The Municipality of Greenstone is sitting on a gold mine – literally! Premier Gold is leading the way among several aggressive junior miners in the region as they continue to confirm more and more gold reserves at their Greenstone Trans-Canada site.
At the same time things are warming up again on the Ring of Fire front with the province having committed to spending $1 billion in Ring of Fire infrastructure and Cliffs Natural Resources indicating that their chromite deposits were for sale.
The provincial and federal orders of government have committed millions of dollars towards the construction and development of a Greenstone Regional Skills Centre. The centre will provide training for regional populations with a specific focus on preparing a workforce for employment in the mining and forestry sectors.
On the forestry front, the Longlac sawmill is operational again and efforts are being made to bring the Nakina sawmill and the Ogoki woodlands back online.
Over the past two years, the municipality together with the federal and provincial governments have committed more than $100 million toward building capacity and improving infrastructure to support commerce and industry in Ontario’s northwest.
On the connectivity side, the Greenstone Broadband project proposes improvements to telecommunications infrastructure in the region with the installation of additional fibre and networking equipment. These upgrades will provide critical infrastructure for business expansion, education and health care, and will provide the necessary capacity at Nakina to support broadband expansion to the Ring of Fire and remote First Nations.
A transportation corridor to the Far North is critical to the movement of goods, for economic growth and to support the First Nation communities located there.
Many communities in the Far North do not have grid access and are reliant upon extremely expensive and environmentally hazardous diesel fuel. Greenstone and its partnering First Nations have a transmission plan, making it possible to supply all future Ring of Fire needs and to bring the grid to the Matawa communities.
A critical component in building capacity for community development is the growth of a skilled labour force.
Greenstone is a northwestern Ontario amalgamated rural municipality of 4,800 made up of the former towns of Geraldton, Nakina, Longlac, and Beardmore, and the settlement areas of Caramat, Jellicoe, MacDiarmid and Orient Bay. It’s one of the largest municipalities in the province with an area of 2,780-square kilometres.
For more information on these projects and more contact the Municipal Economic Development Office at edo@greenstone.ca
