From Conflict to Partnership

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Winter 2012:
Once upon a time, actually not long ago, conflict and confrontation were rife in Aboriginal communities’ relations with mining and forestry companies. Now, ‘partnership’ and ‘consultation’ and ‘respect’ are keywords.

Half of Cameco’s northern Saskatchewan workforce is Aboriginal, and the uranium company’s list of contractors includes many native-owned firms.

In the Northwest Territories, Diavik Diamond Mine’s operators have developed a productive alliance with Aboriginal communities.

In northwestern Ontario, Pikangikum First Nation has taken bold steps to “be in the driver’s seat” when it comes to responsible development of a big patch of precious boreal forest.

These are ‘good news’ stories for the communities involved, as they represent opportunity and potential prosperity in places where unemployment and poverty run high. But are they isolated instances or part of a trend? Do they bode a future of greater inclusion for Aboriginal peoples in Canada’s resource sectors?

Melanie Sturk is one observer who believes we’re seeing great changes, though she cautions against over-generalizing.

“I think definitely things are getting better in terms of community and company relationships,” Sturk says from the Ottawa offices of the Mining Industry Human Resources (MiHR) Council, where she is Director of Attraction, Retention and Transition. “That being said, each situation is different and some companies and some communities are more receptive to each other than others. However, I think overall the industry and the communities are much more interested in working together.”

One element of that trend is the increasing Aboriginal presence in the workforce – and MiHR is helping to nurture this happy development with Mining Essentials, a partnership program with the Assembly of First Nations that was developed with the Metis National Council and other important organizations. Mining Essentials prepares Aboriginal Canadians for employment with a combination of classroom sessions and practical experience. The pilot stage of the Canada-wide program concluded in February 2011, and it was a great success.

“I think this is a really good example of how industry and Aboriginal peoples can come together and create something that is more effective,” she continues. “One of the very important pieces of qualification (for a training site in the program) is that there’s a three-way partnership happening with a qualified educator, at least one company and the community all on board.”

Another part of the steadily improving relationship between mining and Canada’s indigenous peoples is the increasing occurrence of impact and benefit agreements, or IBAs. Reached between mining companies and First Nation communities, IBAs formalize relations, reduce environmental and other impacts, and secure economic benefits for affected communities. They are simultaneously a means for business to improve interaction with Aboriginal people on the one hand, and a powerful expression of Aboriginal rights on the other. On balance, they can rightly be seen as hopeful signs.

In forestry, a northern BC logging company called Coast Tsimshian Resources serves as something of a model or template for First Nations aspiring to take control of their destinies. Owned by Lax Kw’alaams First Nation, the company holds two forest tenures and is allowed to cut more than 500,000 cubic metres annually. It has been exporting wood to China since 2009, and has sent dividend cheques to band members.

Four provinces to the east, the struggling Pikangikum First Nation has established the Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation in pursuit of the same sort of success Lax Kw’alaams has found with Coast Tsimshian.

BEACON OF HOPE

Aaron Palmer, Planning Forester at Whitefeather, says the corporation’s focus at this point is forest management planning. “The intent of the Whitefeather Forest Management Corporation is economic development, and the part that we’re working on now is getting a woodlands operation up and running. There is work being done to look at building a mill facility in the Whitefeather Forest that would receive wood harvested within the management unit.

“Pikangikum First Nation is looking at building a forest products processing business which will produce products with the highest value end use of the wood fibre,” he continues from his office in Red Lake. “The strategy is to use a ‘value chain optimization’ approach for developing highest-value uses from the quality timber available on the Whitefeather Forest.

“Really what it comes down to is the elders of Pikangikum had a vision for their ancestral lands, to be in the driver’s seat for what happens and also to provide jobs for people. Given that the Whitefeather forest has such value, they wanted to ensure the optimum use of the resource.”

The main partnership in this case is between Pikangikum/Whitefeather and the provincial Ministry of Natural Resources, though the Aboriginal community is open to the possibility of partners in the private sector.

Palmer enthuses that Whitefeather is “a massive beacon of hope” for Pikangikum, a community with greater than 90% unemployment. Aboriginal communities frequently came out on the losing end as companies based in faraway big cities cut down trees and created mines in pursuit of profit, with arguably not enough regard for the impact on native land, water, heritage and livelihood.

