A Partner in Prosperity Building

Ontario Mining: A Partner in Prosperity Building is an economic study on the output, employment, fiscal and tax contributions of a representative mine in Ontario.  It demonstrates how 480 direct mine jobs lead to 2,280 employment positions and how the output of a single mine contributes $278 million to Ontario's economy and $84 million to government revenues annually.

Mining in Ontario is a modern, high-tech, environmentally and socially responsible industry.   Mining is one of the most productive industries in the province.  In Ontario, each employee produces more than $500,000 worth of mineral products annually.  The economic contribution of mining is enormous.  Yet, partially due to its high productivity, the industry is not the direct employer of a large number of people. 

The economic benefits of mining that most people see are really only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  What the Ontario Mining Association wanted to discover by this study was a fuller accounting of the economic contributions of the industry through its indirect benefits and the activity generated from where the industry's highly productive and highly paid employees spend their incomes.  We needed a better understanding of the true economic impacts of mining.  Ontario Mining: A Partner in Prosperity Building helps us learn more about the nine-tenths of the iceberg of mining's economic benefits you can't see from the surface.  The OMA wanted to see a fuller view of a mine's economic impact both during its construction phase and its production phase.

The main principals involved in producing this report were Peter Dungan and Steve Murphy, economists at the University of Toronto.  Both have done extensive work on the natural resources sector and Mr. Dungan wrote the book Rock Solid, which studies the impact of the mining and primary metals industries on the Canadian economy.   The OMA provided support and information through its 2006 report Ontario Mining: A High-Tech Productivity Powerhouse.  Also, the Input-Output Division of Statistics Canada was involved in many of the calculations for this report.

Municipal politicians are perhaps the people who should be interested in the findings of this study the most.  Mines are community builders.  They are partners in prosperity building.  As this study demonstrates mining is an activity which has, in the economic sense, less "leakage" than other sectors.  A large percentage of the benefits of the economic development of a mine stay local.  While in production, the 2,300 jobs created by a "representative" mine stay local.  More than 1,500, or 66%, of those jobs remain close to the minesite.  Local labour compensation would be $115 million and local-area GDP gains would be $220 million.   While in its construction phase, 65%, or 1,300, of the 2,000 jobs created are local and $66 million is added to the local payroll and $90 million to the local GDP. 

To learn more about its economic contribution to the society and economy of Ontario click here to download this report.