Land access committee pressured by green plan

“If you threw a dart at a map of Canada, chances are pretty good you wouldn’t hit a spot you could mine,” says Ralph Cheesman, acting chairman of the Mineral Industry Land Use Committee (MILUC).

Since environmental concerns flared up in the late 1980s, land access has become one of the most important issues facing the mining industry. Today, about 6.9% of Canada’s land and freshwater area is “protected” under different jurisdictions and conservation agencies.

In response, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) and the provincial and territorial mining association have formed MILUC. The committee held its first meeting in, 1989.

In the future looms Canada’s Green Plan, which calls on the government to “accelerate . . . efforts toward meeting the target of setting aside 12% of Canada’s total territory as protected space.”

In order to address what it sees as a growing problem, MILUC has developed a computerized database that depicts just how much land is off limits for exploration and development in Canada.

While generating several maps for the industry, MILUC is also encouraging the Geological Survey of Canada to evaluate the mineral potential of the areas likely to be restricted under the Green Plan. Ideally, this would allow the industry some input before any particular area is set aside. Mineral and Energy Resource Assessments (MERA) are already under way on the Queen Charlotte Islands in British Columbia and at several locations in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon.