My name is Richard Paquin, and I'm representing Unifor. Jerry Dias, our national president, asked me to come and speak on his behalf, since he's busy bargaining with Ford now. We'll see how that goes.
I'm the recently appointed new director of mining for Unifor. We represent roughly 11,000 members across the country, most of them in B.C. and Quebec, which represent roughly 20% of our membership of 310,000 members in this particular natural resources department.
Most of our members are from Rio Tinto, Glencore, and Mosaic, which is the big potash mine in Saskatchewan. We are the second-largest union in the country representing natural resources, after the steelworkers. We also represent many members on IndustriALL, which is the biggest global union in the world, representing roughly 50 million workers in a hundred different countries. Mining is a big forte of that area, and we participate in the system in as many areas as we can.
With regard to a bit of history about us, the former CAW was heavily involved in mining also, and in 2010 we introduced a resolution that was put up by former MP Claude Gravelle. We asked him to introduce it in the House of Commons, and it was done and acknowledged by the Speaker.
In order for us to best express our views on how to best protect this great natural resource of ours, Unifor has created a specific national industry council called the Mining, Metals and Minerals Industry Council, or MMM for short, that oversees this important industry across Canada. This council also recently adopted the same resolution, and I'll pass it on after.
What it allows us to do is to have great discussions with all of our members in the country in order for us to best protect and diversify this economy that is created by this natural resource. Former Prime Minister Harper famously referred to Canada as a super-energy superpower. Now if you combine that with the actual value of all of our natural resources, he was right. We are a force to be reckoned with.
Canada has an abundant supply of natural resources that fuel global capitalism and furnish Canadians with the many objects that make all of our lives more comfortable. Aside from being an energy superpower, Canada is one of the largest mining, metal, and mineral producers in the world. We rank eighth worldwide, after China, the United States, and mainly Russia.
As always, this sector has seen many roller coaster rides. Many of the communities where we have members are affected by the market, which changes very rapidly. During the 2009 recession, approximately 10,000 new Canadian workers who were employed in this industry were laid off. Fortunately, because the market picked up in early 2010, 2011, and 2012, 10,000 unit jobs were created within our membership across the country and it assisted the industry to flourish.
Wages are also very high in this industry. In 2013, wages across the country averaged $36 an hour, which is roughly 60% higher than the industrial average. Mining and smelting also make a very important contribution to Canada's overall balance, because we export all of those products. In 2013, it was over $72 billion worth of exports. This reflected high commodity prices as well, and also the growing volume for some of the mineral exports. The resulting trade surplus of all this was worth $20 billion that year, which helped Canada partly offset the enormous trade deficit that was created by manufacturing and other sectors.
Because of the big and often money-making industry that it is, firms spent more than $12 billion on fixed assets in 2013, which is many times the levels spent a decade ago. Because of this product, our GDP was almost $25 billion.
There is a big drawback with this. Because we are so high in natural resources, the market is really open to the global world, and many Canadian operations got bought out in the 2006-08 era by big, global corporations like Rio Tinto and Glencore, which at that time was Xstrata. Alcan got bought up by Rio Tinto. Vale also purchased Inco, which used to be one of the biggest Canadian mining companies in the world. They were all global industries now owned by global players, not Canadian anymore. The reason for that is the profitability in this sector is extremely high when the prices are right.
Because of this industry, we are mandated, under the Constitution document of the British North America Act of 1867, that every province has to be assigned the responsibility of overseeing non-renewable natural resources development. This means that each of our provinces and territories has the duty to draft the legislation and erect the regulatory bodies that oversee the mineral and resource development in its borders.
I'll just name a few. I'll concentrate on Ontario because that's where I'm from. A lot of those industries, like the Mining Act itself, oversee the prospecting, the staking, the exploration, the development of all these natural resources:
...in a manner consistent with the recognition and affirmation of existing Aboriginal and treaty rights in Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, including the duty to consult, and to minimize the impact of these activities on public health and safety and the environment.
Many of other provinces also have similar acts. We also have the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines that actually administers the Mining Act and all the regulations related to it. We also have the Ministry of Labour that does the regulation and plays a very important role in this sector.
We have the Mining Legislative Review Committee, or MLRC for short. This is an advisory committee to the Government of Ontario representing labour, management, and the Ministry of Labour. There is a body of legislation that pertains to the health and safety of all of our workers in all of the mines in Ontario and in all of the mining plants. We also have the Mining Tripartite Committee, which is a committee that deals specifically with what the proper training should be for all of our workers to make sure they return home each and every day.
In order to deal with the new exploration that is feasible in Ontario and other provinces, the Minister's Mining Act Advisory Committee, MMAAC, was formed years ago. It deals specifically with the exploration and development of new mining permits in smelting. It currently oversees the development of the Ring of Fire, which we all know is a growing opportunity in northern Ontario.
The federal government also established a council a while back called the Mining Industry Human Resources Council, or MiHR for short. I'm on that committee also. It's a federal government committee whose purpose is to train our miners to make sure their skills are transferable across provinces. The unfortunate part of this committee is that everything is voluntary, so workers and employers, in order to participate, need to agree to do that. It's not mandated.
Our civilization, and increasingly an emerging global civilization, is built from the ground up using the mining sector and its associated industries, which are partially responsible for the astonishing increase in the diversity and quality of our human life over the past century.
Unifor is guided by the belief that Canada can responsibly develop its natural resources while respecting aboriginal treaty rights including, and importantly, consultation and full social economic participation. We cannot do this under the presumption that the status quo will automatically achieve these goals.
Natural resources are increasingly central to Canada's economic trajectory. Our challenge is to maximize the positive spin-offs of resource development while minimizing the economic and environmental costs.
I'll just make it brief. It's a little longer than 10 minutes.
