Mr. Chairman, honourable members of the committee, thank you for allowing us to speak this afternoon.
Newmont Mining Corporation is a global producer of gold. We have operations in the United States, Australia, Peru, Indonesia, Ghana, Canada, New Zealand, and Mexico, employing some 35,000 people around the globe.
Our wholly owned subsidiary in Canada, Hope Bay Mining, is exploring and considering development options for the Hope Bay greenstone belt in western Nunavut. It is one of the largest unexplored greenstone belts in North America. Hope Bay includes the Doris North project, which is currently in advanced exploration underground, and which we hope will come into production at some time in the near future.
Newmont also owns legacy properties in Canada that are in closure and reclamation. These include the Con Mine in Yellowknife and the Golden Giant Mine near Marathon, Ontario. Further, we have new exploration interests in western Canada, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories.
We'd like to talk today about issues that affect all of us who are working in the Arctic. Companies pursuing mineral exploration in the north face a number of challenges. They include regulatory uncertainty, substantial expectations by first nations and the Inuit, and a lack of key infrastructure, combined with natural factors of vast distances and harsh weather that make the costs of operation in the Canadian far north very expensive.
The challenge is to make development of more deposits feasible to feed the pipeline of projects in exploration and production to build a sustainable Canadian industrial base in the Arctic.
First, we need an efficient regulatory framework. In order to facilitate exploration and development in the Arctic, it is essential to have a regulatory framework that is protective of the environment, provides local benefits, and can happen in a time that allows companies to make timely economic decisions. It takes time to complete the regulatory processes, and this affects Nunavut's competitive investment market. Despite its extremely promising geology, the business challenges associated with working in Nunavut are great. Permitting timelines are of even greater critical impact on Arctic operations than they are south of 60°. The main reason for this is that long permitting lead times complicate the logistics planning necessary to build and operate mines. A lack of certainty in permitting decisions significantly increases the risk of the project and hinders investment, because a mistake of months in a permitting process can actually cost us years on the ground, by the time we design and build a mine and transport equipment to the Arctic.
There are some things that would help greatly. The northern major projects office modelled on the major projects office south of 60 degrees needs to be improved and resourced so that it can make the same advantages in the north that the MPO makes in the south. Major development projects need to be able to get through environmental assessment and permitting in a reasonable time. This has been an ongoing discussion between us and others. Our opinion is that 24 months is a reasonable period. At times now it goes closer to four years.
Reduced timelines that add to environmental assessments, such as long periods of review prior to ministerial signatures and long periods of approval on other auxiliary federal permits, could be shortened without risk to the environment. We believe you should be able to have your permitting packages together within six to eight months after you go through an environmental assessment. At Hope Bay, for instance, some of the permits following environmental assessment took another four years to obtain.
Part of this is that the northern boards of public government need to have adequate resources to do their job in a timely manner. It's expensive to keep good staff in the Arctic and to attract people to stay there, and it's also expensive to train the people from the north to participate in the processes. That is certainly a repairable problem. Resourcing those boards is something that should be fixed.
Projects located on Inuit or first nations lands face unique opportunities and challenges. Newmont supports the process under way to complete the implementation of the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement through actions like passing the proposed Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act with appropriate timelines.
Canada should be proud of the success of the initial mine training initiatives for first nations and Inuit in the NWT and Yukon. These programs are sunsetting and should be re-examined. The demographics in the north show that the population of young aboriginal people is growing rapidly. Cooperation between government and the mining industry on training can provide an opportunity for these youth to have meaningful careers going forward in their lives. Private-public partnerships for training should be an important part of Canadian progress in the Arctic.
There are some unintended consequences to the Nunavut Land Claim Agreement. One of them is that a position of double-bonding has occurred with the reclamation securities that are held over land and water between regional Inuit organizations and AANDC. That needs to be addressed and taken care of. It means that companies are posting double security for land and water in some instances. We fully support securing potential liabilities 100%, but they can't be doubled up. We're told that the solution to this may only be through legislation. If that is the case, we would encourage this committee to ask the government to proceed with legislation that would fix the issue.