This howl against the
mining industry is very typical and can be repeated everywhere. It is misguided and an espousal of bad
practice but then it will not matter much in the long term. In this case the mine will not proceed and
the communities will ultimately wither away and disappear anyway. The old lifeway is extinct and without any
good reason the settlements will be abandoned.
Mining law is a
continuing problem worldwide. British
Columbia probably has the best arrangement of a bad lot. Yet here we are with thousands of field
geologists been told by this person that they are not welcome.
Let me explain a harsh
reality with mining. Mines are rare and
are located wherever Mother Nature decides to settle them. This is just like the ocean or your favorite
lake. Fundamentally they belong to the
global commons and most certainly not to any individual or community per
se. Thus governments are tasked with
creating an equitable framework that allows them to happen.
They have to be
found. What has worked wonderfully is a
sort of lottery system in which huge numbers of individuals gamble on discovery
and go out and look. Once mineral land
is located it enters an effective investment auction system that establishes
title, creates champions and continues the expensive property evaluation
process. All this activity has benefited
the nearby communities throughout Canada.
Today the bulk of the first nations find employment through such
resource extraction. After all they
actually want to live there.
The political problem is
the attempt of various apparent ‘stakeholders’ to derive a transfer of wealth
in the process of creating the asset itself.
This often simply impossible and often ruinous. The real difficulty is that too much is not
settled before the first plane leaves for the bush. This is worsened by the outright ignorance of
the political class itself in terms of understanding mining.
I do want to explain
something. Outside of coal mining and
oil sand mining, the actual footprint is never more than about two square
miles. Once mined out, actual
reclamation is well understood and enforced as well. Thus it often becomes possible to create a
developed asset there of some sort that can outlive the mine itself. There is a natural acid leach problem that
will often last for years for most mines.
The best solution is generally ignored out of scientific ignorance c=
leaving the present unsatisfactory approach.
Thus a mine is a brief
event that extracts wealth for humanity.
This is not true for agriculture especially as presently practiced. This disturbs millions of square miles in
often an unwise manner and presently directly produces dead zones in the ocean
of thousands of square miles as well.
The ecological impact of
a mine will be a pristine forest in a century or so leaving no creditable
evidence of what happened. The
ecological impact of goat farming is the Sahara Desert and the arid Middle
East.
The good news is that
the technology exists which will eliminate the thousands of boots on the ground
needed to discover an ore body. Once
properly deployed, mines will be readily located in abundance and will be
opened only were welcome.
Opinion: Mine rejection
is wakeup call
While
the province stays mired in the past, First Nations are urging reforms
VANCOUVER
SUN
MARCH
27, 2014
Joe Alphonse and Roger William
Taseko Mines Ltd.’s bid to upturn a huge
portion of the pristine Tsilhqot’in area of B.C. has now been rejected for the
third time in almost 20 years, two of these after scathing independent panel
reviews. Wakeup calls do not come much bigger than this.
Taseko and its politically funded supporters
— B.C. Mines Minister Bill Bennett and his government — seem to be the only
ones who do not realize this project is dead and that continuing with legal
challenges will only add to the two decades and the more than $100 million of
investors’ money the company says it has already thrown away on this
non-starter.
Even the conservative Fraser Institute
recognizes there is a problem and is calling for change. The institute’s latest
survey of global mining executives found B.C. had slipped in the rankings to
32nd place in terms of confidence as a mining jurisdiction.
In a recent Vancouver Sun column, the
institute’s Alana Wilson noted: “Uncertainty deters investment by increasing
risk for investors as it decreases their confidence in being able to recoup and
profit from investments.”
While the institute is known for being
extremely supportive of B.C.’s mining industry, Wilson at least acknowledges
that relations with First Nations need to be addressed, as do environmental
issues. The changes the institute would like are probably very pro-industry but
at least it recognized the status quo is a mess.
The mining industry in B.C. faces every bit
as much of a challenge as Enbridge is facing with its Northern Gateway
Pipeline, and it is time the government awakened to this fact. Yet it continues
to stand by politically supportive companies such as Taseko, and blindly flogs
dead horses such as the New Prosperity mine, which has generated nothing but
financial losses for 20 years.
The old mining laws — which give mining
first priority over land use and seek to let mining companies go where they
want and mine what they want — are just not acceptable in the 21st century.
First Nations say so, the courts say so, and the public says so.
The root of the problem is the free-entry
staking process, in which anyone with a computer and a few bucks can stake a
claim. This system allows areas to be claimed that never should be, and
projects to be developed that simply can’t be allowed to proceed.
The textbook case of why this is a problem is
now Taseko’s efforts to turn the waters and lands of the Tsilhqot’in into one
of the world’s biggest open-pit mines just so the company could get to a very
low-grade gold and copper deposit (it would on average need to move one tonne
of earth just to find less than half a gram of gold). It should have walked
away in 1995 when the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans told the
company and the province to forget the idea. But the land was under claim —
without the Tsilhqot’in’s consent — and so the battle continues 20 years later.
No wonder mining executives around the world
are wary of B.C. as a safe jurisdiction in which to invest. No wonder smarter
companies already recognize the new realities and seek to work in a meaningful
way with First Nations from the outset.
The only surprise is that the B.C. government
still thinks it is 1870, when First Nations’ rights in B.C. were not
recognized, and mining can do what it wants, where it wants. This has to
change, and the Tsilhqot’in Nation, like other First Nations, are not prepared
to wait years or decades more for politicians in Victoria to see the light.
The Tsilhqot’in Nation is now putting the
final touches to its mining policy, based on the culturally and ecologically
conscious development of mineral resources in the Tsilhqot’in traditional
territory.
It will define how relationships between the
Tsilhqot’in and mining and exploration companies must be built on a foundation
of respect for Tsilhqot’in values, rights and governance, and real
partnerships.
This is not an anti-mining initiative.
Quite the contrary, it is aimed at creating a
process under which projects that can be supported can proceed and that time
and money is not wasted on projects that are doomed to be mired in
confrontation for years before finally failing.
Had such a system been in place before,
Taseko and its investors would now not be so much out of pocket with nothing to
show for it, and the Tsilhqot’in and provincial and federal taxpayers would not
have had to waste so much time and money on a non-starter project that lies in
one of Canada’s only court-proven aboriginal rights areas.
Our 20-year-old landmark aboriginal rights
and title case is now the subject of a title appeal before the Supreme Court of
Canada.
Our hope is that in the future, the Taseko
fiasco need never be repeated. Surely that is something everyone should hope
for.
Joe Alphonse is chief of Tl’etinqox-t’in and
the Tsilhqot’in tribal chair. Roger William is chief of the Xeni Gwet’in First
Nations government.
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