Ontario First Nation seeks mining claims ban for now, and more consultation

A northern Ontario First Nations community, which opposes development of the Ring of Fire area and has fought pulp and paper mercury poisoning for decades, is taking the province to court for more consultation on all mining claims.  

The Grassy Narrows First Nation, formally known as the Asubpeeschoseewagong Anishinabek, filed papers on Friday with the Ontario Superior Court against the provincial Mining Act because it allows claims without Indigenous consent. That violates Canada’s Constitution and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the community says.  

The community wants the court to issue an order preventing Ontario from approving further mining claims in or around its territory, rescind those it’s already granted and establish a timeline for consultation. There are some 10,000 mining claims in Grassy Narrows’s interim area of interest for mining over more than 2,850 sq. km in the province’s far northwest, according to the court filing.  

“We will protect our land and we just want to reiterate that any activity that’s in Grassy Narrows territory, we should be consulted, we should sit down together, and we should be informed,” Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle said in a news conference at Queen’s Park on Friday.  

“These practices have to change. It’s damaging our land. We want our land to remain intact because of our cultural practices, our way of life.” 

BC ruling 

The case follows a British Columbia Supreme Court ruling last September saying that province must change its rules to ensure First Nations are consulted before prospecting claims are granted to explorers. The court gave B.C. 18 months to change its law.    

In a separate move last week, Grassy Narrows pressed its case about pulp and paper mercury poisoning dating from the 1960s and ’70s to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The community is still suffering after the Dryden Pape Mill dumped some nine tonnes of mercury into the English-Wabigoon river system. In June, Grassy Narrows sued the provincial and federal governments for failing to act under Treaty 3, an agreement dating from 1873.  

“The accumulation of mining claims throughout Grassy Narrows’ territory poses great risks to the community, including the exacerbation of the mercury crisis that has impacted the community for decades,” lawyer Sydney Lang said by email to The Northern Miner on Monday. Lang, an associate at Toronto-based law firm Cavalluzzo, is part of the team representing Grassy Narrows on the mining and the mercury court cases.

Sulphates

“It is well known that contaminants from mining activities, such as sulphates, make the mercury problem worse,” Lang said. “This is a pattern of many decades of Ontario not respecting Grassy Narrows rights and sovereignty with terrible consequences.”

The community is one of a group against the Ring of Fire proposal although the roads are under environmental review and the Eagle’s Nest project held by Wyloo Metals are not on its territory. Grassy Narrows has blocked clear-cut logging on its land for more than 20 years.

In 2018, it declared that mining, staking and exploration was banned on its territory without consent. That followed the community’s 2007 moratorium on any industrial activity without its approval.