Industry’s relationships with First Nations and Metis people have been riddled with conflict, perhaps most dramatically demonstrated by blockades that have periodically sprung up across the country. One of the longest-running blockades is near Kenora in Ontario’s northwest, where Grassy Narrows denizens first blocked logging trucks back in December 2002. The dispute still roils on, with the Aboriginal side heralding a court victory last summer when an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled that the province had infringed on treaty rights.

Further north in Ontario, Marten Falls First Nation has imposed (and ceased) blockades on ice landing strips and mineral exploration in the chromite-rich Ring of Fire. Matawa First Nations’ Ring of Fire Co-ordinator, Raymond Ferris, seemed to succeed in finding détente between member First Nations and exploration companies, but then Matawa chiefs announced in October their withdrawal of support for Ring of Fire development.

On a more encouraging note, four First Nations signed an agreement in August to develop a service corridor for Ring of Fire activities. “We want to work with the government, the industry and all other people that may be involved in that process (of Ring of Fire development),” Webequie Chief cornelius Wabasse told Thunder Bay’s Chronicle-Journal. “We want to be fully involved in the development.”

The relationship between Aboriginal peoples and industry is still imperfect and, indeed, far from ideal. But most observers would agree that it is better, and the mining and forestry sectors are making efforts to improve them still further.

Gary Merasty, a Cameco Corp. Vice- President and former Grand Chief of the Prince Albert Grand Council, says the uranium company has made great progress in bridging differences and strengthening ties with First Nations in northern Saskatchewan.

The proportion of Cameco’s Saskatchewan mines workforce that is First Nations, Metis or northerners has more than doubled to about 50%, Merasty notes from the company’s headquarters in Saskatoon. “We are at this time Canada’s largest industrial employer of Aboriginal people.”

And the progress isn’t limited to people drawing wages from Cameco, he notes. “We have a very proactive northern preferred supplier program. Upwards of 70% of all the services that we require at our mine sites are procured or purchased from northern-owned businesses or companies. We insist that these companies are 50% or more Aboriginal-owned and have Aboriginal management in place, and also that they follow our aggressive employment targets.”

Merasty, who once represented northern Saskatchewan in Parliament, says Cameco tries hard “to really understand the context or situation the northern communities or the First Nations and Metis find themselves in. So we’ve spent a lot of time in community meetings being available, responding to each and every request within a timely manner. We work closely with them in designing initiatives on community investment, on these business investments, on the employment, education and training investments.

“I think over the last 20 years, the company and the men and women within Cameco have really developed a trusting relationship within the communities,” he summarizes. “The community leaders know who the president of our company is, know who the vice-presidents are. Employees are the greatest advocates we have in the communities. They talk about working with Cameco and for Cameco, and they get involved in community events as volunteers. So a lot of social capital has been built up over the years.”

Cameco has won awards and industry recognition for its approach, and so has Diavik Diamond Mine for its own success in bridging differences and building relationships with Aboriginal communities in the Northwest Territories.

Like Cameco, Diavik has been a trailblazer and trend setter in IBAs – though the gem-mining partnership (60% Rio Tinto, 40% Harry Winston Diamond Corporation) calls them “participation agreements.”

“We use the term ‘participation’ because we view our relationship with any Aboriginal group as a partnership,” says Yellowknife-based Diavik spokesperson Doug ashbury. There are five Aboriginal groups in the area of Diavik’s mining operations, and Diavik has a participation agreement with each one of them, he adds.

Diavik further contributes to community economic development with apprenticeships and training, buying from Aboriginal contractors, and an Aboriginal Leadership Development Program. Some 1,100 people are employed either directly by Diavik or through contractors, and 30% of those people are Aboriginal. At the time of writing, the company had more than two dozen apprentices, most of them Aboriginal.

Two Aboriginal business success stories that Diavik’s community-mindedness helped bring to fruition are Bouwa Whee Catering and Tli Cho Logistics. Bouwa Whee (“I’m hungry” in Weledeh) is a 100% Deneowned firm that has expanded beyond food services to supply other mining-camp support. Tli Cho provides site services that include airstrip maintenance, snow clearing and handling of aircraft on the ground; it employs more than 250 people. Ashbury says Diavik has, over the past decade, spent $2 billion with northern Aboriginal businesses and their joint ventures.

