The Globe and Mail is Canada’s national newspaper with the second largest broadsheet circulation in the country. It has enormous influence on Canada’s political and business elite.
OTTAWA — In one of her first tests as Environment Minister, Leona Aglukkaq will give thumbs up or down to a proposed mine in British Columbia that is a new version of a plan tossed out as ecologically disastrous by a former Conservative minister.
Chiefs from Tsilhqot’in First Nations say they have no doubt that a federal environmental assessment panel, which is weeks away from delivering a verdict on the New Prosperity mine at Fish Lake in the B.C. Interior, will reject it out of hand.
They say the plan for the billion-dollar gold-and-copper pit that Taseko Mines Ltd. wants to dig near the lake the Tsilhqot’in call Teztan Biny – a small body of water they consider culturally and spiritually sacred – is just as bad as the earlier version thrown out in 2010 by former environment minister Jim Prentice.
Representatives from environmental groups who sat in on the panel’s hearings this summer say they are cautiously optimistic it is preparing to say no to the mine. Scientists from Environment Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Fisheries and Oceans, as well officials from B.C.’s provincial ministries, expressed significant concerns about the project.
But Ms. Aglukkaq will make the final decision. And the chiefs say they are uncertain that she will have the confidence to oppose an environmentally unsound project should the panel rule against Taseko. The Conservative government is proud of its pro-development agenda.
“What we need and what we want is a government that is ready to stand up and tell industry that it is time we take a different approach and let’s involve First Nations people in every aspect of decision making,” said Joe Alphonse, the chair of the Tsilhqot’in National Government, who visited Ms. Aglukkaq in Ottawa this week with Chief Roger William of the Xeni Gwet’in.
It’s not the first time the Fish Lake mine has gone through the environmental assessment process. British Columbia conducted its own environmental assessment of Taseko’s earlier proposal in 2010 and approved it, citing the hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars worth of tax revenue it would generate.
The federal government followed up with its own assessment and concluded the project would be environmentally ruinous. Two days before he quit the Conservative cabinet, Mr. Prentice upheld that decision, saying the mine would result in “the destruction as well of a complex and highly productive ecosystem.”
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/aglukkaq-will-have-final-say-on-controversial-fish-lake-mine-in-bc-interior/article14824406/#dashboard/follows/