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Aboriginal and Inuit Mining and Oil/Gas

Who will pay for Ontario’s radioactive past? – by Aya Dufour (CBC News Features – October 15, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/

One northern remediation project illustrates the complexity of the issue

If not for the fences and the signs, nothing’s obviously threatening about the radioactive waste that has plagued Nipissing First Nation for decades. It looks like sandy soil peppered with small rocks. Behind the benign appearance, however, are niobium and other naturally occurring radioactive materials that were left behind by a defunct mining operation dating back to the early days of the Cold War.

With the company long gone and the Ministry of Mines busy remediating and monitoring the other 5,865 abandoned mining projects in Ontario, the waste has just sat there for 67 years.

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Baffinland cuts 10% of workforce to focus on Steensby rail – by Samuel Wat (CBC News North – October 19, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Mining company will reduce amount of iron ore shipments out of Milne Inlet

Baffinland Iron Mines is laying off 10 per cent of its workforce in Nunavut due to weak iron ore prices. Senior adviser Paul Quassa said the company is diverting its resources to the $5.7-billion railroad from the Mary River Mine south to Steensby Inlet.

“We would be rationalizing our equipment and supplies… and reducing the number of permit fronts to concentrate folks on the Steensby authorization,” he said.

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Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine mine close to extracting 2M ounces of gold – by Arty Sarkisian (Nunatsiaq News – October 16, 2024)

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Milestone expected to be reached in November; Nunatsiaq News takes tour to learn how ore is transformed

Agnico Eagle’s Meliadine gold mine is nearing a milestone. In November, the company projects the mine located near Rankin Inlet will have produced two million ounces of gold, said Pujjuut Kusugak, director of Nunavut affairs for Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.

Two million ounces is just under 57 tonnes — or perhaps a more appropriate measurement for such occasions, approximately 28.5 small elephants. Nunatsiaq News was given a tour Oct. 2 of the above-ground part of Meliadine mine to learn how rock gets blasted, excavated, crushed and transformed via chemical reaction into such an enormous amount of gold.

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‘We believe Canada needs more nickel,’ Wyloo boss says – by Nicole Stoffman (Sudbury Star – October 13, 2024)

https://www.thesudburystar.com/

Nickel produced and processed in Northern Ontario and the Ring of Fire would be destined for the EV market

Kristan Straub, CEO of Wyloo Ring of Fire, provided an update on the Eagle’s Nest Mine at the State of Mining luncheon in Timmins recently. The mine site in the Ring of Fire in northwestern Ontario has a ‘small footprint’ of one square kilometre or half the size of the Timmins Airport, Straub said.

The site contains a deposit of 17 million tonnes at 3.3 per cent nickel, copper and platinum group elements. It also has some of the world’s largest chromite deposits outside of South Africa, Straub said.

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Ontario stonewalling marine conservation area, proponents say – by Nicole Stoffman (Timmins Daily Press – October 11, 2024)

https://www.timminspress.com/

Bourgouin: ‘The province should be at the table with Mushkegowuk Council’

A proposed marine conservation area in the James Bay Coast is being hindered without the support of the province, Mushkegowuk Grand Chief Leo Friday says. The Mushkegowuk National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) would protect 86,000 square kilometres of federal waters in the Hudson and James Bays and 20 kilometres of coastal buffer zones under provincial jurisdiction.

The federal waters have been approved for conservation by the Ministry of the Environment, but without Ontario’s approval of the 20-kilometre buffer zone, the NMCA could still proceed but will be “very limited,” according to Lawrence Martin, director of Mushkegowuk Council’s lands and resources department.

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Plibersek releases reasons why $1bn McPhillamy’s gold mine near Blayney is on hold – by Lani Oataway and Hamish Cole (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – October 11, 2024)

https://www.abc.net.au/

Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek has found the ‘irreversible’ and ‘permanent’ loss to Aboriginal heritage outweighed the financial cost of halting a $1 billion gold mine development in the New South Wales Central West.

Ms Plibersek today released the Statement of Reasons behind her decision to protect part of the Belubula River, its headwaters and springs near Blayney, from the tailings dam earmarked for the site by Regis Resources McPhillamys gold mine.

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Is Ontario holding back the Ring of Fire? Federal natural resources minister says so – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – October 8, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Accused of stalling Far North mineral development, province says it waits on $1-billion commitment from Ottawa

Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said Ottawa offered a $40-million sweetener to entice Queen’s Park for a formal sit-down to discuss how to make progress in the Ring of Fire. So far, Wilkinson said, they’ve been rebuffed by the province.

“To date, Ontario has not taken us up on that, but I continue to urge Ontario to do that. I think it’s an important conversation, but there are really important issues to be addressed before we actually talk about mines.”

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N.W.T. gov’t to review impact benefit agreements between mines and Indigenous groups – by Nadeer Hashmi (CBC News North – October 08, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Indigenous groups will have say over whether agreements should be renegotiated

The N.W.T. government says it’s aware some mining companies are not happy with uncertainty brought by changes to mining legislation — particularly when it comes to their impact benefit agreements with Indigenous governments and stakeholders.