NORTHERN PROGRESS

Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines Executive Director Tom Hoefer says mining companies and the federal and territorial governments have done an outstanding job lately forging partnerships in a part of Canada that, when diamond mines were first being constructed, was notable for having no settled land claims. In 20 years, he notes, NWT miners have gone “from virtually no Aboriginal employees to one of the country’s leaders in Aboriginal employment.”

In 1995, Hoefer says, you could have counted the number of Aboriginal businesses at the diamond mines “on, like, two fingers. Now there’s about 25 of them. "So that’s the positive side,” he continues from Yellowknife. “Where the negative side comes in is generally where a claim is not settled.”

Land claims disputes often engender court challenges and uncertainty. Hoefer says one result is that, predictably, potential investors can be “a bit gun-shy about what could happen to their projects.” That’s particularly true of exploration companies lacking the deep pockets of a Rio Tinto-size corporation.

Still, Hoefer (a former Diavik employee) sees reasons for optimism. One positive omen, he says, is a memorandum of understanding the Chamber signed this past July with Akaitcho Dene First Nations to promote “responsible mineral exploration and development.”

“It’s also encouraging that we have the federal government working on a regulatory improvement initiative, because the regulation we have up here has become very complex,” he adds. The process started in October with a workshop in Yellowknife bringing stakeholders together.

Cameco’s Merasty says the uranium miner is in northern Saskatchewan “for the long term … And so we work at continuing to build our relationships.” Community agreements will be improved, good will is being strengthened, and communities are set to prosper along with Cameco, he declares.

At Whitefeather head office, Palmer notes that other First Nations are also taking the reins in forest management and setting up robust forestry-related businesses. He hopes Pikangikum, drawing from other First Nations’ inspirational work, “can lead the way and provide more inspiration for other First Nations.”

Few would disagree that there’s a solid business case for companies building bonds and alliances with Aboriginal communities. There’s much to be learned from the experiences of Cameco, Diavik and other firms that have strived for harmonious relations with the land’s original peoples. A key lesson is simply this: Doing the right thing and doing the smart thing can be one and the same.

Fools rule politics of climate change

Published 10 December 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change
By William Marsden
Knopf Canada, 325 pages, $30

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

One conclusion to be drawn from Montreal journalist William Marsden's new book is that this year's federal election was another setback in the fight against global warming.

The May 2 vote's outcome was a majority in Parliament for a Conservative party that is rife with "climate change deniers" and beholden to oil companies.

Fools Rule is a well-researched, highly readable followup to Marsden's 2007 book about Alberta's oil sector, Stupid to the Last Drop.

He makes clear in Fools Rule's first chapters that the change from Liberal to Conservative government in 2006 altered Canada's role in climate talks for the worse.

As Canada's Liberal environment minister in 2005, Stephane Dion went the extra mile to get a diplomatic breakthrough in Montreal that brought the United States back to negotiations.

The present government, by contrast, has allied itself with countries that stonewall on proposals for curbing emissions of the "greenhouse gases" that are driving temperatures upward.

Now that the Conservatives have a majority, we can expect a still more negative approach.

This book gives plenty of colour on climate change diplomacy and how it has gone off the rails and been almost completely unproductive with each international summit.

Marsden describes climate-change talks as a "clumsy tango" of dance partners working at odds with each other.

Many countries have been sincerely striving for global reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but powerful countries have thwarted those efforts.

Canada was among the countries trying to keep the 2009 Copenhagen summit from reaching an effective pact.

Those countries largely succeeded, and the next year's conference in Cancun, Mexico, was a shambles as well.

Canada's economic interests as a petroleum exporter have led it away from doing the right thing, says Marsden, and it's hard to disagree with that assessment.

One need only consider Ottawa's recent stumping for the Keystone XL pipeline to see how oil money trumps environment in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's cabinet.

Marsden makes an interesting point about how "social trap" theory applies here.

He sees the failure of climate-change talks as an expression of how people often will "pursue short-term gain" even when they know their actions will hurt everyone in the long term.

In Canada's case, the pursuit of oil profits is overcoming the long-term interest of ensuring a livable planet for future generations.

Another interesting observation is that those who are most ignorant about the science of climate change are among the most cocksure about being right. As Marsden pithily puts it, "stupidity breeds unbridled confidence."

He despairs that traditional diplomatic processes simply will not resolve this issue, and suggests the answer may lie in getting scientists, economists and other non-diplomats and non-politicians to produce a plan of action.

That seems unlikely, however. Which leaves the reader feeling a bit gloomier about the future.

