Environmental, human rights questions shadow Hope Bay mine sale – by Derek Neary (Nunavut News – October 13, 2020)

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TMAC Resources negotiated a mineral exploration agreement with land claims organization Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and a series of deals with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association (KIA), including a 20-year Inuit Impact and Benefit Agreement in 2015.

“All those agreements will stay in place” if Shandong Gold Mining buys out TMAC Resources, said Alex Buchan, TMAC’s vice-president of corporate social responsibility.

Asked whether the change in ownership at the Kitikmeot’s Hope Bay gold mine would open the door to renegotiating the KIA’s agreements as the Qikiqtani Inuit Association did in 2018 with Baffinland Iron Mines and again earlier this year with an Inuit Certainty Agreement – commanding a rising royalty rate, more jobs and training and even daycare provisions for workers’ children – Buchan tapped the brakes on such an idea.

“No, I don’t believe so,” he said. “In 2015, when we negotiated these sets of agreements with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and then with Nunavut Tunngavik … the term of those agreements was 20 years, and we’re basically five years down the road from that.”

Although Buchan said TMAC has been in “continual communication” with the KIA during this proposed sale, the Kitikmeot Inuit organization has repeatedly refused public comment on the pending deal. Buchan wouldn’t offer comment on where the KIA stands or whether its silence is cause for concern.

For the rest of this article: https://nunavutnews.com/nunavut-news/environmental-human-rights-questions-shadow-hope-bay-mine-sale/