Harper seeks to expand mining development in Nunavut

Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to the only working mine in Nunavut Tuesday to announce his government would provide funding to establish an office to develop mining in the North.

The Meadowbank gold mine near this town on the Canadian tundra employs more than 1,100 people – nearly 300 of them from the surrounding Inuit communities – and its owner, Agninco-Eagle Mines Ltd., is in the exploration phase of a similar operation near Rankin Inlet.

The GDP in this territory rose by nearly 15 per cent last year, due in large part to the Meadowbank mine.

And the resources that lie beneath Nunavut’s permafrost – gold, uranium, diamonds and iron ore – have prompted interest in another dozen potential mining operations here.

“This mine has driven the local unemployment rate to practically zero and it is bringing tremendous economic benefit to the territory of Nunavut,” Mr. Harper told employees who gathered Wednesday in the garage where the many trucks used in the mine are repaired.

The federal government is investing $230,000 over three years to support the establishment of an office in Iqaluit for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

But the costs of development in Canada’s Arctic are usually counted in millions and billions. Agninco-Eagle had to pay more than $60-million just to run a road from Baker Lake to the mine site which is 60 kilometers away, as the crow flies.

It has also invested $1.4-billion in infrastructure at this site – money that it expects to recoup given the price of gold is now hovering around $1,800 an ounce. But it takes deep pockets to contemplate the development of this type of operation.

The Conservative government has said it will help pay for a permanent road between Tuktoyaktuk and Inuvik – a route that will create a vital land link to the Northwest Passage. But it also spends heavily on military exercises and has promised military infrastructure including patrol ships, which critics say is mostly a political gesture given that our sovereignty is not now, nor soon likely to be, under threat.

Some of the people who work up here say mining and other resource extraction would be greatly enhanced if the federal government would invest more in infrastructure and the creation of a long-term development plan.

Mr. Harper said his government has invested billions of dollars in development of the North since it came to office in 2006, including the funding of a geo-mapping program to tell mining interest what resources are available here to be tapped.

“As a government,” he said, “we don’t measure our results of our progress based on how many millions or billions we spend. We do spend a lot of money. But we measure it by results. And I think you see over the past five years the tremendous expansion of activity in the North, and particularly in the mining sector.”

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Source: Globe&Mail