PDAC Perspectives (December 09, 1991)

The House of Commons in Ottawa is slowly working its way through the process of enacting Bill C-13, the Act to establish a federal environmental assessment process to replace the existing guidelines. It will reflect the input of many Canadians from all spectrums of our society. The mining industry has made its voice heard with individual submissions as well as those of the Mining Association of Canada and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.

In the preamble to the Act, the first objective is “in furtherance of the concept of sustainable development, to preserve and enhance environmental quality and, at the same time, to encourage and promote economic development.” Sustainable development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

As miners, we should be encouraged that sustainable development does envisage extraction of non-renewable resources and challenges the industry in the future to continue its successful pattern of discovery and development of new mines.

Unfortunately, some aspects of Bill C-13 seem to be intended to discourage economic development. Every comprehensive study of a project must assess not only environmental effects but the purpose of the project, economic and technical alternatives and the capacity for the particular resource to meet the needs of the present and future. The environment minister, therefore, may deny a project because of his supply and demand forecasts. Are we establishing a George Orwell 1984-style superministry that disregards the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Resources or the free enterprise system?

The superministry concept appears again under the proposed jurisdiction of the Act. Federal environmental assessments were limited to projects where there was a specific federal responsibility or area of jurisdiction such as uranium mining. Most environmental assessments were undertaken by the appropriate provincial authority. This should be so for mining projects as mineral rights are vested in the provinces. Bill C-13 contemplates regulations that would allow federal assessments of a new, wide range of projects regardless of whether they are covered by provincial review requirements.

Some of the mining-related proposed requirements that will initiate a federal review include an artificial lake with an area greater than 300 hectares (many tailings ponds cover this area), any metal mine with a mill capacity greater than 10,000 tonnes per day and any asbestos mine.

The bill talks about joint reviews with provincial counterparts but it doesn’t talk about joint decisions. A mine developer after spending additional up-front risk capital to complete two environmental reviews may receive contradictory decisions. Such a spectre would be ridiculous if it weren’t for our national track record of federal-provincial squabbles. If the federal environment minister does not have a secret desire to be “big brother,” then he should be placing an extremely high priority on establishing general arrangements in advance with the provinces for a single assessment process where more than one jurisdiction needs to assess a project. Those responsible for the writing of the regulations for Bill C-13 should also reflect on the logic of review requirements. Why pick on large metal mines? Provincial environmental assessment requirements cover all sizes of mines, so large metal mines are automatically included. If there isn’t a federal-provincial squabble over the environmental aspects of the large metal mine, will the federal minister want to exercise the economic powers in this review mandate? The provinces might have something to say about that too. Let’s head off more federal-provincial squabbles before they start, eliminate an opportunity for economic uncertainty and get on with promoting economic development while enhancing environmental quality.