Natural Resources Committee on Sept. 22nd, 2016

[Joe Campbell]

Well, it's probably best to talk about the scale of the work we do.

I said earlier that all the historical mines in the Northwest Territories occupied 0.03% of the area of the Northwest Territories. That's a real number. Unfortunately, I can't tell you what 0.03% of the Northwest Territories is going to have the next mine on it. We deal with large differences in scale in the work we do. With my scale of exploration, we need vast territories to look at. If you exclude those areas right from the very beginning, then there's no possibility for us to determine whether those are areas that are going to later impact economically on people in the north. They're excluded from us completely.

As we go through our exploration and it becomes more impactful.... At the beginning, with the early exploration, we're walking over the ground. We don't disturb anything. It's basically looking. If we find something of interest, obviously we're going to do things that have more impact. We'll be drilling holes, but again it's ephemeral. It's short-term work. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it doesn't work. We walk away from it. We do our cleanup, and a few years later you'd never know we were there.

If we get into the mining activity, yes, we have huge impacts on the land there, and those impacts will change that land forever. We can't fool you by pretending that we can completely bring the land back, but it's that small area I talked about.

That little area of land that we need for high impact is a small price to pay for the great economic benefits that mining brings to the north. If we have good co-operation and we have good education to the peoples in these communities.... We must remember that these people are living in small, isolated communities. They're not aware straight off the bat of how mining works. If I say I'm going to explore, they don't have any concept of whether that means I'm walking across the ground or I'm digging a great big hole into it, so education is important for us in bringing that forward so that we have co-operation with the first nations and we can bring the benefits to these communities.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Another issue that you mentioned was infrastructure. It's been mentioned a number of times this morning. Can you give some examples of shovel-ready infrastructure projects that perhaps, if they are not funded, if they do not proceed, if governments don't invest in them, would have a direct and immediate or medium-term impact on mining operations, be they diamond or otherwise, in Nunavut or the Northwest Territories?

[Joe Campbell]

I think Pierre gave the best example, and that was Izok Lake. This is a deposit that's been known for years. If it were in an area of better infrastructure, it's unquestionable that project would have been developed decades ago.

There's a project north of us called Courageous Lake that has a very large gold deposit. Right at this point, that project is on the cusp of being economic. The main deterrent against developing that project is the fact that it's 230 kilometres away from Yellowknife. It's remote.

In respect to Pierre's comment about mines going electric, yes, if you have grid power you can go electric, but if I have electric equipment underground and I need to power my mine with a diesel generator, it doesn't really make much difference: I'm still burning that diesel fuel. All of the other green solutions that are currently available to us, in terms of wind and solar, are not ones that can effectively run a mine in the north. When you have a mine 300 kilometres away from anything else, your first concern is to make sure you don't kill anybody. We need a power source that we can rely on 24/7. Right now the only thing the industry has is diesel. Yes, we'd love to have electric power, but we need a grid to get to those mines to do that.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell.

Mr. Cannings, we'll go over to you.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for coming here today.

I'm going to start with Mr. Gratton.

Just to pick up on the idea of grid—and you mentioned Goldcorp's plans—I've just heard concerns in northern Ontario that even if you brought power to some of these areas, the Ontario grid couldn't handle the power that's necessary to deal with these projects. Can you comment on that?

[Pierre Gratton]

Actually, Ontario is heading towards having surplus power, so I don't think there's going to be a lack of power to support electric vehicles.

I'll add one other point as an example for the north, similar to the previous topic. Agnico Eagle, which operates the Meadowbank mine in Nunavut and has a new project under way called Meliadine, has indicated that if there were an infrastructure bank, there's a run-of-river project that they would likely finance. This would provide power not only to the mine but also to the northern communities in the region that also rely on diesel, such as Baker Lake. There are some options that could be enabled through a mechanism like an infrastructure bank.

There's one other thing I would like to suggest. I did it two days ago when I went up to Gahcho Kué for the official mine opening in the Northwest Territories. I wanted to see where it was on Google Maps, so I went to a Google map. I encourage all of you, when you leave this meeting, to go back to your office, go to Google Maps, click Gahcho Kué, and then scan in. You'll see this little dot and how small it is—to your point—how tiny. It's one of three mines operating in the Northwest Territories, and it is just a tiny speck on the map of the Northwest Territories, in a country as vast as Canada. That's what we're talking about.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I have another question for you. You were talking about the concerns over certainty, but you said you welcome the changes to CEAA and the Fisheries Act, or look forward to what they bring. You said there were concerns around cumulative impacts and species at risk. Are those concerns that they will be taken into account, or just concerns over how cumulative impacts would be taken into account?

[Pierre Gratton]

What's happened with the regulatory reforms is that we went from having 6,000 or so projects subject to environmental assessments to fewer than 100, and they're almost all mining projects. Mining is pretty well the only sector left that's reviewed by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency.

When they look at cumulative effects, they only look at them from the perspective of what effect that mine might have on the cumulative effects in the region. They don't look at the other contributions to significant effects taking place. We now have three examples—and the Sisson mine is one—of the federal government concluding that this project can have a significant adverse effect on the region, even though, to our point, it's a tiny dot in a broader landscape. There's a lot of other activity going on around it. Whether it's natural gas exploration, forestry, or logging, these have impacts that are much greater with respect to the land base.

The federal government doesn't look at any of that. It only looks at mining. Because we're the only ones left under CEAA, we're the ones who potentially face a “no” decision, even though what we should really be looking at is what's good for the region overall and what the necessary trade-offs are.

It may be that a mine should not proceed, but you can't just look at the mine; you have to look at the broader issues. That's the problem we're now facing under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, which is a pretty significant one.

