You may have missed it over the holidays, but we had our own genuine media controversy.
CBC Yukon published a story on the Canadian and US governments providing financial support to Fireweed Metals and its Mactung tungsten project on the Canol Road.
The story’s first line was “The U.S. military's missiles, bombs and bullets could one day contain Yukon tungsten” and it included a 2021 photo of US Marines in Australia firing off an M270 guided multiple launch rocket system.
This provoked a stiffly worded letter from the Yukon Chamber of Mines saying the “story failed on all three counts [of being factual, fair and balanced] by making inappropriate, unfounded and deliberately inflammatory linkages to potential uses of metals from Mactung, and through numerous factual errors in reporting that cast the proponent, project and industry in a poor light.”
CBC Yukon posted a new version of the story, without the rocket launcher photo and with a new opening line: “Canada and the U.S. have announced joint funding for a mine that contains one of the largest tungsten deposits on Earth.”
Beneath the social media furor, the controversy has some real issues at its core.
First, let’s look at the facts. It was indeed strange that the original story did not mention tungsten’s many non-military uses. Its strength and hardness means it is used in light bulbs, drill bits, saw blades and rocket engine nozzles. Only 0.36 percent less dense than gold, it is also handy for counterfeiting gold bars and coins. It also is dense and beautiful enough to make a nice wedding ring, although Yukoners in the bush should note you can’t cut it off your injured finger with regular wire cutters like you can with a gold ring.
Also, according to Outdoor Life magazine, Apex WS-3 tungsten-steel blend is the best all-round duck shot. Tungsten is one-and-a-half times more dense than lead, and less damaging to the environment (not counting the duck).
But CBC Yukon was not wrong to point out that tungsten is used by the military. One example is indeed the M270 in the controversial photo. According to Wikipedia, the M270 can fire the M30A1 rocket. This rocket is like a giant shotgun shell, filled with 182,000 tungsten pellets. Forbes magazine reports the M30A1 has been used to devastating effect in Ukraine on invading Russian infantry and unarmoured vehicles.
Due to its weight, tungsten is also used instead of depleted uranium in anti-tank artillery rounds. The German Army pioneered this in World War 2 but, in a foreshadowing of today’s geopolitical tensions over critical minerals, had to reduce production after the Allies pressured Spain to cut their tungsten supplies.
The original CBC Yukon article had some other notable omissions. Referring to the U.S., it says “the country has a strained diplomatic relationship with China, the world’s largest producer of tungsten.” Strangely, it didn’t mention Canada’s strained diplomatic relations with China, a country well known to be running widespread cyber, intelligence and political interference operations in this country.
In CBC’s defence, the broadcaster has run multiple other stories this year about the ramp up of joint Chinese and Russian sea and air patrols off the Arctic coast. And it reported in October that “Chinese state-sponsored actors repeatedly conduct cyber espionage campaigns against federal, provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous government networks in Canada.”
Another omission is that the original article says that tungsten’s usefulness in munitions makes it “an important resource for the United States.” This almost gives you the impression the author doesn’t think Canada has a modern military that also needs effective weapons.
I suspect our troops garrisoned on the Russian frontier in Latvia wish they had M270s (fortunately, our ally Latvia has modern rocket artillery, including launchers that can use the tungsten munitions in the M30A1 rocket). And of course tungsten is critical to our air force’s jet turbine blades, among other things.
The original article discussed the ethics of producing minerals for military use. It quotes a senior official with the Na-cho Nyäk Dun First Nation who said the “NND has moral opposition to weapons production.” Citing the official, the article added that “Canada and the US are bound to operate according to disarmament objectives outlined by the UN Disarmament Commission.”
I wouldn’t have devoted as many words in an article on the topic to disarmament but, again in CBC’s defence, they gave space to other views. Premier Pillai took a strongly different view than the Na-cho Nyäk Dun official, saying the project was “incredibly important for North America … from a security and defence perspective.”
I side with Premier Pillai on this. Anyone who thinks China and Russia are going to disarm has not been paying enough attention to what President Xi and President Putin have been doing over the last decade.
It would be foolish for Canada and its allies to rely on China for tungsten. Especially when it was just two months ago that China announced plans to put export license restrictions on the metal. MSNBC reported at the time that China controlled 80 per cent of the global tungsten supply chain.
The original CBC Yukon story had some meaningful gaps. But I also think the Chamber of Mines missed the point when their pressure induced CBC to tone down tungsten’s military aspects.
In today’s world of geopolitical tension, the fact that tungsten has military uses is a feature, not an embarrassment, for a territory that mines it. This is one of the few ways the Yukon can actually contribute to the security of Canada and our allies.
I would have kept the original story’s first line, but with a couple of changes added in italics: “The Canadian military's missiles, bombs and bullets could one day contain Yukon tungsten … and that’s a good thing.”
Keith Halliday is a Yukon economist and the winner of the 2022 Canadian Community Newspaper Award for Outstanding Columnist. His most recent book Moonshadows, a Yukon-noir thriller, is available in Yukon bookstores.