling it beyond the point of no return.

Around the time Cliffs was giving up, the Ring of Fire got an unexpected boost from an unlikely source: James Franklin, a respected geologist. The former chief scientist for the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) mused that the Ring of Fire could contain $60-billion worth of minerals. He mentioned the figure in a talk at the 2013 Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention, a popular international mining conference held every year in Toronto.

Geologist Jim Franklin, seen here on Oct. 25, 2019, mused that the Ring of Fire could contain $60-billion worth of minerals.

Justin Tang

Mr. Franklin said he came up with this astronomical number by looking at all the public companies that had published resource estimates of their Ring of Fire discoveries. He simply added up the total projections for minerals in the ground from these reports, and calculated the value if the metals were sold at market prices.

But Mr. Franklin also readily admits the figure contained no analysis of costs or potential return, and no insight on whether any project should be developed.

"There might well be $60-billion worth of metal sitting in the ground, but it might cost you $80-billion to get it out, he said.

Even the most promotional of mining companies wouldnt dare print such a figure in a regulatory document, because it would be misleading to investors.

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If any company did the same kind of thing, they would have gotten slapped down by regulators," said Mr. Srivastava.

In the mining industry, geologists categorize deposits based on how sure they are that the metals found underground can be mined economically. Proven and probable is the highest bar, meaning metal that can be mined for a profit.

The vast majority of mines around the world are built off of a proven and probable resource. One notch below proven and probable is measured and indicated, a far less certain category in which economics have not been proved. Inferred is the lowest tier, essentially an educated guess.

No one sober would build a mine off an inferred resource, said Mr. Srivastava.

Mr. Franklin says about 70 per cent of his Ring of Fire estimate came from the inferred category, with the rest coming from measured and indicated. Now, he has second thoughts about including any of the inferred in his calculation.

I [did something] that youre not supposed to, he said.

Despite its shaky foundation, that $60-billion figure had a big impact on the public imagination. The number has been cited in scores of news articles and other media (including The Globe and Mail), rarely explaining how it was calculated or attributing its source.

The Ontario Chamber of Commerce in 2014 released studies predicting Ring of Fire would create 5,000 new jobs and a $9-billion boost to GDP, and said over its first 32 years of its development, it would generate more than $25-billion in economic activity across numerous sectors in Ontario.

Mr. Franklin says he has tried to stop the rampant use of the $60-billion figure, and raised concerns with a senior official in Ontarios Ministry of Northern Development, Mines and Forestry.

I contacted [them and said], You guys should do your own evaluation of this. You should not be using some number that I came up with at PDAC because we all know the unreliability of my number,' Mr. Franklin said. Its just not proper.

The $60-billion number does appear to have been dropped from most Ontario government statements in the past year or two, but officials havent pulled back their estimates or added context.

Mr. Franklin says if he could do his PDAC talk over again, he would have made it much clearer what the potential downsides and risks are of trying to develop the Ring of Fire. As someone who has worked as a consultant for Noront, and been to its mining camp, he has no illusions about the harsh realities of operating there.

Its an area thats just terrible to work in because its the worlds largest swamp, he said.

When youre [working on the ground] youre just gradually sinking into the swamp. Its hard to know where the lake stops and the land begins, Mr. Franklin said. Its about the worst place you can think of to try to work.

Noronts CEO, Mr. Coutts, isnt interested in talking about any potential downsides. Hes adamant the company will eventually have three mines in production, build a smelter in Sault Ste. Marie and employ hundreds of people -- all told, an investment of several billion dollars.

The reality is Noront doesnt have the money to do any of this. In fact, the company is in dire financial shape. It has US$47.8-million in debt, but is holding only US$4.1-million in cash. A US$32.8-million loan from Franco Nevada Corp. is coming due in April of next year. While Noront has held talks with Franco about an extension, in August it warned investors there is no assurance it will be able to repay or refinance the loan.

They need huge amounts of money, and they cant attract any money," said Mr. Ryan.

Theyre walking around talking about this stuff as if its real. I mean, its a penny stock. Why does anyone take them seriously?"

