Project now needs licence from Nunavut Water Board
TMAC Resources Inc. can move ahead with plans to expand its existing gold mine in western Nunavut, now that it has received a project certificate from the Nunavut Impact Review Board for Phase 2 of its Hope Bay Belt Project.
But the project certificate, issued on Nov. 9, comes with a caveat: TMAC will report and examine “barriers and opportunities to achieving high levels of Inuit employment.” The certificate follows the board’s review of the project’s potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. This was accepted, with some recommendations, by the responsible federal ministers in October.
The project certificate applies to the development of three gold mines and related infrastructure at Hope Bay, located about 150 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay and 700 km northeast of Yellowknife.
The project certificate contains 54 terms and conditions so that the project is “developed, operated and reclaimed in a manner that does not unduly and adversely impact the ecosystemic integrity of the Kitikmeot Region and the Nunavut Settlement Area,” said Elizabeth Copland in a Nov. 9 news release issued by the NIRB.
Before the project was issued, the NIRB conducted a workshop via teleconference on Nov. 1, with TMAC., the Nunavut Water Board, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, the Government of Nunavut, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Transport Canada.
Based on their submissions, the NIRB revised the wording to one condition of the certificate. It now makes it clear that TMAC must “monitor the socio-economic effects of the project, including employment, on affected communities of Nunavut and compare these effects to the impact predictions made for the project.”
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