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David Robinson

Airships to the Arctic

Airships to the Arctic

A few years ago it took imagination to see the future sneaking up on Northern Ontario’s mining sector. Now it is getting hard to ignore.

The future of mining innovation

The federal government wants to boost innovation in mining. It is doing it the wrong way. Mining is a relatively small sector — 70,000 workers in 2016 — but it accounts for a stunning 19 per cent of the value of Canadian goods exports.

Stock and commodity prices may signal rebound

Stock markets report every day on individual wild horses in a stampeding herd of companies. Each horse, or company, is scored against itself.
What CEOs see and what we should do

What CEOs see and what we should do

Tugs have power to spare, but on dark and rainy nights, when the tide is running fast, there are channels that make even tugboat skippers nervous.
Mining: such a strange mix of products

Mining: such a strange mix of products

Canada’s mineral sector is an odd collection of quite different industries, united by big trucks and high wages. Suppliers in for the long haul should think about the peculiar character of each segment of the mining industry.
Both the wind and the tides are in our favour

Both the wind and the tides are in our favour

The fall of the Canadian dollar will have a positive effect on Canada’s mining supply and service sector and on domestic mining. When the dollar goes down, Canadian mines and Canadian suppliers do better.

Supply and service sector headed for good times

The mining supply and service sector will do much better than the rest of the economy over the next 50 years. Here’s why. And here is what we ought to do. There are three stylized facts that matter.

When bad news is good news, make fudge

In “A Detailed Analysis of the Productivity Performance of Mining in Canada,” Celeste Bradley and Andrew Sharpe concluded that “the productivity performance of mining in Canada has been very poor.

Masters of the Underground

Management consultants quote Sun Tsu’s Art of War when they want to emphasize strategy and creative thinking. I plan to quote Wayne Gretzky about an idea that I think mining supply firms should be pushing. Dr.

Sudbury cluster shouldn’t have happened

Mining sprawls. It is the nature of the beast. The way that metal production sprawls about the globe isn’t terribly convenient for human beings. We tend to like shorelines with lots of vegetation.