EDITORIAL — Tulsequah Chief may be harbinger of change — Green for go

After three years of extensive review, the British Columbia government has granted Redfern Resources approval-in-principal to reopen the Tulsequah Chief mine, situated 120 km southwest of Atlin. The Vancouver-based company has also been given the green light to build an access road to transport ore from the polymetallic mine to the port of Skagway, in neighboring Alaska.

The province’s struggling mining industry breathed a sigh of relief when the announcement was made. Opponents of the project had made a last-ditch attempt to convince the government that mining would “devastate” the river on which the dormant mine is perched, and that grizzly bear habitat would be at risk.

To make their case, groups opposed to the mine called in heavyweights who previously had been instrumental in quashing plans to develop both the Windy Craggy copper-cobalt mine in B.C. and the New World gold-copper project in Montana. Both mine sites are now part of wilderness preserves or parks.

This time, however, the mining industry and its supporters were better organized, fought back more effectively — and won. Aboriginal groups joined forces with local communities to show their support for the mine proposal.

At a conference held earlier this year in Vancouver, mining executives warned that if Tulsequah Chief was derailed by powerful anti-mining lobbies, it might sound the death knell for mining in the province. Dramatic words, perhaps, but not for those who had watched the same New Democratic Party (NDP) government mishandle the Windy Craggy affair years earlier.

In the late 1980s, when Geddes Resources announced plans to develop Windy Craggy, protesters took to the streets dressed up as trees and bears and warned the world that the nearby Tatshenshini River would become a toxic stew of pollutants if mining was allowed. Former premier Michael Harcourt bowed to his “green” supporters and made the mine site part of a park, all the while promising fair and timely compensation to Geddes and others who had projects in the promising mineral belt. The “timely” portion of the promise was never kept, and it was hardly “fair” to shuffle the multi-million-dollar compensation bill onto the province’s already beleaguered taxpayers for a remote park few, if any, will ever visit.

After all, Harcourt did have the option of saying “Sorry folks, the mine plan isn’t good enough, approval denied.” That way, at least, Geddes might have improved its mine plan or put the project on hold until advances allowed for more environmentally sound mining practices. And the mining industry would not have been cast adrift in the sea of negative investor sentiment that resulted from the government’s poor handling of the incident.

Unfortunately, Windy Craggy is not the only issue to have been mishandled by Harcourt and his successor, Glen Clark. The once-robust economy has gone into a tailspin, budget deficits are mounting, and high tax rates have driven away many industries that are not tied to fixed assets in the province. Amid this bleak backdrop, Redfern’s $150-million proposal to reopen Tulsequah Chief was welcomed by local politicians anxious to replace jobs being lost in their jurisdictions. The review report showed that Redfern met all requirements and that potential environmental impacts can be managed effectively. The company’s plans to develop the underground base and precious metal mine still await final approval, which is conditional on more detailed information and analysis.

B.C.’s mining industry has had little to cheer about in recent years, which makes the developments at Tulsequah Chief good news indeed. We hope it signals better days ahead for an industry that has long been a cornerstone of the provincial economy.