Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 31st, 2011

[Ugo Lapointe]

If I remember well, in March 2011, the Auditor General of Quebec tabled a report consisting of several chapters. The one that attracted attention was the one on shale gas. However, another chapter dealt with environmental monitoring by the ministère du Développement durable, de l'Environnement et des Parcs du Québec. In short, it said that this department did not have the means to support its ambitions. It does not have the means to ensure appropriate follow-up and monitoring.

Let us take the example of a former director in this department, for the region of Abitibi-Témiscamingue and northern Quebec, which covers close to two-thirds of Quebec. She says that between 4 and 6% of full-time jobs are designed to ensure follow-up of dozens of operations projects and hundreds of exploration projects. The department simply does not have the staff to ensure follow-up and monitoring of the regulations.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Have you observed comparable shortages in human resources in federal organizations working in northern Quebec?

[Ugo Lapointe]

I don't have any data for the federal Department of the Environment. However, I imagine the tendency is the same, particularly in recent years.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I'd like to make a link between your organization and Ms. Schwann's concerning uranium.

In Quebec, as you said, a moratorium has been demanded. What are the main concerns motivating the population to demand a moratorium?

I'd like to ask Ms. Schwann this question, to find out whether the same concerns exist in northern Saskatchewan.

[Ugo Lapointe]

The question is for me, I think?

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Yes, at least the first part.

[Gary Merasty]

I'll take that question. We're actually one of the uranium companies--

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Just a second--

[Gary Merasty]

I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

I will take just one minute with Monsieur Ugo Lapointe, if I may, and then I'll see if there is the same problem in Saskatchewan.

[Ugo Lapointe]

I think that one of the concerns rightly expressed by the population concerns the long-term management of mine tailings. Every mine, including uranium mines and metal mines in general, generates tailings in large quantities. Typically, metal and uranium ore—depending on the deposit—often leaves contaminants or toxic elements, such as heavy metals, which must be managed. There is always the risk of acidification or acid mining drainage to be considered.

But uranium mines pose an additional challenge, which is that of managing the tailings, which contain significant radioactive material, like thorium and radium, which is left behind. The company takes the uranium, the marketable part that it has to process and send to markets in the south and elsewhere. But then it leaves behind millions of tonnes of mine tailings containing radioactive material.

At present, the best means available to us for managing these tailings are civil engineering infrastructures, such as dikes, that must retain the tailings not just for 10, 20, 30 or 40 years, but even centuries. But it's not true. And it's not just us who are saying so.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Lapointe. I can see exactly where you're going as far as potential environmental problems are concerned.

I would like to send my question back to the other side. Does the same concern about the management of uranium tailings exist in Saskatchewan? Earlier, we were told that the duration of uranium operation permits was too long and that all that had to be assessed.

Thank you again, Mr. Lapointe.

[Tammy Van Lambalgen]

Hopefully I'll answer some of that question, but in Saskatchewan I think we're comfortable with companies that.... The provincial government requires financial assurances to be posted for the uranium projects, which are either through actual funds deposit or irrevocable letters of credit, and those funds are based on what the cost of decommissioning would be.

The additional safeguard is that down the road, when we've met all our decommissioning requirements and our site is ready to be turned back, it can be turned back to the crown under the Reclaimed Industrial Sites Act, which also has funding requirements both for unforeseen events and for routine care and maintenance activities that might be associated with that project.

So certainly I feel that we have a lot of measures in place in Saskatchewan to ensure that long-term...I don't know...assurance of a site.

[A voice]

Yes.

[François Lapointe, NDP, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, QC]

In principle, the tailings are never—

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Mr. Lapointe, I'm sorry, but you're out of time.

Mr. McGuinty, for up to five minutes, please.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

I'm going back to the question of first nations/aboriginal participation in operations, particularly in Saskatchewan. We're told there are over 40 member companies in the Saskatchewan Mining Association. Can someone help me understand...? Back in 1976, Thomas Berger wrote a report which said that ultimately we should be striving to get to a place where equity participation was the norm in terms of first nations folks owning companies.

Of the 40 member companies, including Cameco, AREVA, and those that are part of the Saskatchewan Mining Association, how many of those companies have equity participation by aboriginal peoples?

[Pamela Schwann]

Recognizing that the population of northern Saskatchewan is 85% aboriginal, none of our companies would. Province-wide, the aboriginal population is about 15%, so even in the north, which is really the best example in Canada in terms of aboriginal participation both in employment and in business, we're not at equity participation. Great efforts are still being made to get there, but it's certainly not a simple answer. It involves a lot of additional supports in the education system. It's almost a social science question.

[Gary Merasty]

Let me add that in northern Saskatchewan, through various panel hearings in the 1990s, the government, northern residents, and the uranium mining companies set a best efforts target at 67%. We're at 50% currently and have been sustaining 50% for the last number of years.

But since 2004, we've increased the number of northern employees by 183%. One out of every two employees hired has only kept us at the 50% mark, and we're running into educational problems.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Mr. Merasty, I don't understand. What are you talking about when you talk about 67% and 50% as targets? These were voluntary targets taken on, but they are a percentage of what?

[Gary Merasty]

The mining companies in northern Saskatchewan, with the government and the northern community, said of the workforce at the mine sites that we would strive and make best efforts to achieve a 67% employment rate of northerners. That's one fact.

The second fact is that we are at 50%.

The third fact is that in the last six years we have increased the number of aboriginal people employed by 183%.

What we're experiencing as a fourth fact is that we're tapping out the skilled labour population, so the first nation communities and the mining companies are now working together, in an interest-based focus, on how to increase that number.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

I understand that we're talking around the edges again. We're talking about employment, which is an important thing, and opportunities, or what was referred to as a social science question. I understand that impact benefit agreements keep emerging. They're evolving, they're improving, and most of them remain confidential, particularly some I've come across in northern Alberta recently that I've tried to get access to information about....

But I want to ask the question again. I don't see educational blockage or, for example, lack of educational opportunities as a necessary block to equity participation; that is, to ownership. For example, why couldn't Cameco enter into a joint venture with equity participation? Or is Cameco in joint ventures with equity participation for folks who live on the ground there?

[Gary Merasty]

I'm sorry. I misunderstood your equity question. I thought you meant it from an employment participation perspective.

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

No. I mean ownership in the companies that are exploiting the resources.

[Gary Merasty]

Right.

At the current time, the opportunity that we pursue with the communities, based on the communities' direction, is to help build businesses within those communities to provide services to the mine sites, which in the last six years have provided $1.7 billion in gross revenues. To them, this is a very lucrative opportunity.

Secondly, discussions around equity have not come up because they introduce other risks: cash calls, riding the markets up and down.... What the communities are more interested in is a secure, stable level of funding that they can rely on for the foreseeable future.