He got Googled, and he liked it

Published 20 August 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:

I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59
By Douglas Edwards
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 416 pages, $32

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Doug Edwards took a big gamble in 1999 when he left an established newspaper for an Internet startup with a funny name.

Jumping from a California daily newspaper's marketing department to the fledgling Google entailed a $25,000 cut in salary.

But thanks to generous stock options, Edwards was a millionaire when he left Google less than six years later.

Good for him. Now, why should you be interested in his memoir?

Well, for starters, I'm Feeling Lucky offers the first book-length insider account of Google's formative years.

Judging by the book's depth of detail, Edwards clearly was paying close attention and taking plenty of notes as the little search-engine site grew to the Internet giant it is today.

He was in on Google's tense negotiations with AOL for a momentous advertising and search contract, and saw that partnership evaporate when AOL bought a rival search company.

He saw news hosting after the Sept. 11 terror attacks evolve into Google News.

He was around for the birth of Gmail, and he watched as the company's first attempt at a social network site flopped (it recently launched another attempt, dubbed Google+).

Edwards was Google's brand manager, meaning he was tasked with guiding and shaping its public image as it grew in popularity and breadth of services.

The job included being the company's master wordsmith, writing things to build on public perceptions of Google as smart, honourable and a bit whimsical.

So it's no surprise that this, his first book, is highly readable, brimming with clever analogies and metaphors, and chock-full of nimbly told anecdotes.

Many of the stories have to do with Google's founders, Stanford University alumni Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

The book portrays Page and Brin as brilliant, eccentric and riddled with contradictions.

They founded the company without a clear idea of how it would eventually make money, reckoning they would find a way to make the business profitable without compromising their ideals too much.

It seems the venture capitalists that bankrolled Google in its early years did so on faith that the founding geniuses would make the search engine work as a business.

Brin and Page often said it was important to be honest with Google's users, but at other times they adamantly refused to disclose how some things the company did might imperil privacy.

They expected long hours from employees and were ruthlessly stingy toward suppliers, yet the workplace included an on-site chef, massage services, a sauna and gym, a wide assortment of candy, air hockey and video games before there was even a hint of profit.

Partly in lieu of bigger salaries, Page and Brin offered employees stock options that made millionaires of many when the company went public on Wall Street in 2004.

Edwards doesn't disclose how much he pocketed from selling his shares, but there are clues that it was a rather substantial sum.

He does say that he borrowed money from his parents to purchase a large number of shares -- he was surprised at how many he was allowed to buy -- at 20 cents each shortly after joining the company.

Since the share price soared past $100 right after the initial public offering's launch in late August 2004, we can surmise that the lucky wordsmith made off with a staggering amount.

This book certainly is well-written, though it would be better without so many distracting footnotes.

Every few pages, there's another footnote or two to draw the reader away from the story at hand.

Often the footnote contains information that we could do without; other times, it should have been a brief parenthetical remark in the story.

Oh well. Like Google itself, this Google memoir strives to be thorough but falls a bit short of perfection.

Losses on Tap

Published in Bar & Beverage, Summer 2011:
Pour a little more, or give away free drinks: It’s an easy, though unethical and illegal, way for a bartender to win the favour of patrons and get bigger tips.

The practice of over-pouring costs bar owners buckets of money. It can be the difference between profit and loss for any fiscal year, so it’s a problem that has to be addressed.

Fortunately there are some good, reasonably priced solutions in the marketplace. Aids on offer include inventory software, portion-control spouts, meters on beer kegs, tap locks, and auditors who will keep track for you.

The good people of Atlanta-headquartered Alcohol Controls Inc. (ACI) can hook you up with nearly all of these options to reduce beer and liquor “shrinkage.”

“We try to have a little bit for everybody,” proclaims ACI president Mark Flaschner. “We do have quite a range.

“This is what we specialize in, and we’ve been doing this for 20 years now. We’re the longest-running and the largest provider of loss-prevention products that are geared towards the bar industry.”

He says there are “a lot of different ways you can go,” but seems to most strongly recommend the Eclipse system that is an upgrade of the popular Spirit system incorporating portion-control spouts and software that keeps track of how much is poured.

Eclipse tells the bar manager at the end of a shift how much was poured, which can be checked against what the bartender entered into the POS till.

