I have heard with great satisfaction that HD Mining, a subsidiary of the Chinese state, has returned 19 miners to China pending the outcome of current litigation regarding their status.
HD Mining planned to have an initial 200 Chinese miners working its site in northern B.C. with plans, approved by our provincial Liberal government and given foreign guest worker status by the federal Minister of Immigration, to have up to 4,000 Chinese miners in. B.C. when coal production began. HD Mining’s reason for this need was that there were no qualified Canadian miners available. By a remarkable coincidence, I understand the manager of the mine is a former assistant deputy minister of mining in the B. C. government.
I grew up and worked in the mining industry in Canada. The mining method to extract the underground coal seam at Murray River is called the ‘long wall’ extraction method. It is highly automated but not complicated. A person with a high school education can learn the operation of the main extraction machinery in two days. There are hundreds if not thousands of Canadians capable of this.
We are not Angola or Kenya and do not need to create Chinese state owned labour camps in B.C. to develop our resources.
Gary MacDonald
Cranbrook