EDITORIAL: Inuit investment in mining needed (Nunavut News – May 31, 2020)

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The Hope Bay gold mine in Nunavut was recently acquired by Chinese gold mining company Shandong Gold Mining.

As Canada’s resource industry is rocked by the fallout from Covid-19, the foreign mining firm has scooped up Hope Bay from TMAC Resources for what is likely a good price, despite suspicious timing, creating what Tom Hoefer, executive director NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, has called “good news for everyone.”

Not everyone is happy though as the purchase has generated a national debate around Arctic sovereignty and Canada’s dealings with China.

Geo-politics authors, federal MPs and a former CSIS director have been weighing in on the issue and recently so has Rylund Johnson, a Yellowknife MLA in the NWT’s legislative assembly.

“China has no interest in seeing our rare earth metals developed or any mine compete with their own if it comes to that … If Canada had real economic development corporations and gave the North’s Indigenous development corporations meaningful capital, then we could actually own some of our own resources as a country,” stated Johnson online in response to the article “Chinese ownership of Nunavut’s resources stokes unease,” in the May 25 Nunavut News.

For the rest of this editorial: https://nunavutnews.com/nunavut-news/editorial-inuit-investment-in-mining-needed/