MacGregor optimistic about mining

Mining does have a future, says longtime industry player Sir Ian MacGregor.

Addressing a recent luncheon of the Toronto branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum (CIM), MacGregor said mining will continue to be essential to the well-being of society.

“It is the hardware of society which provides our standard of living” and it is the mining industry which helps to provide that “hardware,” he said. Mining will be needed, he argues, as more of the world moves from the politics of dictatorship to the politics of democracy, and more and more people practise “freedom of choice” in the consumer marketplace. On the subject of the environment, MacGregor drew a parallel between the global population explosion and the strain being placed on the world’s resources. “It’s people who cause pollution,” he said, adding that improvements in living standards will require more resources. “The politics and the economics of the future are tied together,” he said. Miners of the Western World will look increasingly to other areas of the globe for new projects; the less developed nations, he said, will in turn be looking for some form of compensation.

Ending his speech on an up note, MacGregor proposed that the West consider a “world electrification scheme” whereby current efforts to bring electricity to the less developed parts of the world would be a accelerated. MacGregor, a native of Scotland, has had a long involvement with the aluminum and steel industries. A former chief executive officer of Amax, he chaired both British Steel Corp. and the National Coal Board (British Coal Corp.) in the 1980s before moving into investment banking. His current business interests include cable television.

MacGregor was speaking at the 14th Hamilton lecture of the Toronto CIM branch. The annual lectures honor two brothers, Robert and Philip Hamilton, for their contributions to Canadian mining earlier this century.