Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for the opportunity to speak here today.
My name is Mike McDougall. I'm the president of the Klondike Placer Miners' Association. With me is Jonas Smith, our executive director.
Our organization represents approximately 160 family owned and operated placer mines in the Yukon territory and an industry upon which the modern Yukon was founded. I'm a multi-generational placer miner. My father was a placer miner. My wife, of course, is with me in the operation, and so are our children.
Since the days of the great Klondike gold rush, our industry has consistently provided a solid foundation for Yukon's economy. We've delivered employment opportunities for Yukoners and we generated tax revenue for government. Unlike many Canadians in the resource sector this year, many of our members have had a good season primarily due to a low Canadian dollar and a reasonable U.S. dollar price for gold. However, the current low oil prices have also played a significant role as the placer industry consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuels.
Now a brief note about placer mining. The business of placer mining is to recover gold that is free in gravels, and the gold has been placed in those gravels by natural processes over many millennia.
Miners use heavy equipment to remove the overburden and we process the underlying gravels to recover the gold. Gold is separated from the gravels by using water and gravity methods alone. We're significant users of diesel fuel in our processes not only for our heavy equipment but also to run the generators, power our camps and places where we prepare food for our families, but also to enjoy hot showers sometimes after a day in the pit. Solar and micro-hydro options are utilized where possible, but there's currently no alternative, economic or otherwise, that could displace the fossil fuels from our industry.
We're very concerned about the potential detrimental effects a carbon tax would have on our industry and on the economy of Yukon.
We support initiatives to promote efficiency and innovation, but making our cost of living and doing business more expensively will not reduce our consumption of fossil fuel. It will just make it harder to provide for our families and to contribute economic opportunities to our communities. If the federal government is truly interested in reducing emissions, we would like to see a focus on fewer financially punitive measures to encourage increased efficiency and reduce consumption.
Canada and Yukon are blessed with an abundance of natural resources, including our human resources. Our land has endowed us with raw materials that are sought after across the globe. We have the ethical and environmental workplace standards as well as the ingenuity to be world leaders in responsible resource extraction. Our placer industry has developed and incorporated cutting-edge technologies and environmental reclamation techniques as it has evolved over the last century.
We would like to see our government utilize tax cuts as opposed to tax increases as a means to incentivize further improvements. Programs such as educational opportunities to teach miners about new technologies and access to low-interest loans to take advantage of such technologies, or to upgrade to more efficient equipment, would all be options that we would like to see explored.
Almost a half of all first nation self-government treaties in Canada are with the Yukon first nations. This creates a unique set of opportunities for the first nations involvement in resource development in Yukon. First nations citizens are fully integrated into our workforce, in our communities, and really in our families as well. Their participation in resource development is also enshrined in Yukon's environmental assessment process, which is defined in the land claims agreements.
This legislation, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, YESAA, came into force in 2003. YESAA defines much of how the placer industry's operations are assessed for impacts and how these impacts are mitigated. Placer mining is the single-largest client of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board.
In 2015, the former Conservative government passed amendments to YESAA that were intended to address issues with the assessment process that have compounded since its inception in 2003. However, due to a lawsuit resulting from failure to properly consult first nations, our Yukon member of Parliament, the Honourable Larry Bagnell, has campaigned successfully to rescind them, and Bill C-17 is currently awaiting second reading in the House of Commons.
To be clear, the KPMA respects and fully supports the Yukon first nations' position to be meaningfully and adequately involved in the consultation process. However, what was lost in the process and the politics is the pressing need for these changes.
Issues such as costly and time-consuming reassessments for unchanged projects, inconsistency and lack of accountability between designated offices, and a lack of clear timelines all leave our industry with uncertainty. The amendments were meant to bring YESAA into line with the other Canadian jurisdictions, provide certainty for investment, and allow the Yukon to be competitive. As the government is now prepared to amend this legislation once again, we would like to see these issues addressed in the amended bill.
The federal government has heard the concerns of the first nations. As the number one client and end-user of the YESAA process, the KPMA expects that government will engage with us prior to finalizing any amendments.
I would like to thank all honourable members again for the opportunity to speak today. I look forward to expanding on my comments in responding to any questions you may have.