Heres another harsh reality Noront must face: Even if an access road into the Ring of Fire appeared tomorrow, it isnt in a position to move forward on any of its projects, because it hasnt proved they are viable. In its marketing materials, Noront flaunts a feasibility study conducted in 2012 on a nickel-copper-palladium project called Eagles Nest, which Mr. Coutts says will be its first mine.

Yet in the same breath, Mr. Coutts acknowledges that feasibility study is no longer valid. A lot has changed since 2012, including copper and nickel prices. The company assumed materially higher prices for both.

Mr. Coutts is optimistic that Eagles Nest could still be profitable, especially in light of significantly higher palladium prices, used in the manufacture of catalytic converters for autos. But the company has to conduct a new study to prove the investment case.

As for the much-hyped chromite deposits, while Cliffs once planned to build a massive chromite mine, called Black Thor, Noront has drastically scaled back its ambitions. Instead, it hopes to eventually develop a much smaller one, called Blackbird, and then possibly Black Thor. But the timeline for all of this is uncertain, and Noront has no proof that any of it is feasible.

Lost in all the hullabaloo is the harsh reality that there doesnt appear to be a broader economic case for building a chromite mine in the region, or any other place in the world, for that matter.

According to a May report by the U.S. Geological Survey, there are already enough proven chromite reserves in the world to last for centuries. South Africa and Kazakhstan dominate the production side of the market, and they provide China, which controls much of the worlds stainless steel market, a steady supply of cheap raw ore.

Mr. Coutts says the companys plan is to sell ferrochrome -- smelted chromite ore -- to the much smaller U.S. market. But even he admits that breaking into that market will be tough for an untested and unknown producer.

Youve got to establish yourself in the chrome world. You got to understand it. You got to prove yourself as a consistent high-quality producer, he said.

"[The Americans] are getting product right now from other suppliers that theyve taken for 20 or 30 years. Theyre comfortable with that. So theyre going to all of a sudden turn around, and the South African product that theyve been getting for the last 20 years from a consistent supplier, and go, Oh yeah, Ill buy it from Noront, who Ive never heard of, up in the Ring of Fire.

Another point of contention is whether building the much-vaunted road into the Ring of Fire would even suffice. Mr. Franklin says that trucks carrying heavy chromite would quickly wreck a gravel road. Only a railroad could support the weight, but a railroad would likely cost orders of magnitude more.

The all-season road will work just fine for nickel and base metals but it will not work for chromite, said Mr. Franklin. You just wouldnt do it by truck.

Mr. Coutts dismisses this as nonsense, and says that the road can easily handle the transportation of the chromite.

Doug Fords point man on the Ring of Fire is Greg Rickford. The Kenora-Rainy River MPP is Ontarios Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines. Hes also Minister of Indigenous Affairs. By all accounts, he should know the project well. He succeeded Mr. Clement as the minister who oversaw economic development in northern Ontario in Stephen Harpers government, and then served as Minister of Natural Resources.

While out of office from 2015 to 2018, Mr. Rickford served on Noronts board. (He says he has since sold his shares in the company.) He has also worked as a nurse and lawyer in the remote First Nations communities near the Ring of Fire, something he says gives him a window on the regions need for hope and jobs.

Mr. Rickford acknowledges the wild claims over the past decade including the promise of tens of billions of dollars in riches have raised expectations to dizzying heights.

View original post here:

The road to nowhere: Claims Ontario's Ring of Fire is worth $60-billion are nonsense - The Globe and Mail

The year 2019 is shaping up as a tipping point for action to address the challenges surrounding global sustainability and waste management. This positive development comes as discussion among governments, researchers, not-for-profits and corporates is shifting towards a can do attitude to reducing waste and changing attitudes, behaviours and practices.

This article was published in Recycling Technology / Reading time: 5 min.

A new groundswell isunderway across the globe as corporates, communities and societies are movingfrom the linear economic approach of make, use, dispose to a circular economywhere the aspiration is to keep materials out of landfill and incinerators, andin use for as long as possible.

Realisation of the need to close the economic loop so that used materials and waste streams are treated as the renewable resources they truly are is dawning on decision-makers the world over. This coincides with increased scientific focus on, and business innovation around, viewing waste as a commodity to better manage long-term social, environmental and economic impacts.

