Mining in Canada: Hitting paydirt

The world we know today could not exist without the contributions made by Canadian mining. Canada's manufacturing and high-technology industries subsist on mineral products. Minerals fertilize the soil that grows our food crops. Products shipped across the country are hauled in trucks, railway cars and planes made of steel and fuelled by gasoline. Our homes, apartments and office buildings are built almost entirely of mined products, such as cement, stone, sand and gravel and use metal pipes, electric cables and thousands of hardware items that depend on minerals for their manufacture. Nearly everything we use was at one time extracted from the earth.

In 2002, Canada's fuel and non-fuel miners generated $2,500 for every person in the country. The total value of this output in 2002 was $77 billion (in current dollars), down from $83 billion in 2001. Of this, $18 billion came from metals and industrial minerals, and $59 billion from mineral fuels. Most of the decline can be attributed to a drop in the value of mineral fuel production from 2001 when it was valued at $65 billion, representing a decline of 9.3%.

Canada is one of the world’s largest exporters of minerals and mineral products. In 2002, minerals and mineral products provided 12% of Canada’s total exports and contributed to the Canadian trade surplus. Alberta, Ontario, Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Quebec dominate the industry, collectively accounting for 90% of all mineral production. Only Prince Edward Island lacks any significant mining or oil drilling activities.

Though prices were declining for virtually all mineral commodities at the end of the 1990s, the value of the industry on a regional and community basis in many parts of Canada cannot be overstated. The minerals industry in 2002 represented 24% of the Northwest Territories’ and Nunavut’s GDP, 17% of Alberta’s and 14% of Saskatchewan’s. The minerals industry is now a major component of Newfoundland and Labrador’s economy with the industry accounting for 18% of Newfoundland and Labrador’s GDP in 2002, up from 5% in 1997. This increase is the result of two major offshore oilfields being brought into production—Hibernia in the fall of 1997 and Terra Nova in the winter of 2002/03.