Inventory loss is a “pretty serious” problem, Bevinco marketing manager Krista Dinsmore says from Toronto. “On average, bars are losing 20 per cent of potential sales, so you’re looking at thousands of dollars every week, depending on the size of a bar.”

Dinsmore says some inventory loss occurs due to bartenders unintentionally pouring too much into a shot or wine glass. Other times, it’s because of accidental spillage. Still other times, the loss is due to dishonest practices.

Flaschner agrees, but hastens to add that we shouldn’t get too dim a view of staff. “Think of it this way: When you’re driving down the highway, everybody’s going over the speed limit until they see a cop with a radar gun,” he says. “And the reason is that people will tend to push the edge of the envelope if they fear no repercussions. That’s just human nature.

“It doesn’t mean that there aren’t honest bartenders out there, but typically when bartenders know that their manager doesn’t know how much they’re pouring, they’re going to give away some free drinks. They’re going to over-pour some drinks to get more in tips. They’re also going to pour drinks and collect money and not ring up some drinks.”

He says it’s vitally important for management to keep a vigilant eye on inventory because “if the manager doesn’t know if the bartenders are stealing, then typically you’re going to have an operation where bartenders are cutting into the profits.”

While ACI (www.alcoholcontrols.com) offers gadgets and software, Bevinco has real live people come into establishments for inventory control. For a weekly fee, Bevinco will weigh and count all bottles (opened and unopened), calculate from that data how much was dispensed since the previous audit, and compare that to point-of-sale numbers.

All that data is uploaded into Bevinco’s software system to create a variance report which is submitted to the client establishment.

As part of the service, Bevinco (www.bevinco.com) also puts a sticker on every bottle it inventories to let bar staff know the situation is being monitored.

Bevinco’s auditing service reduces inventory loss by more than three-quarters to less than five per cent, according to Dinsmore.

Flaschner cautions that the battle against shrinkage “doesn’t have to be an us-versus-them type of scenario. I always tell managers, ‘Be nice to your bartenders. Just tell them what your expectations are and then hold them accountable to it.’

“You never have to be upset or mean with them. You just say, ‘Hey, Jimmy, I love you to death, but you poured $1,000 in liquor and you only rang up $700 in liquor sales today. That’s not acceptable. I don’t know what you’re doing, and it really doesn’t matter what you’re doing. I just want you to ring up sales properly. If you can’t do that, you can’t work here.’”

Your shrinkage-stopping options are varied, and include free-pour spouts such as the ones sold by Arizona-based BarVision, which actually transmit data on volume poured to a computer, which records the data in real time.

Whatever your choice, the important thing is that you tackle the problem.

As ACI’s Flaschner says: “The bottom line is, bars should use some type of controls. Whether they get it from us or someone else, they’re going to benefit hugely if they put in controls.”

Dramatic account of Madoff's fall highlight of tale

Published 14 May 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
The Wizard of Lies: Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust
By Diana B. Henriques
Times Books, 419 pages, $34.50

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Before beginning to tell the story of the largest Ponzi scheme ever, U.S. business journalist Diana Henriques furnishes her readers with a list of key "characters" -- 89 in all.

That is thoughtful of her, since it can be difficult to keep track of all the players in The Wizard of Lies, despite how well Henriques relates the tale.

The intriguing story of how Bernie Madoff fooled thousands of people into believing he was a wizard of Wall Street trading, and not just using new money to pay old investors, begins nearly 50 years ago in 1962.

That's when Madoff first used someone else's money to deceive investors, reports Henriques, a financial writer at the New York Times who has penned three previous books and been a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

The cover-up money came from father-in-law Saul Alpern, who was an accountant. Madoff had lost $30,000 on risky stocks but borrowed that amount from Alpern and put it into clients' accounts so that they wouldn't know about the loss.

The sleight-of-hand wasn't a Ponzi scheme, but it wasn't honest, either.

Madoff did it to, in Henriques's words, "burnish his reputation as a trading star."

He concealed information clients of his then two-year-old firm deserved to know -- that he had lost their money on a gamble he should not have taken.

Despite first-hand knowledge of his son-in-law's deceitfulness, Alpern referred and recruited many people to him for investment services.

After Alpern retired, his accounting firm's remaining partners continued its association with Madoff and eventually made investor recruitment for Madoff its sole focus.

Madoff's business grew tremendously through the 1970s and '80s, as more and more people became convinced he was an investment genius.

