Natural Resources committee  The challenge is that we can't pass our costs on, so we need to have an encouragement rather than a penalty. We need to have it as an incentive to comply, rather than just a straight tax on the industry.

Natural Resources committee  Part of it would help.

Natural Resources committee  That's right. Currently we are paying a certain amount of carbon tax in British Columbia because, of course, trucking firms are bringing the product that we consume up through B.C. In answer to your direct question, yes, some form of...because we can't pass our tax on since we s

Natural Resources committee  Currently, the permitting process that a placer mine goes through in Yukon consists of an assessment through YESAB, and then an application for a water licence through the Yukon Water Board for the final operating permit. Because of an artifact of federal legislation being taken

Natural Resources committee  We're not part of the Canadian Mining Association. We're primary producers, but placer is unique in the Klondike, unique in the Yukon, and in Canada.

Natural Resources committee  Our organization, the Klondike Placer Miners' Association, has had no consultation on it. The broader umbrella group, the Yukon Chamber of Mines, may have, but I can't speak for them. Certainly we've not been consulted on it.

Natural Resources committee  Thanks for the question. Currently, just to back up a bit, there are no carbon taxes implemented in the Yukon at this point. In terms of alternatives to a carbon tax, I mentioned things like low-interest loans to upgrade equipment for more fuel efficiency. That would be one of t

Natural Resources committee  That's correct. Most of our mines are well outside of the traditional grids, if you will. Our only option is using diesel fuel to develop that.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you for that question. You're right. The four contentious issues were the delegation of authority, the binding policy direction, the fixed assessment guidelines, and the projects that had been previously screened with minor changes not requiring reassessment. If we had to

Natural Resources committee  We're a small family-based placer operation, so we fall into the lower third in size of operations. We'll annually use anywhere between 75,000 and 100,000 litres of diesel fuel in our operation. You can do the math very quickly. If the fuel costs an additional 25¢ per litre, then

Natural Resources committee  That's a very good question, because you are exactly right. We are bulk material handlers. Although the industry has changed dramatically from my father's time to now and we are using more efficient methods, we still require bulldozers for some of our processes and we still use l

Natural Resources committee  Those numbers have remained constant for us over the last seven years. It's fairly constant. In orders of magnitude, we are smaller than the largest operators. They would use two million litres, plus or minus. There's an enormous amount of fuel used to produce this gold.

Natural Resources committee  Thank you very much for the question. I like to say, in the roughest terms possible, that we turn gravel and gold into money, as placer miners, so we do the commercial part of it. The challenge for us is permitting, so we need to work on making sure that our permit processes are

Natural Resources committee  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