Good morning, honourable members.
My name is Joe Campbell. I am an executive board member of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines and vice-president for the Northwest Territories. I am here to present the chamber's comments on Bill C-88.
I am also an executive chairman of TerraX Minerals, a publicly traded junior exploration company currently exploring for gold around the city of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. I am also president of a geological consulting company providing services to the mining industry around the world. As part of that consulting business, I have acted as expert adviser to the Kivalliq Inuit Association in Nunavut for environmental review of mine developments. My varied work experience is relevant to my appearance here on Bill C-88.
I wish I could say that the layering of personal workload is exceptional. However, it is commonplace in the mining industry, in which business risk is high and making ends meet is a constant challenge. These challenges are greatest in the Northwest Territories—the central target of Bill C-88. Severe climate is certainly a factor, but a far greater issue that we face is the lack of infrastructure, which escalates development costs and timelines and renders the dream of being a leader in producing the critical metals of the green economy exactly that—a dream.
There is no level playing field for the north. We are beset by higher costs and tougher regulations from all levels of government—local, indigenous, territorial and federal. Against these odds, the mineral industry persists and provides thousands of jobs, fuelling the northern economy with billions in business expenditures and taxes and helping to contribute to regional infrastructure. Mining remains the only viable private industry that staves off the total welfare state in the Northwest Territories.
The mining industry has made great strides with indigenous communities, creating thousands of person-years of employment, supporting a wave of new aboriginal businesses and producing a flow of millions in taxes and royalties, not only to public governments but to indigenous governments also. Mining has significantly catalyzed the creation of a middle class in the indigenous communities of the north.
This economy was bought with a very small footprint for our current Northwest Territories mines of about 0.005% of the Northwest Territories, yet mining is the only industry that is regulated to provide a comprehensive project description detailing all environmental and social impacts, plans for mitigating those impacts that include impact benefit agreements, and closure plans to return the area to nature. We post the costs of those closure plans up front before digging a hole. I would bet that residential housing developments would grind to a halt under a similar strain.
Mining is not a threat in this highly regulated world and our mines operate to very high standards. We can coexist with the environment. This is the vision of Canada's north and should furnish the guiding principles for this legislation.
Despite this record and the honourable people who created it, the mining industry is demonized by NGOs and often by our own governments. Each new piece of legislation escalates the effort to constrain or prevent resource development, sometimes explicitly within the legislation but more often as an insidious increase in regulatory inefficiency that ups the costs and timelines of the process, making mine investment more uncertain.
Let's be clear. This bill's main purpose is to regulate our industry, yet that industry is criticized as self-serving if we provide comment—comment to make changes on issues that affect us directly. Let me state clearly that we are not opposed to the spirit of Bill C-88. To attract investment in the north, we see it as necessary to have clear and firmly established rules of law to guide our development.
Do we want more certainty, clarity and timeliness of process than is provided by Bill C-88? Of course we do, but I am not here to argue for a single board or for shortcuts to process timelines. I will argue that legislated uncertainty and raising the cost of the process is counterproductive to regulating development. Arguably, it is included in Bill C-88 as prevention of development.
As regards certainty of process, please use this as an opportunity to change the legislation to enact sections 3.18 and 3.19 of the devolution act as promised in the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act. By addressing the need to fully devolve the MVRMA to the territorial government, we will allow northerners to make their own decisions. This will coordinate the process and rid us of the lack of accountability and ambivalence that now infests it
As regards cost, please do not enact cost recovery on Bill C-88. Embedded within the bill—including but not limited to proposed sections 79.4, 90.31, 109.3 and 142.01—are broad provisions for cost recovery. This industry is expected to shoulder these costs, but we are given no control over them. The federal government empowers the boards, and they control the activity and the clock. Then, after pulling all the levers, they turn around and put out their hands for the recovery of the costs of the process they are entirely responsible for.
If you believe these costs are unsubstantial, please review sections 124 through 128 of the MVRMA and the corresponding amendments within Bill C-88. After several years of baseline studies and consultation, all mine developments go to an environmental review with a minimum timeline of approximately 18 months for determination. ln practice, a determination is rarely reached in that timeline. As an example, the Governor in Council can extend the timeline to infinity based on subsection 128(2.3) of the MVRMA.
ln addition, the review board can freeze a review timeline to request more information from the developer, with no restriction on how many times it can do this. Requests to the board for delay can be submitted by any interested party. No other industry, except oil, lives daily with the spectre of never-ending regulatory processes, and now you expect us to pay for it.
ln Bill C-88, the only written control on what is an applicable cost is for “prescribed” services. There is not a person on the planet who would sign a contract under these terms, yet the industry is expected to swallow it whole while shouldering all the other extra monetary challenges that northern development entails.
The industry cannot bear the burden of cost recovery, particularly when we have no ability to control the process or budget for it. Until the mine is built, we have no source of income. More correctly, our investment backers will not bear the cost. No investment equals no development, which equals no cost recovery at all.
ln closing, our industry provides the products that you all use daily. The green economy will rest on the backs of the rare earth metals mined by our industry. The mining industry is and will remain the backbone of northern Canada's economy, providing meaningful employment, particularly in indigenous communities.
Building a strong mining future benefits those northern communities. Don't enact legislation that diminishes that growth.
Thank you for listening. I would be pleased to answer any of your questions later.