By the early '90s, Madoff's firm was a major force in the NASDAQ stock exchange that he had helped create and once chaired.

Somewhere along the way, his "investment advisory" service became a Ponzi scheme. Precisely when is unclear and may never be known.

Madoff says it happened during a money crunch in 1992, but Henriques suspects the transformation occurred shortly after the Black Monday market crash in October 1987.

She suggests in the epilogue that the transformation might not have been so abrupt as Madoff going crooked on a particular day.

Rather, she says, the Ponzi scheme may have been the climax of a gradual process that began in 1962 when Madoff learned he could get away with deceiving investors.

His criminal behaviour may have been, as she puts it, "a destination he reached after a decades-long journey along the edges of right and wrong."

At any rate, the stress of constantly having to reel in new money to cover redemptions became too much for him and he confessed his crimes to his sons, who were both employees at his firm, on Dec. 8, 2008.

His sons turned him in, he was arrested Dec. 11, and Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities was shut down.

Henriques's account of those dramatic days, meticulously reconstructed through interviews with virtually everyone involved, is one of the book's highlights.

She also does an excellent job explaining the process and controversies involved in trying to get compensation for Madoff's thousands of victims, who were out more than $20 billion in cash losses and still more in paper losses.

Madoff, 73, is serving a 150-year sentence at a medium-security prison in North Carolina.

He told Henriques this past Feb. 15, in the second of their two interviews at the prison, that he never really believed he was stealing.

What a character.

Insider trading a helluva tale, if uneven in spots

Published 7 May 2011 in the Winnipeg Free Press:
Tip and Trade: How Two Lawyers Made Millions from Insider Trading
By Mark Coakley
ECW Press, 381 pages, $20

Reviewed by Mike Stimpson

Two men meet in law school and forge a friendship based on shared politics.

Their friendship becomes a partnership in insider trading that nets several million dollars in illegal profits, until they're caught.

One man kills himself before charges are laid; the other is sent to prison.

It's a helluva story, and the author of this true-crime story has the advantage of having known both principals from his student days at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto.

But the storytelling is of uneven quality, occasionally larded with dull and unnecessary details.

Hamilton writer Mark Coakley recalls Stan Grmovsek and Gil Cornblum as practically inseparable buddies who penned provocative right-wing pieces for Osgoode Hall's student paper in the early '90s.

One of Grmovsek's columns was like a parody of right-wingers, arguing that the poor should be taxed more than the rich, though Grmovsek was serious.

Coakley liked the rightist pair, and they seemed to like and respect him despite Coakley's left-of-centre politics.

In 1994, about a year after finishing law school, Grmovsek convinced Cornblum that they should make extra money by trading stocks based on secrets Cornblum learned at work.

Cornblum would come to work early to hunt for information while no one was around to see him, then tip Grmovsek on mergers, takeovers and other transactions that his employer was facilitating.

The process continued for 14 years, minus a few years in which Cornblum did not tip Grmovsek.

By the spring of 2008, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Ontario Securities Commission were hot on the crooked pair's trail.

Grmovsek's E*Trade accounts were frozen in late April, and the law firm that employed Cornblum was told of suspicious trading in client companies' shares.

Fired, disgraced, and worried about going to prison, Cornblum committed suicide by jumping off a bridge shortly before he was to be formally charged in October 2009.

Grmovsek pleaded guilty to three charges and began a 39-month prison sentence last year at the maximum-security Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ont. The book concludes with him awaiting transfer to a minimum-security facility.

Coakley, who previously wrote a historical novel about Vikings, explains the twosome's crimes in a way that's easy for everyday folks to understand.

He also gives an engaging and interesting account of his own interactions with them, and the sometimes complicated friendship between Cornblum and Grmovsek (who, unbeknownst to his pal, took more than his half of the profits).

But we could do without Coakley going on about the history of York, the part of Toronto where Osgoode Hall is located, or the special place New York City's 57th Street (where Cornblum had an apartment for a couple of years) has in popular culture.

Coakley's decision to reprint long excerpts from court transcripts likewise provides too much information and legalese, some of it eye-glazing.

Some readers won't like the way Coakley repeatedly links Grmovsek and Cornblum's politics with the avarice that fuelled their crimes.

But the assertion seems fair when you consider that big-time white-collar crooks are rarely, if ever, leftists. It is reasonable to think greedy attitudes might produce greedy behaviour.

