We already know people who live on traditional lands in the north are unlikely to welcome mining. They shouldn’t be able to veto it
Ontario Premier Doug Ford wants to break up the status quo of process, endless consultation and delay that has bogged down major infrastructure project approvals in the province. It’s about time. Ford’s Bill 5, the Protect Ontario by Unleashing Our Economy Act, aims to speed things up by creating “special economic zones” that would exempt big projects from many municipal and provincial rules.
The bill would allow cabinet to designate those zones and decide what rules apply. It can take a big club to break up the status quo. Bill 5 is certainly such a club, and no one swings one quite like Ford. This is his “Get It Done” mantra in action.
Ford aims to use the new rules to get development started in the Ring of Fire, a promising mining area in the Hudson’s Bay lowlands that occupies about 5,000 square kilometres and is rich in nickel, chromite, platinum, palladium and copper. The land is a combination of federal and provincial Crown land and Indigenous reserve land.
For the rest of this column: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/randall-denley-ontario-ends-the-ring-of-fire-consultation-quagmire-to-finally-get-it-done