Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, clerk, and fellow attendees. As you've just mentioned, I'm Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada. We're the national voice of the mining and mineral processing industry. Ben Chalmers, who is with me, is our vice-president of sustainable development and is responsible for implementing our “towards sustainable mining” initiative. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today and share some of our perspectives on habitat conservation in Canada.
For a bit of additional background, I sat on the B.C. species at risk task force a few years ago while president of the Mining Association of B.C. The task force was a multi-stakeholder group that included Peter Robinson, president of the David Suzuki Foundation. Established by former premier Gordon Campbell, the task force reached consensus and submitted both a description and an analysis of the shortcomings of the federal Species at Risk Act as well as a suite of recommendations for the province on how to improve its approach to species at risk protection. I encourage the committee to read the task force's report if you haven't done so, as well as the government's response, which was recently published.
In 2011, the mining industry employed 320,000 workers, paid $9 billion in taxes and royalties to provincial and federal governments, and accounted for 23% of Canada's overall export value. Mining is proportionately the largest private sector employer of aboriginal people and an enabler of many successful aboriginal-owned businesses. Critical to many rural and remote communities, mining also generates prosperity in our major cities, notably Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, and Saskatoon. Each of which serves as a centre for global mining excellence for various types of mining.
Looking forward, proposed, planned, and in-place mining projects in Canada amount upwards of $140 billion in investment over the next five to 10 years. Across the country, major projects are seen in mined oil sands, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, and diamonds, among other sectors, with large investments also occurring in environmental and processing areas.
To enable the industry to become an even stronger contributor to Canadian prosperity, industry needs an effective, enabling regulatory environment. In the brief we submitted to you, however, we focused not just on what we need government to do but also on what we are doing. We describe in our brief our members' commitment to biodiversity conservation demonstrated through implementation of our towards sustainable mining initiative, or TSM. TSM is a condition of MAC membership and involves public reporting and third-party verification of performance against a suite of performance indicators, including three that address biodiversity conservation. We also highlight for you a few examples of how some of our member companies are putting TSM into practice on the ground.
We focus on TSM because we would like you to understand how mining operates today and the kinds of systems that are in place to address issues such as biodiversity conservation. It is important context to guide government legislative and regulatory action.
When it comes to issues such as habitat conservation or species at risk protection, we believe that regulation that enables collaboration between different stakeholders will be the most effective. It's a different operating environment from, for example, pollution control where the source is clear as is the responsibility. When it comes to decisions involving land use there are multiple players and shared responsibilities. Hence, the regulatory approach should be different. Approaches that are too prescriptive and force land users into silos run a serious risk of failure and potential conflict.
The Fisheries Act, for example, has in the past compelled mine sites to create artificial and expensive on-site fish habitat that contributes little to enhanced fish populations and biodiversity, and may, in fact, work against both. We are cautiously optimistic that a new, more flexible approach to offsets by Fisheries and Oceans will enable more creative solutions to compensate for the, at times, temporary loss of fish habitat caused by new mining projects. Recently, for example, we are aware of Fisheries and Oceans accepting the repair and replacement of blocked and/or damaged culverts near the mine site as part of an offset plan. These actions, simple and cost-effective, will contribute to healthier fish populations overall, even though this activity is outside the mine lease. By allowing such flexibility, the government also enables industry to work more closely with local communities, including first nations, to identify and collaborate on local priorities, which also helps to foster social licence.
We also comment in our brief on the shortcomings, and frankly, the disappointment of the Species At Risk Act. When originally conceived, SARA was intended to foster stewardship and collaboration on the ground. Indeed, the front end of the act outlines the opportunities for concluding conservation agreements to enable industry, aboriginal, and local communities and governments to protect species and enhance their habitats. This is section 11.
Regrettably, the implementation of SARA has failed to capitalize on these aspects, at least to date. It has always been our view that collaboration involving land users, be they private land owners or tenants, will be the most effective approach to protect species and assist in their recovery.
A founding principle of the Species at Risk Working Group, an independent multi-stakeholder coalition of which MAC was a part—and I note we have two other organizations here today that were also part of this group a number of years ago—was that for species at risk protection to succeed, actions must work for species and for people. Conservation efforts should not place an undue burden on land users, as species at risk protection is a public good.
Instead, government resources have been directed almost entirely to the development of recovery plans, identification of critical habitat, and prescriptive critical habitat protection. Furthermore, a failure to meet the act's timelines for recovery plans has led to litigation. There is a concern that the avoidance of litigation is now driving decision-making, detracting from the act's real objective, which is to protect species at risk and support their recovery.
SARA's single-species approach has also precluded a more integrated ecosystem-based approach that would recognize and plan for the fact that species do not exist in isolation. A species-by-species approach, which adds to the financial cost of administering the act, also limits the potential for more landscape-, multi-species-, ecosystem-based approaches that hold the promise of greater effectiveness, lower costs, and lower impacts on land users.
“Single-species approaches can also have perverse outcomes, with society picking “winners” based on visibility or iconic status while ignoring “losers” that could be equally or more functionally important.” I lifted that line from B.C.'s Species At Risk Task Force report, which I thought was a really compelling one.
There is clearly a need for better federal-provincial coordination on species protection and recovery. For many resource sectors, including mining, the provinces are the primary regulator. The provinces are typically better placed to manage land-based decisions, which could be informed and enabled by federal legislative requirements under SARA.
Finally, we are concerned that a narrow focus on critical habitat protection as the only tool for protecting species at risk will needlessly sterilize the land base from responsible economic development, when other options might be available of equal or potentially superior effect. We recognize that at times critical habitat protection or no-go zones may be the only tool available to ensure survival of a species at risk, but blunt instruments such as this should be used sparingly and selectively.
Major projects, such as mines, are subject to full environmental reviews at both federal and provincial levels. Recent reforms to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act have not reduced the application to mining, although there have been meaningful and effective improvements to process and timelines. Today, mining represents some 70% of current federal environmental assessments.
CEAA requires consideration of impacts of a mining project on listed species at risk; thus environmental assessment ensures that mines are developed with knowledge of potential impacts on species and their critical habitats as well as of other environmental considerations. This process also ensures that mines are built with appropriate mitigation and compensation measures, if required. Mines are heavily regulated at the provincial level, with permits required for all aspects, including road construction, water use and release, tailings and waste rock management and disposal, and reclamation. Further, mines built by members of MAC will include implementation of TSM.
In this context, what becomes important is ensuring sufficient legislative and regulatory flexibility to encourage sensible and creative approaches to environmental management. Objectives-based rather than overly prescriptive legal instruments encourage better outcomes and foster collaboration with other stakeholders.
Our industry willingly partners with other groups active on the land base, in particular with aboriginal communities. Collective approaches reach farther and combine the traditional knowledge and scientific expertise of different partners. In our experience, local communities of interest, including habitat conservation groups with an interest in the outcome and with a connection to the land and its resources, can—given time, resources, and an enabling environment—form the strongest and the most effective and enduring partnerships.
The federal government can create conditions that enable and foster positive biodiversity outcomes by pursuing an outcomes-based approach. Rigid, prescriptive legislation and regulations have in the past contributed to perverse outcomes that should be avoided. An outcomes-based approach would support and enhance efforts by the mining industry to positively contribute to biodiversity conservation through initiatives such as TSM, would foster local collaboration and partnerships, and would reduce conflict.
Thank you, we look forward to your questions.