Greg Rickford knows mining, and he knows how to work with First Nations communities. Now he has to prove he can manoeuvre Canada through the rough-and-tumble world of pipeline politics.
Mr. Rickford, 46, was named the new federal natural resources minister on Wednesday as Joe Oliver moved on to finance. He inherits a grand plan to transform Canada into an “energy superpower” with $650-billion in resource development over the next decade.
The appointment was praised across Ontario’s mining sector, where Mr. Rickford is widely respected and is already at the centre of the province’s biggest new resource development. But it elicited shrugs in the West, where the Kenora native is a virtual unknown.
Peter Koven & Jeff Lewis – March 19, 2014.