Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 24th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Thank you very much, Mr. Mark. There again, members, are two more important components to the issues pertaining to economic development here in the north.

At this point we will go on to questions from members. We go in a pre-set order. The time for questions and answers is five minutes. That will start with the member's question, and by keeping the questions and responses as compressed as possible, we are able to hear more about the subject.

We'll begin with our first round of questions. We'll go to Mr. Russell for five minutes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good afternoon to each of you. Thank you for being here with us.

Mr. Mark, have you seen eastern Arctic shipping increasing over the last five to ten years?

[Manasie Mark]

As I said, I have worked almost a year here for NNSI. I don't have much information on that yet, but if you want to have more information on this, we can get in touch with my head office.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

We see some statistics saying that there has been an increase in maritime travel—cruise ships, for instance, is one form. I'm not sure whether we have any statistics on barges and cargoes being carried and that type of thing.

What is the navigational system like? We hear that there should be more investments for navigational aids for ships and shippers as they navigate the eastern Arctic. Is there any work being carried out in that way?

[Manasie Mark]

Yes, there have been projects. It's been ongoing. As I said, there have been bigger and newer vessels and bigger barges being used this year. Other than that, I don't have much information on that either, yet.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I appreciate that you've been there for a year, and of course it takes a little while to get your feet wet and get to know all of the different dynamics related to the industry.

Let me turn to Mr. Clements. Can you take a minute to bring us through what your company had to do in order to go forward with its exploration activities? What is the regulatory process like? Who are the partners or the parties that you would have to have some consultation with, some approval from? We get a different picture of the different regulatory regimes from Yukon, NWT, and now Nunavut. If you could, just take us through what that is like, and if you have some idea about specifically what the mines might have to go through—I know you are in exploration—could you just give us a little walk-through on that?

[Brooke Clements]

There are a number of components right now. There are federal permits for access to the property; there is the Nunavut Impact Review Board; the Nunavut Water Board looks at our permit requests; we also consult with the local communities to keep them informed of what we're doing and to try to maximize employment in the local communities.

It's a process that's a little bit in flux right now. There's new legislation as a result of the 1993 land claim that's going to be put before the House of Commons, possibly shortly, which slightly redefines the process and establishes project timelines. It's a pretty well-defined process of various levels of review, with the levels of review increasing as your project gets more advanced.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Maybe if you want to go into a drilling program, for instance, or something of that nature, it would require more permitting, or—

[Brooke Clements]

Yes, each level of exploration and development requires more and more rigour of evaluation and permitting. For a drill program, say, you need a water licence, you need permits for the camps, the camps are subject to inspection. You also have an obligation with WCB to meet certain safety standards, and our operations are subject to inspections. Maybe three times this year we had inspectors out to the property. We have a property near here where 48 people worked, based out of two camps.

I hope that gives you a general idea.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Yes, and from my perspective, even though we may be able to make some things simpler or more clarified from a proponent's perspective, I still think we want a certain level of rigour in terms of making sure that people's interests and environmental interests, which are somewhat the same, continue to hold to a high standard.

So whatever this legislation might say, and we haven't seen any legislation yet, we certainly want to make sure that if there are clarifications—at least, I'm speaking from my perspective, Mr. Chair—we don't want to see the threshold of safety or environmental protection or IBA's, for instance, which are legal requirements, or any of that lessened.

Going back to Mr. Mark, there's been talk of a port here in Iqaluit, a docking or wharf infrastructure.

[Manasie Mark]

[Inaudible--Editor]

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

There's been a promise of a deep-water port, an off-loading facility here in Iqaluit. Would that be a real asset and a real help to the shipping industry here?

[Manasie Mark]

We have been dreaming about that here for years. The high tide we have is unbelievable. We have to wait the whole day to get the high tide back.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

I have one quick question to build on this. Kimmirut is about 120 kilometres from here, isn't it?

[Manasie Mark]

Yes.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

If there were a docking facility in Kimmirut with a road tying it to Iqaluit, does Kimmirut have the same tide problem—or challenge? I mean, we can't change the tides; we're not going to move the moon, either. I'm just wondering whether Kimmirut is more suitable for a large docking facility.

[Manasie Mark]

It is, because I don't see that Kimmirut has a higher tide than we have here. In Iqaluit there are great problems with the tide. More people have been talking about getting the dock going over by the causeway.

[Todd Russell, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

I think we'll leave it there.

Thank you, Mr. Russell.

It is now Mr. Lévesque's turn.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good afternoon, gentlemen.

Mr. Clements, you have no doubt heard about the problems that Canadian Royalties experienced in Nunavik. A large part of the problem was due to the fact that the company could not use the existing road, and the cost of building a road to transport the mineral ore out of the territory was exponential.

Let's talk about the planned infrastructure. How far from the shore are your deposits? What are the estimated costs? Are the deposits that you are currently exploring very far from the shore? When you bring in exploration or extraction equipment, are your camps set up by helicopter, or is there a road that you can use? If you extract the resources, do you intend to refine the mineral ore on site before shipping the finished material?

[Brooke Clements]

I'll speak to those two questions and I'll just refer to our project 120 kilometres from here at Chidliak.

For the foreseeable future we will not need land transport. We can transport by aircraft any equipment such as drills, heavy equipment, things we need for the next few years. In the summer we have a gravel airstrip and in the winter an ice airstrip capable of landing aircraft. For the next few years it would be much more expensive to take things over land. If we're fortunate enough to get to the construction phase, the first year or two almost certainly would be a winter road to transport the big stuff the 120 kilometres across the land and then, we hope after that, a permanent road.

Your second question is about refining stuff on site. For diamonds, yes, you would do all your processing and recovery on site. Your daily production is maybe the size of a coffee can. So all the diamonds would be extracted from the rock on site and then they would be shipped off site, probably by aircraft.

It's not like metals, where you would ship off large concentrates or big bars of copper and things like that.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Manasie, would you be able to set up a deep-water port so you could unload your boats without needing barges for long-distance cargo shipping?

Does the boat leave from Montreal or Halifax? How long does it take from one of those harbours to get here?

[Manasie Mark]

The boats come from Montreal. The boats take about five to six days to come up here to Iqaluit.

Three ports, even four, would be fine to get things going better than what we have here now.

[Yvon Lévesque, Bloc, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Your boats ship goods, non-perishable food, oil and so forth. You have tankers, regular cargo ships.

Do you anticipate developing gold, copper and other types of mines, since the territory no doubt has such resources? Do you anticipate boats doing the shipping? Transporting the finished material does not have to require a huge amount of capacity; three or four trips a summer should be sufficient to liberate the territory. Mr. Clements could probably confirm that. Have you planned for this?

After arriving here, how long does it take to unload a tanker? I am not just talking about here, but also in Nunavik, as you have to cover long distances to ship oil.

[Manasie Mark]

Yes, and this usually takes almost everything. They take almost any kind of cargo, plus the dangerous goods and all that. If they have to carry gold and diamonds, they have been set up for that. It's all been set.