Waiting on ruling from federal government about extraction limits
More than 1,000 workers at Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. received termination notices and might be out of work by October if the Nunavut-based miner’s extraction permit isn’t renewed by the Federal government, the company said on Wednesday.
The workers received their notices on July 31, company spokesman Peter Akman said. He added that the notices would be rescinded if Baffinland receives the permit to increase its annual extraction limit of iron ore to six million tonnes from its original allowance of 4.2 million tonnes.
While the company was allowed to mine six million tonnes of iron ore every year from 2018 to 2021, an application to further expand the mine capacity to 12 million tonnes received a negative recommendation on environmental grounds from the Nunavut Impact Review Board (NIRB), a body that advises the government, in May.
“There are rules within the NIRB process that you cannot project split. You cannot apply for two elements of a project at the same time, and so …(we) said to NIRB we will not be applying for six (million tonnes) for 2022 (because of the 12-million-tonne application),” Akman said.
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