Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and standing committee members, for having invited us down to appear. I'm joined today by Larry Connell and Brent Murphy, who are two directors on our board.
We're a non-profit society representing industry and advocating for responsible development in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. We do that out of two offices now, located traditionally in Yellowknife and this year a new office in Nunavut. It was sponsored as a pilot project with the Government of Canada, the Government of Nunavut, and our industry members to deal with the phenomenal growth opportunities.
We've provided a larger deck, and I'm going to paraphrase it, touching on a few slides. There are three key messages: first, mining is a key economic strength in the north; secondly, great opportunities lie before us; and third, we face challenges.
Eberhard Scherkus already touched a little bit on the importance to the economy in Nunavut with his project slowly approaching 15%, along with exploration in that region, of the GDP. In the NWT, mining is about 30% of the GDP. When you factor in other spinoffs in real estate and transportation, it's almost half of the whole economy. It's certainly a big industry.
Our industry is able to produce a lot of other spinoff benefits in infrastructure, for example. Over the years, it has been responsible for the only railway into the north. It has been responsible for ports at Nanisivik and Polaris, for the highway into Yellowknife, and ice roads—that sort of thing. It has also been very good at providing community benefits through things like helping infrastructure in communities, recreation facilities, scholarships and training, and lots of sponsorships and donations as well.
Our industry is a technological innovator, certainly on the engineering side. We're able to overcome challenges. The Diavik Diamond Mine received Canada's top engineering award a few years ago for having come up with a dike design that allows it to mine ore bodies on the bottom of the 60-kilometre-long lake. Without that, we wouldn't have the benefits of that operation.
We've also made engineering achievements with diesel technology, for example. We actually achieve twice the efficiency from our diesel power generation that communities do, because we collect the waste heat from those diesels. Just recently, we had one of our companies announce it is putting in wind generators at its site to help expand that ability and see what they can do for generating alternative energy.
We've also helped with ice-breaking cargo capability in the north. Nowadays, we've engineered ice roads so that we can take 10,000 trucks over a two-month winter road up to mine sites, which is a pretty phenomenal achievement.
We are not only a technological innovator; we are also a community innovator. Quite frankly, the mining industry in the last 15 years has been a real game changer in the north in both territories. Community benefits are that big game changer.
Mining is the largest employer of aboriginal people in Canada. It's also now the largest private sector employer of aboriginal people in the north.
The NWT diamond mines alone have contributed more than 17,000 person years of northern employment. Half of that is aboriginal employment. That has just been in the last 13 years. Accompanying that, there has been over $8.5 billion in northern business investment, and half of that has been in aboriginal businesses. These are businesses that just didn't exist a mere 13 years ago. Already, if you look at Nunavut's gold mine and get the statistics from it, maybe you'll see that it is already on that same path as to what's happening over there. It's a real game changer; it's a different industry from even 20 years ago.
We have a lot of opportunities before us. There is a nice map in your deck that shows potential projects in Nunavut and the NWT. These are all projects that are in the advanced stage, or else they are in the environmental assessment stage. We're hopeful they can become mines. Of course, it's all dependent on commodity market prices, timelines, and our hitting that window.
In Nunavut alone, there are at least 10 potential mining projects. They're identified on a nice chart in your package. If you look at the job opportunities that accompany those, you'll see they're huge. You'll see in the graph that it's really quite a tidal wave, if I can use that term, how many jobs those represent. They're in the thousands of jobs, which means lots of opportunity for training if we're going to maximize those opportunities in jobs as well.
On the business side, again, there are huge investments that those projects would bring, both in capital construction and in operating expenses. I dare say that also provides a lot of benefits to government, because the whole way through there are taxes collected.
If you look at the NWT, we have six mining projects in a similar situation. They are perhaps not quite as large as in Nunavut, but they are still important to us. If you combine those two, you have a total value in the north of about $14 billion in capital investment between those two territories. There are over 100,000 person years of employment and more than $40 billion in total expenditures over their lives.
We face challenges as well. There are five challenges we've outlined. One is geoscience; one is regulatory and policy environment; one is infrastructure; one is regulatory capacity; and the final one is community capacity.
Geoscience is our research and development. I know you've already heard speakers in the past on that, so I won't touch on it very much.
We're very happy that there has been an announcement recently to reinvest in exploration in both territories. That is the most undermapped region of the country.
On the regulatory and policy environment, I'd say Nunavut is quite supportive. They've benefited from a single land claim. They have a supportive GN, Government of Nunavut, and NTI mineral policies.
They have legislation, though, that needs to advance. You've heard some people touch on the NUPPAA bill. We're hoping that will come back this year. That will help to provide certainty for projects going through environmental assessment, and I think that's why Nunavut has $323 million in investment projected for this year.
On the NWT side, it needs help. Quite frankly, that's reflected in a drop in exploration investment down to $83 million this year. When the world is booming, our two neighbours in the Yukon and Nunavut are booming, and we're going the other way, it's a symptom that something is wrong.
One of the issues is access to land. It's becoming more difficult in parks and protected areas. Unsettled land claims are creating a huge challenge. The Akaitcho claim is a particularly rich area, and that's creating a lot of problems for us.
Aboriginal consultation is unclear, and I've mentioned land use planning and protected areas.
The legislation is complex. We have a very complex environment because of the multiple land claims up there. Our legislation under the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act needs amending. The process has begun. It's been a long time coming, but we would urge that the pressure stay on to have it amended.
With regard to infrastructure opportunities, the Chamber of Mines doesn't have a particular strategy that we're pushing. We have a map in the deck. You'll see there are a lot of opportunities throughout both territories for ports and for roads. There are also opportunities for hydro power, airports, even a railway. We would seek your help, though, in finding creative solutions and creative funding solutions to that.
On the community capacity side, training capacity is the big issue. You've already heard that ASEP comes to an end on March 31. There is no successor program. We need to have a successor program. It was very, very successful, with the benefits on the diamond side in the Northwest Territories. We need to keep that momentum going.
We also need it on the business side. With the billions of dollars in investment, local companies could reap a lot of benefits, as they are now, but with that growth we need to also look at increasing their business capacity.
There is environmental capacity for communities as well. We want to have good solid environmental assessment processes, and communities need to be involved in that to make them sound.
Ottawa can help us face these challenges. Let me touch on five.
On the geoscience side, continue to grow that investment. It's important to an undermapped region of Canada.
On the regulatory and policy environment, advance the legislative changes to NUPPAA and the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. Settled land claims would be a tremendous benefit to us. And clarify the aboriginal consultation issue.
On infrastructure, as I said, find the creative solutions and partnership and we'll work with government on that. With regard to regulatory capacity, provide sufficient funding for public boards of government. We've signalled to the Minister of AANDC already about funding for boards like NIRB. They have to deal with that wave of opportunity, and we want them to have the capacity to run good processes.
Then, finally, on the community capacity side, we need support for new aboriginal training funding. We also want support for that business capacity building, and we want to ensure funding to participate in the regulatory processes.
That draws my report to a conclusion.
I've also brought with me a book to speak about innovation and infrastructure, and there are copies available for every one of the members. It's the 30th anniversary of the ice road, which has done so much and has actually made those diamond mines possible. So you might like to have a look at that.
Thank you very much.
