84 Page 82 Sudbury Br anch 9 0 Red Deer Lake Road North W ahnapit ae Ont ario P0M 3C0 T 7 0 56 9 459 59 yond the point of no return Nov 20 2014 The article quoted Goncalves as saying that the Ring of Fire proj ect is dead in spite of renewed gov ernment pledges to move ahead The calves made headlines in December with his declaration that he had zero hope that the Ring of Fire would be developed in his lifetime Anyone involved with mining devel opment knows it takes a long time to bring a mine into production from the potential of the exploration phase Why the extreme pessimism Sounds like bad policy to pursue coming from the President and CEO of a company that wants to divest itself of its hold ings in the Ring of Fire It looks like Goncalves is denigrating the po tential of the Ring of Fire to justify the shareholder revolt at Clif fs But consider this that there were mining people more skilled than Goncalves at in the potential for mining in the Ring of Fire So much so that they outbid and outmaneuvered competitors to acquire Black Thor from Spider Re sources The Ontario government has made slow progress generating smoke and heat by creating the Ring of Fire Secretariat and an interim Develop ment Corporation The Matawa T r ibal Council signed a framework agree ment with the Province of Ontario in the spring of 2014 about how consul tations are to proceed with the 9 First Nations Exploration permits are still being issued and by September 20l4 the Matawa Council expressed con cern that the spirit of the framework agreement was not being followed by the province in issuing those permits The province has promised to spend 1 billion on developing the infra structure that will make the mining potential viable lt announced the cre ation of a Development Corporation to coordinate the participation of min ing companies First Nations and has invited the federal government to join in The federal government through Greg Rickford the minister respon sible for the Ring of Fire has twice but when his counterpart Michael Gravelle asks the federal government to match the 1 billion dollar Ontario is committed to spending Rickwood directs the province to apply to an ex isting federal infrastructure program Contd from pg 80 Contd on pg 83