Construction is underway on the first all-season access road leading into Northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining region.
Premier Doug Ford visited Webequie First Nation on June 25 to commemorate the start of construction of the 107-kilometre Webequie Supply Road, which will connect the first nation community to the Ring of Fire mineral deposits. The road is scheduled to open by November 2030.
The trip to the remote, fly-in Ojibway community some 540 kilometres north of Thunder Bay also marked Ford’s first visit to the critical mineral-rich region he has often referenced since taking office in 2018.
The Ring of Fire is a region in the heart of Treaty 9 territory within the James Bay Lowlands. It is home to substantial reserves of chromite, cobalt, copper, nickel, and platinum.
The province signed a $39.5 million deal with Webequie last October to acquire the materials and equipment necessary to start preliminary work on the road. The province said the 2030 target date for completion of road, which will extend eastward through a landscape ranging from esker rock to peatland, is four years earlier than initially planned.
Webequie has already cleared part of the road that sits on its reserve on the northern peninsula of Eastwood Island on Winisk Lake in Northwestern Ontario.
Webequie First Nation Chief Cornelius Wabasse told reporters last fall that the road will help lift the community out of poverty and link it to the provincial highway system. He described the Webequie Supply Road as essential for his remote community that currently is accessible only by air, water, or a winter road.
Mining Claims
Australian mining corporation Wyloo has said it hopes to develop a large nickel mine in the region and is exploring multiple additional sites for mining in the mineral-rich zone.The majority of the 40,000 claims staked in the Ring of Fire are owned by Wyloo and the Canadian junior mining company Juno Corp.
Ford has long aspired to mine and refine critical minerals in the northern area of the province and repeatedly called on Ottawa in 2025 to designate the Ring of Fire as a priority nation-building infrastructure project.
Ford successfully signed a cooperation framework with the federal government last December to implement a “one project, one review” approach to streamline environmental assessments, speed up regulatory approvals, and pave the way for the province and First Nation partners to fast-track road construction.
Ford has said the agreement will make the series of proposed roads to the Ring of Fire easier and quicker to build.
The province also plans to work with the Marten Falls Community to build an access road that is officially scheduled to break ground in August. In between Marten Falls and Webequie will be the Northern Road Link, which the province said will begin construction in 2028.
The proposed roads and mining project has provoked anger among several other First Nations in the region that oppose development in a predominantly pristine area of the province.