For instance, new technology and capability derived from the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology (SMaRT) at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, Australia, can produce building panels from old clothing and textiles, as well as plastics, waste timber and glass.

This Microfactory technology can transform waste glass into engineered flat ceramic products, which have been used to make stools and table-tops, as well as for decorative purposes. They are now also being tested for flooring and walling applications.

It can also transformelectronic waste such as phones, laptops and printers into high-quality plasticfilaments for 3D printing, and to extract and reform metal alloys from printedcircuit boards, eliminating the need for conventional smelting technologies.

These scientificallydeveloped microrecycling processes can provide game-changing solutions toproduce materials from waste on a small scale, and demonstrate that a period ofdisruption is underway.

A key challenge is to harness the commercial appetite and opportunity to create value from the materials that end up in landfill to ensure societies divert at scale the waste that can be reformed into new, valued-added materials, products and manufacturing feedstock.

This involves actively working with companies and organisations seeking to enshrine circular economy principles in their operations so they can know who are the other participants in these new supply chains, understand where and how they fit in, and what the opportunities are.

The main difficulty is there are so many stakeholdersacross all the supply chains that there is no effective connectivity processfor circular economy participants. For example, an organisation with a wasteproblem might be able to send these materials to another company which is ableto use them in its operations, but there is no awareness of this win-winsolution within local economies.

Another challenge is the need to encourage designers andproducers of products, packaging and applicable services to build in from thevery beginning of the product lifecycle a consideration for how all of thematerials used will become part of the circular economy when an end-user has nofurther need for the product and treats it as waste.

Chinas National Sword policy banning other countries from sending their waste to that country is being replicated across Asia, and the silver lining in this development has been to cause an acceleration of positive reform around waste and recycling policy among many national, state and local governments.

In Australia, thenational government re-elected in May 2019 announced the countrys first-everministerial role for waste reduction, to be connected to its foreshadowedWaste Recycling Investment Plan. Each of the state governments in Australia nowalso has circular economy policies and statements, and is working hard tochange the value chain around waste.

Another positivedevelopment has been the establishment of dedicated initiatives to createnetworks and hubs that bring together the various stakeholders across supplychains so as to work together to find the opportunities necessary to makechanges that not only reduce waste but also ensure it can be valued and used asa renewable resource through circular solutions.

In the state of New South Wales (NSW), for example, weare working hard to close the loop wherever possible on materials in localeconomies by building awareness and new connections to create value-addedproducts through materials reuse or transformation, particularly for materialswhich can be directed into high-quality manufacturing solutions.

I was honoured to be appointed in March this year as theDirector of the new government-funded NSW Circular Economy Innovation Network, whichhas been tasked with helping drive this change across Australias largest state.

At an international level, there has been growingmomentum in this space. This type of work is perhaps best known through UNEnvironment, the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, withinitiatives such as the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy. However,small-scale actions and solutions through market-based networks like ours arerequired to meet the needs of local businesses that make up the majority ofeconomies.

In March 2019, the European Commission adopted acomprehensive report on the implementation of the Circular Economy Action Plan,which presents its main achievements so far and sketches out future challengesto developing circular economies to reduce pressure on natural and freshwaterresources, as well as ecosystems.

To demonstrate the growing importance of circular economyprinciples, a new Technical Committee under the International Organization forStandardization was announced in July 2019 with the objective to help make theglobal circular economy a reality by steering local projects towards asustainable, agreed global standard.

Known as ISO/TC 323 Circular Economy, this TechnicalCommittee will develop requirements, frameworks, guidance and support tools,with the aim of ensuring implementation of UN Sustainable Development Goals.The Committee comprises experts from over 65 countries, with Australia sittingas an observer member.

So while there is growing concern around the need forgreater sustainability, I actually see 2019 as a tipping point year when themomentum of change is starting to crystallise the concept of a circulareconomy. This is a period of disruption we must have.

The bottom line is a circular economy creates local jobs,enhances the economy, and improves social and environmental wellbeing. The paceof change must accelerate into the next decade so we can live more sustainablyand harmoniously on our planet.

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New technologies and how to build a circular economy - Recycling International