How does that play out?
Evidence of meeting #36 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yesaa.
Evidence of meeting #36 for Indigenous and Northern Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was yesaa.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
How does it play out in any industry when someone shows up and does things that aren't good for the environment, the industry, or society in general? Hopefully they get hauled away to jail at some point if they're bad enough, right?
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
Yes.
I see that in 2013 you had 50 placer applications in the Yukon. That's a great volume of work, actually, even at a very abbreviated level, to get through any kind of bureaucratic process. It's a lot of difficult work. You have to do the same for everyone. You can't treat one person differently from another. If you have somebody new in the industry here and somebody who has been there a while, they're going to end up in the same process.
How would you shorten the timeframe, or how would you shorten the workload, in doing an assessment of placer mining when you have somebody new coming on the block?
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
I don't think the assessors really take into account whether someone is new or not.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
Everybody is treated the same, of course, and that's only fair and right.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
It means that the people who have been there longer sometimes have a little extra paper burden. Even though they're trustworthy and they know what they're doing and they have all the tools and equipment and the knowledge to do it exactly right, you still have to question them like you'd question somebody new showing up.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
That's true. The questioning is consistent, but none of the questions are really designed, I think, to sort out a bad apple, or someone new from someone old.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
Okay, but they're to determine that each person who's going ahead with a project has met the minimum basic criteria that are required.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
It should be based on the project itself and not the person.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
Yes. It's based on the project. We have no argument with that. Of course that's the way it should be.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
You say it's been a difficult time. Would you say that the cost of doing the environmental assessment work has now made any part of the industry not viable?
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
We can afford the actual cost of doing the work, though it's very hard to find someone to shepherd it through the system. Many of us find it very difficult to shepherd these things through the system ourselves.
I can give you an example. Years ago, when YESAB first came in, I gave up on trying to do it myself. I just got too angry and frustrated. They're very busy right now, YESAB, and so are the people who take these things through the system.
My son-in-law and I decided to do a road application ourselves, because what could be so complicated about a road application, really? We made the initial application, went over the route and everything like that, and presented it to YESAB. They came back with an inadequacy form and said they needed more information. One of the things they wanted to know was all the routes that were no good that we'd rejected. Well, of course we didn't look at routes that were no good. We looked for the most logical, easy, and stable place we could find to build a road.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
I just get totally frustrated when people ask me to tell them about all the places that were no good to build a road. I mean, it's just....
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
It is a process that can be frustrating, and that's what we're hearing from you.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
But it's not a process that has stopped anybody yet from placer mining.
3:35 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
It can stop people for a season of placer mining, certainly, because you can get held up in the adequacy review.
I can give you direct examples from my own experience. I had a licence renewal in a place that I had been mining for many, many years. I went for a normal licence renewal, and all of a sudden YESAB wanted me to do a heritage overview study, which would delay the whole thing for a whole other season, really, because of our seasonality up here and the short working season we have.
We went to the heritage branch and said, look, YESAB's asking us for a heritage review. The heritage branch said, no, we already have the heritage review. It was done by a hardrock company two years ago: we have all the information. YESAB already had the information too. This is part of our frustration.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
I'm running out of time here, so I have to ask you a question now.
3:35 p.m.
NDP
Dennis Bevington NDP Northwest Territories, NT
You know, you rely on local people understanding how to do your job. Now you're going to have a minister of the Canadian government giving policy direction to the board that makes decisions about how your job gets done.
Wouldn't you rather see that happen with the board, with the Yukon people, rather than somebody in Ottawa?
3:40 p.m.
Conservative
3:40 p.m.
President, Klondike Placer Miners' Association
I thought that's what this was about. I could be mistaken, but I thought this was about the delegation of direction—