There are other issues too. It's a more rigid act. Coordination with the provinces is much more difficult now, leading to new delays. It has not turned out to be a happy experience for us at all.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll turn to Ms. Cluff-Clyburne.

You spent much of your presentation talking about first nations consultation and collaboration. I've heard comparisons of northern Ontario and northern Quebec with regard to this, and I've heard praise for what's being done in northern Quebec. Agreements like the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement and the Paix des Braves have created rules and regulations hand in hand with the Cree and Inuit.

Do you feel that model is something we should follow elsewhere in the country?

[Susanna Cluff-Clyburne]

Just to be clear, when we talk about indigenous peoples, we're talking about all three constitutionally recognized indigenous peoples. I think that type of agreement—the James Bay agreement—is certainly something that can be looked to. I don't think we would ever advocate that it be replicated throughout the rest of the country, because the relationships between indigenous peoples and the crown are so different. Their histories are different and their current circumstances are different. While to our minds it has been a success, I don't think we would ever advocate that it be replicated elsewhere.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I'll comment to Mr. Campbell.

I was at a presentation last night or the night before on the new national park proposal for the east end of Great Slave Lake, which is being brought forward now largely by the first nations there. It seemed they were trying to accommodate resource industries around that and excluding areas that might be of interest. With that sort of process, when you have first nations proposing to set areas aside, how do you work with that? Do you support that kind of process?

[Joe Campbell]

What we support is being included in the process. There's not anybody here who suggests we shouldn't have any parks or that there aren't areas that we want to keep pristine and protect. We just want to be part of the process. In the case of the project I have, just to give you a simple example—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

It will have to be a short example.

[Joe Campbell]

—we're exploring what is the most promising gold belt in Canada, north of Yellowknife, yet over the last 20 years, the territorial government has given leases for cottages on the lakes in that area. That creates another layer of difficulty for the development of the area.

Had there been a process in place, we could have told them that this was not a good place to put a cottage, particularly because it has very high arsenic levels. We could have been part of the process. We can help to make parks better by making sure we exclude areas of very high value to the mining industry—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Campbell. I apologize again. I'm going to have to cut you off there.

Mr. Harvey, I understand you are going to split your segment with Mr. Tan.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Yes. I just have all of my questions directed at Mr. Gratton.

When you spoke earlier, you spoke about the lack of certainty that has emerged within the Canadian mining sector over the last number of years, and how that has led to us effectively sliding down the scale in terms of development and our standing on a global scale.

Can you touch a bit more on how you believe we got to where we are, and what the mining sector in general thinks the path forward is? How we can get to where we need to go, and what is government's involvement in that process?

[Pierre Gratton]

Sure. I should put it in some perspective.

We're used to being the number one jurisdiction, so maybe our standard is high. Our chief competitor for a lot of the mining commodities is Australia, and that's who we're losing ground to. We're still competitive with the United States or Mexico or Chile. We expect to be, as a matter of course, but with Australia, we have to work hard at it. They're a federal state like us, so they have state level and federal level, but their federal environmental assessment system is more selective. It's not all mining projects. They intervene more selectively than we do, and it is better coordinated. They have provided much more support for infrastructure building, particularly during the last super cycle, than we did. They've done a number of things. They've even, most recently, appropriated our flow-through share system, which gave us a competitive advantage; now they have it, so we've lost that advantage.

They've been doing a number of things over the last 10 to 15 years that have outstripped us, and I think that's the cause for concern.

With our regulatory system, I touched on the issue of cumulative effects, but what the CEAA has done is impose timelines. We like timelines. We're not arguing against timelines, but it has become so rigid that coordinating with provincial environmental assessments—and we're always subject to both—has become more difficult.

We need somehow for the act to still have the rigour of timelines but to include some flexibility to work with the provincial governments. What I think was overlooked when these changes were made is that for the mining industry, it's not just the federal EA that matters: it's the whole thing. It's the provincial EA, the federal EA, the provincial and federal permit process, and how long that takes. We're in a situation now in which federal permits can take longer than the environmental assessment. It's after the environmental assessment. You're looking at maybe a two-year EA, but then a three-year permitting process. Our timelines are getting really long and much more uncertain, and there has to be a better way to do this.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Thank you.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Mr. Gratton, you just mentioned innovation. So far, most of our arguments or regulations or the report have been focusing on innovation in mining practices, on mining operations or mining technologies. In your opinion, how can the government help the mining supply chain to be more innovative?

[Pierre Gratton]

That's exactly what the Canada Mining Innovation Council is doing. It's working with suppliers and with other service providers to help generate the kinds of solutions we need, whether those be electric vehicles or new water treatment systems. It's things that can help transform. There's a project under way to look at better techniques for grinding rock that would save huge amounts of energy and reduce costs and emissions.

We need to separate in our minds the difference between R and D and innovation, because the two are often conflated. R and D is long-term. It's the new idea that could take 20 years to materialize. Innovation is about looking at what already exists and adapting it to a new sector or a new application. That's what CMIC is focusing on, that last piece that can truly be transformative.

We have learned that we need to collaborate more as a sector, and in doing so we could really benefit from the federal government's support for this transformation exercise that we're on now with the Canada Mining Innovation Council.

[Geng Tan, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

That's all the time we have, unfortunately. We're very grateful to the three of you for joining us today and sharing your information.

Committee members, our next meeting is Tuesday. We've had some adjustments to the schedule. We have two witnesses scheduled for Tuesday, so I propose to do them together, rather than in two one-hour segments. We can go an hour and a half and then use the last half-hour to address the witness list. If everybody could show up on Tuesday, raring to go, with the focus on the witnesses they really want, that would be fantastic.

Thank you.

The meeting is adjourned.