Former Timmins Mayor George Pirie has been named Ontario’s new mining minister with a special mandate to develop the Ring of Fire.
Premier Doug Ford revealed his 30-person cabinet on June 24 with only a few changes in portfolios held during Ford’s last provincial government.
The decades-only title of Northern Development and Mines was split into two portfolios with Pirie, a mining industry veteran, handed the mining file and incumbent cabinet minister and Kenora MPP Greg Rickford focusing on northern development and Indigenous affairs.