Quebec's political leaders seem to have fallen for the Great Green Dream of economic prosperity without energy or natural resource production.

British Columbia’s mining sector had another prosperous year, according to PwC's annual report on mining in British Columbia. The sector remained stable despite facing global market uncertainty, lower commodity prices, and higher costs for labour and mining inputs such as production materials, fuel, and transportation.

Canada’s mining industry is global, with Canadian listed firms active in exploration and development projects around the world. Practices that are seen as bribery in Canada may be quite common in emerging economies where miners operate, such as requests from public officials for under-the-table payments to help obtain permits, licenses, and other permissions. Changes to legislation to combat corruption and bribery abroad enacted by the UK, the USA, and Canada are bringing changes for the mining industry.

Slower global growth and declining demand from China has led to a drop in copper prices in recent months. China currently accounts for more than 40% of world demand, and its demand has boomed as its rural population has moved to cities needing copper for wiring and pipes.

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting column recently on the costs that policy uncertainty has had on the U.S. economy: Three economists, Stanford University's Nicholas Bloom and Scott Baker and the University of Chicago's Steven Davis, have done invaluable work measuring the level of policy uncertainty over the past few decades.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a new report casting a large shadow over the prospects for the proposed Pebble mine in Alaska. The EPA study is not an evaluation of a specific mining proposal, but rather, assesses the potential impacts of mining in the Bristol Bay region by creating 3 mining scenarios.

Rare-Earth Elements (REE’s), it turns out, are not really all that rare, it is just that until engineers starting finding uses for them in cell phones, windmills, lithium batteries, and other electronics applications, mining companies were not particularly interested in looking for them. Expanded use of REE’s in the past decade has changed this and created opportunities for mining companies, and, it turns out, for mercantilist bureaucrats in China.

A recent article in the Vancouver Sun illustrates the near impossibility of making greener decisions – like biking to work – without mining. 

Watch Dr. Kenneth Green, Director of the Fraser Institute Annual Survey of Mining Companies 2012/2013, as he discusses Arizona’s performance in the survey with Arizona State Geologist Lee Allison on Arizona Mining Review.   

Op-Ed by Alana Wilson,Senior Research Analyst with the Global Centre for Mining Studies at the Fraser Institute.