Good morning, everyone. My name is Ugo Lapointe. I work for MiningWatch Canada, as the Canadian program coordinator.
MiningWatch is a non-profit organization based in Ottawa. We have a mission to promote better environmental, social, and economic practices in mining in Canada and abroad.
We can discuss for a long time the different mining issues that concern Canada currently, but we wanted to highlight two key issues, and mostly one this morning. This morning the main point we want to discuss is that the global mining industry, as we can see now, is growing at an unprecedented rate. It's really significant, the trends we're seeing, not only over the last decade but really during the last 50 years. We need to keep those global trends in mind for future public policy-making in Canada.
I will explain why it's important to keep those global trends in mind when it comes to environmental issues, particularly as it pertains to Canadian mines in Canada.
It is useful to adopt a historical perspective when considering gold mining and gold consumption globally for the last 160 or 170 years. Looking back, you can see an exponential increase in metal consumption, particularly since the 1980s. Iron, copper, and nickel have all seen exponential growth globally.
The main mining jurisdictions in Canada are Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, Newfoundland, and Nunavut. We see over the last 10 years significant growth. Over the last two years, there has been a slowdown in the mining industry. Even with that slowdown, however, we're still about twice as high as we were 10 years ago, to judge by investments in projects in these provinces and territories over the last 20 years or so.
There are many drivers for this growth, but I will highlight only the main ones.
Population growth is a major driver, and consumption growth comes with it. This is taking place largely in the urban centres of the world. City-building and urbanization, particularly in developing countries, whether it's China, Brazil, or India, account for the use of massive amounts of metals such as iron, nickel, and copper. Over the last 50 years, the urbanization trend has been major. People are moving to cities in China, and we see cities of a million people springing up every year, almost every month. This activity requires massive amounts of metals.
Transportation is the other major sector. With transportation, we're talking about road infrastructure, including the transport modules such as cars, boats, and airplanes. You name it.
When you look at the statistics, you see these are the main drivers.
Of course, when you start looking at other specific metals like gold or a commodity like diamonds, these are very peculiar niches that are more in the aesthetic consumption and financial sectors. The point is that there are major trends of global growth that are linked to a whole bunch of what we call base metals, which are linked to city and population growth, and then there are other subsectors that we need to consider when we think of public policy for the future.
Another major trend that I want to highlight with you this morning is the fact that we're seeing lower and lower grades; in other words, all across the planet and on different continents, the mines that we're mining today are not as rich as the mines that we used to mine.
This graph represents trends in countries on four continents—the U.S.A., North America, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil—for gold mining over the last 170 years or so. All across the planet we are seeing that in the gold mines that we mine today, grades of gold are a few times lower per tonne of rock extracted.
There are two main reasons that explain those trends. One is that, yes, we mined the richest ore body that we could find first, and actually those trends are also observable in Canada in many instances. The other trend has to do with technology. Today we're able to mine lower-grade mines that we were not able to mine before.
Why is this trend important for us today? This means that when we mine today, for the same amount of metal that we produce, we generate far more mining waste than we used to. The mines are becoming bigger and bigger and the mine waste that we need to deal with—the tailings and even the energy or the water that is needed—has significantly increased in relation to the same amount of metal that we produce. There are significant environmental and social issues related to that.
In particular this morning I just want to highlight three main issues. I'll focus only on one, because I won't have time to explore all of those. The three main issues that are linked to the global trends I just mentioned—the mine waste and tailings that are generated by those mines today—are massively challenging technically, financially, and environmentally. Socially what we see as well is a trend towards more and more projects getting into sensitive areas where we did not formerly go. Those sensitive areas trigger community responses that are often in opposition to projects.
We need to consider this trend, because it has an impact on the mining industry in Canada and it will continue to have an impact. In our opinion, Canada should develop a solid public policy in response to this specific trend. Indigenous people's rights in particular are a key issue. Economically the costs of cleaning up those sites is increasing because of the size of the sites, but there is also the matter of liability when some of those sites are abandoned by mining companies and the cleanup costs end up in the lap of the government or the taxpayer.
One example that you see illustrated is that of the 2014 mine spill in Mount Polley. This was the biggest mine spill in Canadian history, with 25 billion litres of mine waste spilled into the surrounding waters. Today we are still dealing with the aftermath of that spill. That is linked to what I was saying earlier: we need to deal with bigger and bigger mines and more and more mine waste and mine tailings sites. Doing that is a technical challenge and a financial challenge.
The dams that we build today, which can be 40 metres or up to 100 metres high, represent a huge risk, in our opinion, for the government, for taxpayers, if those constructions are not well done and if they end up under government responsibility for the next century. They need to be well designed, well operated, and well maintained, and they need oversight and financial securities to make sure that taxpayers don't have to pick up the tab if something fails.
Mine spills are not unique to the Mount Polley spill of 2014. We've seen other mine spills. We've counted at least 10 to 15 mine spills in Canada over the last 10 years. These are just examples of a few of them.
The point is that tailings management, mine waste management, and the associated risk of spills is of major concern. It's a concern that will continue to grow as the mines become bigger and bigger and we have more and more mines. There is a cost associated with them.