UPDATED: Oct. 5, 8:36 a.m.
The Canadian government, through the Export Development Canada (EDC) agency, announced Oct. 4 it will provide Vale with up to a $1 billion loan to encourage the company to continue to invest in its Canadian operations.
In a press release, EDC's president and chief executive officer Eric Siegel said the relationship between his agency and Vale provides "significant potential benefits for Canada."
“Vale has demonstrated an ongoing commitment to Canadian suppliers, making senior procurement officials available to meet potential Canadian suppliers on a number of occasions through EDC matchmaking events, leading to a near doubling in Vale’s Canadian procurement over the past few years,” Siegel said.
The president of Steelworkers Local 6500, Rick Bertrand, said he isn't happy with the loan, considering that a strike between Steelworkers Local 9508 (representing Voisey's Bay workers) and Vale is ongoing after 14 months.
Local 6500 settled a nearly year-long strike with Vale this summer.
"It is ridiculous that the government is considering lending a foreign owned corporation any money when they have profited in the billions already, and while we are still waiting to learn how the first deal, the original sale of Inco to Vale, was suppose to be a net benefit to Canada," Bertrand stated in a press release.
Nickel Belt MP Claude Gravelle also spoke out against the EDC's choice to extend the $1 billion line of credit to Vale. He said it "adds insult to injury" to workers who are on strike, been on strike, or been laid off.
“Vale broke the promises it made to Canada and our communities when it purchased Inco, unnecessarily prolonged its strike with its 1,300 workers in Sudbury using scabs, and attacked workers’ defined benefit pensions,” Gravelle stated in a press release.
Two-hundred-fifty million of the loan would be earmarked for upgrading the Voisey's Bay facilities, something Gravelle said the company could afford to do itself.
“Vale has made billions in profit in the past year,” he said.
The mediator assigned to the dispute between Local 9508 and Vale, Bill Wells, suspended talks between Vale and the union.
One of the major sticking points is wage parity between employees at the Greater Sudbury and Voisey's Bay sites.
