Getting Burned by the Ring of Fire

I enjoyed this Globe & Mail article that justifies Ontario's hypothetical secession from Canada on economic grounds. I've talked before about some of the other problems with federalism in this country, so I was very receptive to the article. However, there was one argument mentioned towards the end of the article that irked me:

"prosperity will prove elusive, unless $12-billion that flows out of Ontario annually is used at home ... to supply the needed roads, energy and Internet without which Northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire, touted as the most promising Canadian mining development in a century, will never reach its full potential."

This gif was not part of the G&M article, I just thought it was awesome and marginally connected to the subject of this post enough that I could justify throwing it in here.

I dislike this notion that government should be striving to develop asap the "Ring of Fire" because:

1. If it such a lucrative opportunity, then private companies can make it happen.
2. Environmentally, there is no rush to dig more open-pit mines in Northern Ontario.
3. Those minerals aren't going anywhere. It's not like China is going to tunnel through the Earth to get them before Northern Ontario can cash in. The Ring of Fire is not a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, nor does it have an expiration date.
4. Minerals are probably going to be worth more in the future.
5. Mining in the Ring of Fire has "political headache" written all over it. It's on First Nations land and the government-Aboriginal relationship is kind of a mess right now, in case you haven't noticed. There are already barricades being up put up native bands to block planes from landing on frozen lakes in the Ring of Fire. There's no urgency to get involved in that mess.
6. The aspirations people have for the Ring of Fire are conjecture anyway because it's just at the exploration stage right now. Why should the province feel compelled to invest in the hopes of a speculative benefit?
7. Waiting might allow more environmentally-friendly technologies for extracting minerals to be developed.

Open Pit Mine near Timmins, ON

The get-resources-now attitude in that article reminds of a quotation from the CEO of a mega-corporation in a computer game:

Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.
-Chairman Mwabudike Morgan, "The Ethics of Greed"

For those not familiar with the classic 1999 computer game Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, it's basically Civilization with future technology on a distant planet because Earth got so messed up that humanity had to start again somewhere else. The game has seven factions that represent different value systems like the environmentalist faction, the collectivist faction, the militaristic faction, etc. Chariman Morgan is the leader of the capitalists' faction, and Morgan himself is a "self-made mogul and diamond tycoon." The faction as a whole is an "industrial conglomerate" that excels in production, especially when there is nothing to "hinder the just and free flow of capital."

So, what I'm saying is that those who want to use government subsidies and/or loose regulations to accelerate the extraction of minerals from the Ring of Fire share their worldview with a caricatured version of corporate avarice. I rest my case.