https://www.kenoradailyminerandnews.com/
With Ontario’s legislative assembly back in session at Queen’s Park as of last week, Kenora-Rainy River MPP Greg Rickford is moving forward his agenda to reduce provincial bureaucracy hindering the mining industry, including changes to the Mining Act.
Rickford said he held consultation meetings with stakeholders in several provincial industries over the summer, including the Mining Working Group, formed earlier this year to reduce red tape in the mining sector.
As the minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Rickford met with the group on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at Queens’ Park for Meet the Miners Day. “Generally speaking, every sector had a consensus that our system was too expensive and too complicated,” he said.
The ministry’s strategy, so far, has been to put what Rickford calls “SWAT teams” on mining projects to help them move through government faster and implementing plans to pass regulatory changes to Ontario’s Mining Act as part of the Ford government’s larger promise to cut red tape across the board.
In a statement from Oct. 29, Rickford said he wants to work with MWG to propose changes to the Mining Act to accelerate approvals. “The act itself is not necessarily the problem, it’s the regulations that are born from the act,” he told the Miner and News. “We can’t take seven years to open up a mine.”
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