As Japanese workers and scientists battle to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima plant, most Nunavut residents who showed up to a public forum Thursday night rejected the spectre of uranium mining in the northern Canadian territory. Many Nunavummiut who attended a uranium forum Thursday night said they do not want uranium mining in Nunavut, while some even attacked the territory's Inuit group for supporting uranium development.
Mining Essentials: A Work Readiness Training Program for Aboriginal Peoples, enhances relationships and cooperation among Aboriginal communities, educators and industry by supporting training and hiring goals outlined in many formal and informal agreements (i.e. IBAs).
Mining Essentials is the only pan-Canadian work readiness program for Aboriginal peoples in mining. The program aims to ensure Aboriginal peoples have the essential skills and workreadiness training needed to enter mining and to provide industry with a local, employment-prepared workforce.
Experience is still a more important teacher in the workplace than classes or workshops. People retain more when they learn informally, in response to need, because they deem the subject relevant and what they learn is reinforced when they put it into practice. The proportions of formal and informal learning vary with the task at hand, the context for learning, and the psyche of the learner. Generally, informal learning carries anywhere from four to ten times the weight of formal learning.
The old model is a wake-up call that says informal learning is important. Instead of acting like it’s not there, we should shape our organizations to nurture it. What’s missing is the how. How do you choose the aspects of informal learning you want to emphasize?
People in the Toowoomba area will be able to access specialist training in the State’s emerging industries at a new faculty of the Southern Queensland Institute of TAFE. Employment, Skills and Mining Minister Stirling Hinchliffe today toured the TAFE’s Faculty of Mining, Resources and Infrastructure as part of the Bligh Government’s Community Cabinet in Toowoomba. Mr Hinchliffe said SQIT introduced the new faculty this year to help meet industry demand for skilled workers.
“There is massive growth in the Queensland mining industry and it’s important we have enough skilled workers to meet those demands,” Mr Hinchliffe said. “We also want to see Queenslanders take advantage of the opportunities on offer."
It has become a media tradition for moves in the gold price to be related to some political event or a civil war or a major tragedy such as the earthquake in Japan, when the events have a negligible effect on those markets.
India, ranked among the top five global players in production of several major minerals, is poised for rapid growth in its mining industry - about five percent of the GDP. However, lack of skilled workers is set to hit the industry, creating a demand-supply gap of over 2,200 people by 2025, according to a study on mapping of human resources and skills for the mining industry in India by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
The aftershocks of the Japanese earthquake are still being felt around the world. People everywhere are reeling from the triple whammy of a massive earthquake, a terrifying tsunami and now the prospects of a nuclear accident. The human misery is unimaginable, with thousands or even tens of thousands killed and hundreds of thousands of people left homeless. On top of the devastation already unleashed on Japan, the drama continues at the Fukushima nuclear plant.
Many readers might remember that exactly two years ago the S&P 500 tagged the infamous 666 price level before putting on a monster 2 year rally that saw it surge over 100% to the February 2011 highs.
For most people, Toronto's financial district is the place where Canada's big banks make their money. That's true to a certain degree, but it tends to overlook one of the primary sources of all that money: mining.
The Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario has taken note, so it's setting up a program in which students can obtain both a graduate degree in geology and a law degree.
Ian Holloway, dean of Western's law school, told me about the program after I bumped into him at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention this week in Toronto. "Something like 60% of the world's financing deals in mining are still done in Toronto. And all of those deals need lawyers. So there's a huge shortage of a very specialized legal skill set."
Northern Securities Analyst Matthew Zylstra seeks out junior precious metals stocks with value in the ground and growth potential that are not yet obvious to the markets. He also looks for companies that have unrecognized base metal potential that can significantly reduce the cash costs of precious metals production.