Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
On behalf of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines thank you for the invitation to speak to you today in relation to Bill C-43.
The Chamber of Mines is the industry association and leading advocate for responsible and sustainable mineral exploration and development in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. We support the merging of CHARS and the Canadian Polar Commission as an appropriate efficiency measure that will assist in achieving the goals of the northern strategy.
We are eager to do our part to support this institution and help shape Canada's future through the advancement of Arctic science. The chamber could be a helpful broker in identifying those of our members who might be interested in partnering with the science and technology program to advance new knowledge creation in areas of mutual priority.
We have been a member of the CHARS advisory panel since 2011 and we're pleased to participate in the development of the science and technology blueprint. During its development we recommended that CHARS' research priorities focus on three key areas that affect our industry. The first is marine shipping. Virtually all new mines in the Arctic regions of Nunavut and the NWT will rely on marine shipping. We believe that new research in this area will show that responsible marine shipping is not harmful to the environment.
We like to think our industry helped Canada set a leadership role in Arctic shipping back in the 1970s when Canada joined with industry to support Arctic mining and marine shipping development. At that time the federal government took an 18% ownership share in the Nanisivik mine, supplying transportation and community infrastructure for the most northerly mining operation in Canadian history. It was that government that invested in the technological creation of the world's most advanced ice-breaking cargo ship, the MVArctic, to service the Nanisivik and Polaris mines.
It is that MVArctic technology that was the foundation of the latest advancement in Canadian Arctic marine shipping, the much larger and more sophisticated MV Nunavik, which recently successfully took a load of mineral concentrate from Arctic Quebec through the Northwest Passage to China. We hope that CHARS' work will help remove barriers to mining development, the goal being that years from now we will have determined that marine shipping to support mining is not environmentally significant.
Our second key area of interest is improved community health. We would like to see research with appropriate indicators that provide scientific evidence to support mining's contributions to healthier communities. Training and capacity building that has arisen from the CHARS project in and of itself supports resource development. For example the Nunavut Arctic College has developed an environmental technologies foundations program primarily to develop technicians for CHARS. However, some of these future potential graduates could also consider environmental management positions with mining projects.
Science literacy amongst the public is another mutual objective. With active research programs under way in the north involving community participation, it is more likely that the general public will have a greater knowledge of scientific methods and be better able to understand the assessment and monitoring results of mining projects.
A third key research priority for our industry involves improving baseline wildlife data for environmental assessment. CHARS has an important role in supporting our advancing potential mines in filling the gaps in knowledge in environmental data. This data, particularly with respect to marine and terrestrial wildlife, will assist resource development companies in completing their environmental studies.
To conclude, we are pleased with a number of the legislative changes proposed by Bill C-43 in division 3, part 4, and expect they will be an incentive for increased mineral investment in the north. The chamber looks forward to future dialogue with the federal government as the CHARS institute is established.
That concludes my presentation. Thank you.