As far as I can see there are a couple of reasons why local manufacturing as well as mining is suffering;
1) first of all, ocean shipping costs basically nothing; meaning that materials shipping in bulk is a very small part of the overall cost
2) there are more chineese students studying engineering than all the western world
3) western companies of the last 2 decades have invested in manufacturing in Mexico and many low cost labour places
4) with internet it is so easy to establish contact with any manufacturer anywhere in the world to buy stuff cheap
5) in the case of mining, the product prices are based on the LME (London Metal Exchange) and you can't sell it any more expensive
6) historical relationships are less important than in the good old days
In this environment your cost determines if you make a profit or not, if you are a high cost producer you basically loose money. Although metal prices, such as nickel, are fairly high on a historical basis; places like Sudbury have a hard time competing with places of low labor costs. Oil prices are high and will stay high, materials of construction such as steel and I also supect concrete are also high
On top of this the Canadian government is implementing strickter environmental regulations meaning that in places like Sudbury, the companies have to invest hundreds of million of dollars to comply.
Unions have served many communities very well in the past, but now they are between a rock and a hard place.
Governments have some control such as preventing unfished products to be shipped out of the country, environmental controls, but it is hard to imagine Canada banning or taxing imports from cheap producing countries.
Clearly unions have a fight on their hand; I would hope that they can get a good and fair deal and we all can maintain our standard of living; but I suspect that the Walmartization of the world economy is just to powerful to slow down.