High-tech Exploration

Published in Mid-Canada Forestry & Mining, Spring 2011:
Drilling into rock and extracting a core sample is a bit pricey, so it’s good to know where you have a better-than-average chance of finding what you’re looking for. That’s where the brainy experts and high-tech equipment of geophysical surveying come in.

The experts include geophysicists who process data, aircraft pilots and equipment operators who collect the data, and engineers who develop the data-collection technology. Sometimes their work is followed up by the likes of Condor Consulting, a Colorado-based firm that processes and interprets data.

“We take it to the next step after data collection,” explains Condor President Ken Witherly, himself a geophysicist with decades of experience in the mining sector. “We do a kind of forensics, the sleuthing part of geophysical surveying.”

The equipment includes aircraft, navigation systems and data acquisition systems. The technology is often very impressive and mind-boggling to those not schooled in the sciences. Toronto-headquartered Terraquest Ltd. has, for example, a proprietary XDS VLF-EM (Very Low Frequency-Electromagnetic) system that maps electrical conductivity from above. It is, as company President Howard Barrie says, “a very advanced electromagnetic sensor.”

As a field of work, geophysical surveying is ever-changing and brimming with innovation and new ideas. Here’s a look at just some of its exciting developments of recent times.

FROM THE SKY

Exploration companies turn to geophysical survey firms such as Terraquest and Oracle Geoscience to collect data via high-tech devices suspended from airplanes and helicopters. The data may fall under the parameters of magnetics, electromagnetics, radiometrics and gravity.

Magnetics refers to the the measurement of magnetic response to detect, for example, possible kimberlite pipe which might contain diamonds. Electromagnetics involves the measurement of conductivity of what is below the surface. Radiometric data indicate radioactivity, which is useful information if you’re looking for uranium.

What about gravity? Isn’t that the same everywhere? Not exactly. There are fine – very, very fine, in fact – differences depending on the mass and density of minerals directly below, and that’s what is measured.

Pico Envirotec makes airborne surveying easier with equipment such as IMPAC – Integrated Multi-Parameter Airborne Console, a new real-time data acquisition device that combines a number of components into a single unit. “It’s quicker to install, it’s easier to install, and it requires far less effort on the part of the user,” Pico Chief Operating Officer Keith Hall says from company headquarters in Concord, Ontario.

“When you’re paying $1,500 a day to lease a helicopter while you install your equipment in it, being able to install in a couple of hours as opposed to a couple of days is a serious consideration,” he adds.

Pico’s recent innovations don’t begin and end with IMPAC. The company has also developed P-THEM, a versatile time-domain electromagnetic system for use in helicopter-borne surveying. It weighs less than 300 kilograms but has a powerful transmitter, a state-of-the-art receiver and advanced signal-processing software. “And it’s actually for sale, as opposed to having to go to a company that will lease you their services rather than sell you the equipment,” Hall points out.

The airborne survey specialists at Sander Geophysics measure magnetics, gravity, electromagnetics and radiometrics (gamma-ray spectrometry). “Concurrent with these methods, we can record scanning LiDAR (light detection and ranging) data to provide extremely accurate digital elevation models of the topography in the survey area,” adds Malcolm Argyle, Marketing Manager, from his office in Ottawa. The company has a fleet of 14 airplanes and one helicopter.

Sander has designed and developed its own AIRGrav system for gravity surveys. “It’s been used worldwide for petroleum exploration and regional geophysical mapping for over 10 years, but we have recently flown several mineral exploration surveys where higher resolution is required,” Argyle says. “All our AIRGrav surveys record magnetic data concurrently with the gravity, providing our clients with two complementary potential field data sets.”

Goldak Airborne Surveys, out of Saskatoon, was the first company in North America to offer a three-axis AEM (airborne electromagnetic) gradiometer system. Measuring the three axes is important, says Chief Geophysicist Marc Pelletier, because it means you’re “measuring all of the components accurately.” Thus, you get a better idea of what’s below ground.

Pelletier says Goldak has in the last couple of years “been mostly busy with radiometric surveys.” That type of survey is useful for not just uranium exploration, but for detecting a broad range minerals. “In fact,” he adds, “most of what we’ve done recently has been in government geological surveys.” The company’s 20 or so field staff and five office staff have been involved in surveys for the Saskatchewan, Quebec and federal governments and flown over lands from B.C. to Quebec to the Arctic coastline.