The forthcoming Mineral Resources Act may require these companies to pay more to communities and Indigenous groups affected by mining operations.While the act was passed back in 2019, the government is still working on developing regulations. An initial draft is expected to be released by the end of the year or in early 2025.

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Canadian miner Hudbay settles long-standing lawsuits alleging human rights abuses in Guatemala – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – September 8, 2024)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Hudbay Minerals Inc. HBM-T has settled a long-standing series of lawsuits in an Ontario court that centred around alleged human-rights abuses at a Guatemalan nickel mine more than a decade ago.

The allegations heard in the Ontario Superior Court are based on clashes between Indigenous Mayan protesters and security personnel at the Fenix nickel mine in eastern Guatemala in 2007 and 2009.

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Mining the Northwest: Ottawa drops $14 million to help move critical minerals to market – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – October 7, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Four northwestern Ontario mining proponents snag funding for road, transmission line and engineering work

Four copper and lithium mine developers in northwestern Ontario, collectively, will be pocketing almost $14 million in federal funding to build access roads and power lines into their future mine sites.

Federal Energy and Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson delivered the news in Thunder Bay, Oct. 7, that $13.8 million is earmarked for five mining-related projects – including two with Sudbury’s Frontier Lithium – that will facilitate the mining and movement of these critical minerals for processing and eventually to the electric vehicle supply market.

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Sagamok Anishnawbek takes the plunge into underground mining – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – October 3, 2024)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Z’gamok Enterprises acquires majority ownership of Sudbury contractor Legend Mining

New ownership is at the helm of Legend Mining. Z’gamok Enterprises Inc. (ZEI) has acquired a 51-49 per cent controlling interest in the Sudbury mining contractor. The deal, a year in the making, was finalized Sept. 4.

Diving into underground mining services had been something the organization has been thinking and strategizing about for a decade. ZEI, an economic development organization owned and operated by Sagamok Anishnawbek is located south of Massey on the north shore of Lake Huron. It runs three businesses that collectively employ 130.

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Indigenous women from Ecuador bring concerns on mining abuses, free trade to Parliament Hill – by Brett Forester (CBC News Indigenous – October 02, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/indigenous/

Delegation to meet with federal leaders in Ottawa amid talks on proposed free trade deal

Indigenous women from Ecuador are in Ottawa this week raising concerns a proposed free trade agreement could enable human rights abuses by Canadian mining companies operating on their ancestral lands.

The delegation travelled thousands of kilometres from the rural reaches of the Ecuadorian Amazon to Canada’s capital city, bringing what they say is an urgent message of grave concern to the doorstep of Parliament Hill.

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Burgundy Diamond Mines pauses plan for critical Ekati expansion (CBC News North – September 25, 2024)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

Company also asking N.W.T. gov’t to reduce burden of ‘onerous’ mining regulations

The company that owns the Ekati diamond mine in the N.W.T. has paused a plan to develop an underground project at one of the mine’s pits — a plan it previously said was critical to Ekati’s future.

Burgundy Diamond Mines notified the Wek’èezhìı Land and Water Board Tuesday that it would be withdrawing its application for the Sable Underground development. It previously said its entire business could hinge on that project, and without it, Burgundy “risks the financial viability and sustainability of the business.”

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U.S. Ramps Up Hunt for Uranium to End Reliance on Russia – by Ivan Penn and Rebecca F. Elliott (New York Times – September 2024)

https://www.nytimes.com/

Miners aim to meet a growing demand for emissions-free energy, though a failure to clean up old sites haunts the industry.

More than 1,400 feet below an Arizona pine forest, miners are blasting tunnels in search of a radioactive element that can be used to make electricity. Two states north, in central Wyoming, drillers have been digging well after well in the desert, where that element — uranium — is buried in layers of sandstone.

Uranium mines are ramping up across the West, spurred by rising demand for electricity and federal efforts to cut Russia out of the supply chain for U.S. nuclear fuel.

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Inside the Fight for the Ring of Fire – by Laura Trethewey (MACLEANS Magazine – September 30, 2024)

https://macleans.ca/

In Ontario’s hinterlands, a battle is brewing between First Nations, prospectors and the provincial government over a multi-billion-dollar motherlode of metals

Coleen Moonias grew up in the 1980s in Lansdowne House, a tiny Ojibwe community in northwestern Ontario. In winter, when the temperature plunged to 50 below zero, the interior walls of her home glittered with frost. Her parents hung blankets as insulation.

In summer she foraged with her cousins for berries, fending off swarms of mosquitoes that rose from the surrounding peatlands. The nearest neighbouring community was nearly 100 kilometres away; Coleen’s entire world was this small place bound by blood and marriage. But Lansdowne House was sinking into Attawapiskat Lake, and so, when Coleen was eight years old, its residents moved to a new location nearby, which became Neskantaga First Nation, home to about 400 people.

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