Good morning, honourable members.
My name is Joe Campbell and I am president of TerraX Minerals, a publicly traded junior company. We're exploring in the Yellowknife area of the Northwest Territories. I am also a board member of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines and I represent them.
I'd be remiss to say that these are my words; they are not. It's a collection of words from notes of various members within the two chambers.
I want to open by saying that the mineral industry is good for the north. It helps provide thousands of jobs, fuels the economy with billions in business expenditures and taxes, and even helps contribute to the regional infrastructure.
Over the past 25 years, with the discovery of diamonds in the Northwest Territories, the mining industry has made even greater strides in aboriginal 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 now to aboriginal governments too. Mining has significantly catalyzed the creation of a middle class in the aboriginal communities in the north.
Mining is the north’s economic advantage, and as a result, today it is the largest private sector contributor to the GDP in both the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. In doing all of this, the industry has essentially been your contractor, doing what governments cannot do, converting seemingly worthless rock into valuable jobs, business, and tax revenue. We do that at great risk, for finding a mine is not easy, nor, as I can tell you from personal experience, is finding the money, for we do much of that with other people’s money. We do all of that following the ever-changing regulatory blueprints that you have asked us to follow, but there are limits to what we can deliver by ourselves. Our mines won’t last forever, and we must continue to work to sustain what we have and to explore to find new mines so that our efforts to date don’t slide backwards.
How do we sustain such a good thing? It is primarily by keeping investment interest strong. We live in a competitive world, and investors have a host of countries to invest in. To keep investment strong requires an attractive climate that provides reasonable security for investors, since finding mines is already risky enough. We very much need you to help us if we are to create a strong foundation for future growth.
With that, let me speak to three broad areas for improvement.
First, improve access to land. Access is the lifeblood of exploration and mining. Without it, we cannot find and develop mines. Land access is problematic today, and we need Canada to help remove the challenges that I will now describe.
The first is settling aboriginal land claims. The southern half of the Northwest Territories is still subject to unsettled land claims, and negotiations have been under way for over 30 years. Besides removing lands from development during negotiations, not clarifying who the land owner is creates tension between public and aboriginal governments. Investors can get innocently caught in the middle when, for example, the government says the land is open to exploration and a company begins its work, and then an aboriginal government says the land is not open and threatens legal action. As a result, much land is officially off-limits to development, and much more is effectively put off-limits.
Second, we need to reduce the amount of land being proposed for pure conservation with no allowance for mining forever. The footprint of our current Northwest Territories mines is about 0.005% of the Northwest Territories; the area of all of the mines from all of our history is less than 0.03%. This is a very small footprint. Our exploration is short-lived and it has low environmental impact, yet we are the recipients of the largest national parks in the country. The most recent federal proposal for Thaidene Nëné national park is for 15,000 square kilometres, three times the size of Prince Edward Island. Mining is not a threat in this highly regulated world, and our mines operate to very high standards. We can coexist with the environment. We can have both.
Third, we need help with the proposed land use plan for Nunavut that is moving dangerously and strangely towards the most protective in the country. I say strangely for, if it is allowed to proceed as it is, it will compromise even the Inuit, the largest landowners in the world, from developing many of their land's hard-negotiated mineral rights. Since INAC will need to sign off on the final plan, it is time for Canada to scrutinize the work that is being done before taxpayer money is wasted and Inuit economic future stymied.
An efficient regulatory system provides certainty of cost and process for investors. Unclear, uncertain, and untimely regulatory processes frighten investors away. The previous government opened the door to regulatory cost recovery in both the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. These two territories have the most progressive and transparent regulatory systems in the country. While they are models of aboriginal and public governments sharing responsibility for the regulatory regime through board processes, they are also expensive processes. Please don’t hinder investment by imposing cost recovery on already high-cost processes and jurisdictions.
We also need your help with regulatory capacity. Regulatory boards are not fully staffed, which causes process delays and adds pressure and cost to the system. The office overseeing Nunavut mineral tenure continues to be woefully understaffed. Simple things like phone calls are not returned. More importantly, tenure maps are not updated, and what we call assessment reporting is delayed.
We need Canada to modernize Nunavut’s tenure system. INAC has promised for years a modern tenure system in Nunavut, called map staking. The transition from ground staking to an online system would represent transformative change and would increase business and investor certainty, reduce costs, and support the participation of local prospectors in the industry. This could lead to a resurgence of the mineral industry in Nunavut. Our industry strongly supports the map-staking initiative developed by INAC, but we are weary of the long implementation dates that have come and gone numerous times. We would like to see an end product implemented, particularly at a time when the industry could use a boost.
Finally, we need to reduce the infrastructure deficit. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut cover the size of western Europe, but with a tiny fraction of its infrastructure. There is no highway system in Nunavut and only a small one in the Northwest Territories. Similarly, there are no power grids in Nunavut and only three stranded, isolated grids in the Northwest Territories. There is no ability to bring cheap power from the south or vice versa.
As a result, remote mines must supply their own roads, ports, and airstrips as well as their own diesel power, adding cost that most competitors don’t face. Diesel is used because it's the only reliable source we have. This further un-levels the playing field in an already high-cost Northwest Territories and Nunavut, making them less competitive.
There are a number of infrastructure proposals on the table that all need federal financing. We are in desperate need of some visionary federal investment. The nation-building Grays Bay road would fit that bill nicely and give Nunavut its first road link to southern Canada.
In closing, our industry has made great strides in the past 25 years, particularly in aboriginal communities. Building a strong mining future matters. It will help sustain and grow benefits for those northern and aboriginal communities, and as a side benefit, it will make a strong statement for Canadian sovereignty in the north.
Thank you for listening.