Thank you, Mr. Chair and honourable members.
My name is Angie Robson, and I'm the manager of corporate and aboriginal affairs for Vale Canada's Ontario operations. It's an honour for me to be appearing before this committee to discuss innovation in the mining sector and what governments can do to support future growth for our industry and companies like Vale.
Earlier this year, at the World Economic Forum, the Prime Minister mentioned that he wanted the world to know Canadians for their “resourcefulness”, not just for our country's abundant natural resources. At Vale, we have always believed that resourcefulness is fundamental to our success in developing natural resources responsibly and sustainably, wherever we do business.
As you may know, our company has a very long legacy and history in Canada. Formerly known as lnco, we began mining operations in Sudbury, Ontario, in 1902, where we now operate one of the world's largest fully integrated mining complexes, including six mines and a mill, smelter, and nickel refinery, as well as a cobalt and precious metals refinery in Port Colborne. While my discussion today will focus primarily on Ontario, our operations in Canada also include mines and production facilities in Thompson, Manitoba, as well as Long Harbour and Voisey's Bay in Newfoundland and Labrador.
It was 10 years ago last month that lnco was acquired by Vale and it has continued to operate as a Canadian-based global subsidiary of one of the world's largest diversified mining entities. In the decade since, and despite very challenging economic times for mining, Vale has invested more than $10 billion into our Canadian operations, with more than $4.3 billion of that invested in capital projects in Sudbury alone. This underlines Vale's strong commitment to our Canadian operations and the communities in which we operate.
These investments have focused on modernizing our assets, improving environmental performance, and strengthening our global competitiveness both in up cycles and in down cycles in order to support the next generation of employees at our Canadian operations. We have to breathe new life into our current mines and build the mines of tomorrow, and for an operation that's been in Canada for more than 100 years, the only way we can do this is through innovation, significant capital investment, and strong partnerships with our communities and with government.
When we talk about innovation, it's not only in a technical and commercial sense, but also in a social sense with respect to the way we approach our responsibilities and the social licence to operate. I thought I would share a few of those examples in my remarks for you today.
In looking at technological innovation, one of the capital investments that we're most proud of is our recently opened Long Harbour processing plant in Newfoundland. This facility uses a hydrometallurgical process that Vale developed in-house. It processes nickel concentrate directly to metal products without having to smelt the concentrate, thereby significantly reducing the greenhouse gas emissions and other emissions typically associated with mining production.
This one-of-a-kind technology, which had financial research and development support from the federal government, applied the know-how within our company to find better ways of doing what we've always done. This is a true example of how, working together with government, we created a success story for Canadian innovation.
In Ontario, we used the latest in innovation to build our newest and most modern facility, the Totten Mine. Totten features the latest in mine technology and safety automation, including a wireless underground communication system and state-of-the-art control room. Through the Wi-Fi system we've installed underground and the use of radio-frequency ID tags on people and equipment, we can immediately identify where everyone is at any given time, providing obvious benefits from a safety perspective.
The system also allows for “ventilation on demand”, something we're increasingly looking to apply to our other operating mines. Currently, our ventilation systems are designed to run at full power, around the clock, throughout the entire mine, like running an air conditioner at full blast when no one is home. It is no surprise, then, that ventilation accounts for roughly half of our energy bill.
Instead, at Totten, our ventilation system directs air based on the detection of the RFID tags and adjusts the volume of air accordingly through the use of automated control systems and fans. While the upfront costs to apply this technology to our older mines will be substantial, we expect the energy savings and environmental benefits we realize through this system to be significant, so this will be a key focus for us moving forward.
Applying technological innovation to help enable mining at depth is also a key priority for us as we look toward the future. The majority of our reserves in the Sudbury Basin are below our current infrastructure and at depths where there will be significant costs and challenges to mine the ore.
For example, we're currently mining at about the 8,000-foot level at Creighton Mine, and our intent is to mine down to about 10,000 feet. This is incredibly deep and is a true story of innovation in its own regard. To paint you a picture, this is like mining to a depth of about five and a half CN Towers stacked underground—certainly no small feat in engineering.
In order to get there, we're collaborating through research and financial contributions to organizations such as CEMI—the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation—and its Ultra-Deep Mining Network and to the Deep Mining Research Consortium. We understand that we can't solve this problem alone. As we move forward, we have to collaborate with our government, academic, and industry partners in order to come up with solutions that will continue to support Canada's place as a leading mining jurisdiction.
On the environmental front, adapting 21st century technologies such as ventilation on demand to 20th century infrastructure is essential to ensure our ongoing success. Another great example of this is our $1-billion Clean AER project at our Copper Cliff smelter complex in Sudbury. This project is the most complex and innovative flow-sheet redesign we've taken on since the 1980s, resulting in an 85% reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions, a 40% reduction in particulate emissions, and, importantly, a 40% reduction in greenhouse gases. The project is currently 65% complete with nearly $800 million spent to date.
This tremendous reduction in emissions will serve to complement our reclamation activities in Sudbury. For those who can recall the impact of acid rain on the surrounding environment in the 1980s, the innovative approach we've taken in working together with government and our community partners to achieve the green transformation of the city has been stunning and is a Canadian success story that has been internationally recognized and is one that we can all be very proud of.
Innovation has also been a hallmark of how we have approached partnerships with first nation communities wherever we do business. Before we developed the Voisey's Bay nickel mine in Labrador, our company engaged the Inuit and Innu in a partnership that produced impacts and benefits agreements that are still considered the gold standard in Canada. Today at Voisey's Bay, we're very proud to say that more than 50% of our workforce is indigenous and 80% of our service and supply contracts are awarded to indigenous businesses.
It's important to note that the Government of Canada was a significant partner in the training component of this success and provided significant funding for the Voisey's Bay joint employment and training initiative, JETA. Vale is currently working with local communities on a funding request for training support for the underground mine development phase at Voisey's Bay, which is now under way.
While we've set the bar with Voisey's Bay, we also have a growing aboriginal participation in our Manitoba and Ontario operations. In Thompson, Manitoba, for example, we've traditionally had retention issues because of the remote northern location and therefore focused recruitment efforts on local indigenous communities. As a result, we're proud to say now that more than 20% of our workforce in Thompson is indigenous. In some cases, this required looking hard at our recruitment policies to eliminate extraneous criteria that were barriers to employment for certain candidates. As my colleague who led the initiative in Manitoba likes to say, “It wasn't about lowering the bar for candidates; it was about widening the door.”
Finally, Vale is extremely proud of the investments and other contributions we've made to fund innovation and science. In Sudbury, we've been collaborating through research and financial contributions to organizations such as CEMI and the Vale Living with Lakes Centre, a centre for excellence in research in freshwater restoration, which is part of Laurentian University. Perhaps most notably, Vale is very proud to be a partner in SNOLAB, which is hosted underground at Creighton Mine and is conducting Nobel-prize-winning research that is breaking new frontiers in science.
In summary, Vale is a company that innovates. Like others in our sector, we're continually looking at new ways of doing things in order to raise our level of performance in terms of safety, sustainability, and productivity. As a few examples have illustrated today, partnership with the government has been very helpful to accelerate our efforts in certain areas. Whether those partnerships involve funding for the commercialization of a new technology such as hydromet, or supporting an initiative like JETA to scale up to meet the training needs of indigenous people, government can be a catalyst in helping companies move an idea from concept to application. We believe that this is a role that the Government of Canada can continue to play with respect to the mining sector.
I thank you for your time this morning. I look forward to our discussion.