Another Saskatoon company, Leaf and Stone Resonance Services, surveys from much further above ground than any plane or chopper goes. Leaf and Stone uses resonance coupling technology to look specifically for whatever mineral you seek.

“Molecular Resonance Coupling is a spectrum change that occurs when two atomic structurally identical substances match each other,” the company website explains. “We have applied this technology and have developed a proprietary method of measuring this response so that given a sample of oil or other mineral, we can locate the same substance that is underground and not yet discovered.”

CEO Robert Fisher says the technique’s very accurate, and has testimonials to back up his assertion. “We commercialized it in October of 2007, and we have not been wrong in our 21 months of tests and since we commercialzed it,” he declares. You can learn more about the firm’s intriguing work at www.leafandstone.ca.

AT GROUND LEVEL

Ground surveying can collect magnetic, electromagnetic, gravity and radiometric data, plus other parameters such as seismic data.

EMpulse Geophysics - principally physicist David Goldak and mathematician Shawn Goldak – applies natural-source electromagnetics to help exploration companies find underground resources. The Saskatchewan firm uses the electromagnetic energy from thunderstorms (which can occur thousands of kilometres away) to map resistivity (how a material resists the flow of electrical current). From that information, inferences can be made about where particular minerals might be found in significant volumes.

EMpulse’s most promising innovations of late are probably in its use of 3D inversion software, post-surveying, to map resistivity distribution in the subsurface. “To make use of all the data we collect, you really have to do a 3D inversion,” David Goldak explains. “In the past, people have been limited to two-dimensional inversions, but when you do a 2D inversion you end up throwing out about half of the data you collect. If you’re able to do a 3D inversion, you’re using all of the data that you collected. You’re making use of all your information.”

Precision borehole surveying technologies are the specialty of Icefield Tools Corporation, which has been designing, manufacturing and selling such products since 1990 (first as Icefield Instruments, then under its present name as a spin-off to that company). Its star product these days is the GyroShot, which has sold well in the mining and petroleum sectors since coming on the market a few years ago. It uses nano-technology to deliver accurate borehole surveys yet it’s also “very rugged,” says President Erik Blake.

Dan Patrie Exploration, operating out of Massey, Ontario, owns claims in Ontario and offers magnetic and electromagnetic survey services to other companies. Owner and CEO Dan Patrie has worked in mining and exploration since 1968, and in geophysical surveying since 1986. He says induced polarization surveying, in which surveyors transmit electrical current to find polarizable targets, has developed a lot in recent years thanks to “more powerful systems” being used in the industry.

Indeed, a recent article in Ontario Mineral Exploration Review detailed how Abitibi Geophysics worked with the National Research Council and several gold mining companies “to commercialize a concept that increases the detection radius [of polarization surveys] by hundreds of metres.” That concept is hole-to-hole induced polarization, an improvement on the classical borehole induced polarization survey.

“The idea is to explore in between the boreholes that they already drilled, looking for pockets of mineralization that they might have missed,” geophysicist Roman Wasylechko, who co-authored the article with Abitibi President Pierre Berube, says from Ottawa. “What we do is, we transmit electrical current to polarize any mineralization that is underground, and we measure the responses cross-hole in the various boreholes.”

The responses give Abitibi staff such as Wasylechko indications as to where there might be the kinds of mineralization that exploration companies are looking for between or below boreholes. By taking measurements between holes, he explains, “our radius of coverage increases, because we’re now measuring a signal from one hole to the other hole.”

Hole-to-hole induced polarization had been tried before, Wasylechko continues. “The problem was what to do with the data – to figure out the mathematics, to develop the model of the electric field. We invested a fair bit of money in terms of research into understanding what happens when you are taking measurements between holes rather than along one single hole at a time.

“Instead of providing people with a simple profile of the response in the hole, we invert the data to produce a 3D image of all the readings that are taken amongst all the holes,” he says.

In laymen’s terms, Wasylechko is saying the bright minds at Abitibi turn the data from hole-to-hole induced polarization surveying into three-dimensional pictures indicating the size, shape and location of the polarizable clumps below ground that seem to have significant mineralization. These are areas for further exploration since, of course, the only way to find out the exact kind of mineralization in those places is to drill a hole and extract a sample.

What Abitibi and the other innovators do is complex stuff requiring advanced scientific knowledge and a lot of hard work to make it happen. For that knowledge and work, exploration and mining companies are surely grateful.