Ottawa opens Arctic to miners
December 9, 2010 - 2:19am
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Ottawa opens Arctic to miners
excerpt:
The federal government is facing a lawsuit after quietly opening a vast tract of a once-protected Arctic wilderness to mining claims.
Ottawa's move shocked northern aboriginals and environmentalists, and land-claim negotiators say the decision to no longer bar prospectors from a pristine and much-loved part of the Northwest Territories endangers the entire plan for protected areas in the Eastern Arctic.
These idiots know no bounds.
Same story, different link: Arctic wilderness area quietly opened for mining claims
May not be a sure thing, though.
excerpt:
Still, Hoefer pointed out that a mineral claim is a long way from a mine development.
In Canada, after the war, veterans came back to an under-devloped country and economy still mired with high unemployment rates. The government offered mineralogy courses to the unemployed and encouraged them to be prospectors and shoe repairmen, trappers etc. And after many of them discovered valuable mineral deposits, the legal machinery was set in motion to confiscate their mining claims and often without any compensation at all. My father was one of those guys. After he found a gold deposit worth somewhere close to $100 million in today's money, they stole his mining claims from him and wore him down with legal maneuvering. The setup in Ontario in those days was worse than a Stalinist bureaucracy.
My advice to small prospectors hoping to strike it rich in the arctic is, don't go there. Forget about it. It's a scam. Anything you find will be expropriated and made into a mineral preserve for the future benefit of the corporatocracy and foreign mining companies.
That may be what is behind all of this to begin with. But there's also issues of Arctic environmental well-being and aboriginal people's property ownership, and likely a myriad of other issues to be dealt with. If this proceeds into actual mining operations, this could be an enormous catastrophe in the making. I hope I don't live long enough to witness this.
It would probably cost taxpayers less in the long run to just leave whatever minerals in the ground considering the billions of dollars in taxpayer handouts handed off to foreign mining companies in the past. Canadians would end up paying them to take it off our hands anyway after a small time prospector is crooked and robbed of his sweat, blood and tears.
I wonder if any of the Opposition parties have commented on this story yet.
I wonder if any of the Opposition parties have commented on this story yet.
No biggie... I don't think there's anyone in Ottawa who's entirely sure about what they want to do about much of anything these days anyway.
The Edehzhie was a Candidate Protected Area under the Protected Areas Strategy. It had been protected under interim land withdrawals since 2002. After more than 10 years of negotiations between the Dehcho First Nations, Canada and the Government of the Northwest Territories it was expected that the negotiations would now focus on a final boundary for the Protected Area which would be permanently withdrawn from prospecting and development. Instead, the feds unilaterally, and without any notice to the Dehcho, ended the interim protection on October 28. This follows the publication of the taxpayer funded mineral assessment, which is part of the PAS. The mineral assessment is made available to the mining industry, at no cost, to fascilitate exploration, and eventually mining, in an area that was supposed to be protected.
The PAS has been exposed as smokescreen to subsidize the mining industry rather than protect sensitive lands. Unfortunately, none of the eco groups which receive large scale funding from the PAS (not to mention the funding they lap up from Suncor/Pew Foundation tar sands profits) have denounced the sham PAS, which has become known as Protect Annual Salaries.
http://nnsl.com/northern-news-services/stories/papers/dec9_10ede.html
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/natives-blast...
http://m.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/natives-blast...
"To not listen to the people of the North and to just arbitrarily make a unilateral decision to open this protected area just shows that the Conservatives are not standing up for northerners," Dennis Bevington, the New Democrat MP for the Western Arctic said in a release.
That's the first Opposition comment I've heard on this story.
Liberal Larry Bagnall (Yukon) has been talking about it too. He asked a question in the House in November. I don't have a link to it, but I'm sure his office would be happy to send you a link to the Hansard page.
And the ARctic is now open to the Mackenzie Valley pipeline.
Yup - saw that on the news, George. But the CBC's Jennifer Ditchburn (I think it was her) said there are still hurdles ahead for the pipeline, including opposition from northern aboriginal and environmentalists who may be launcing legal challenges - hard to fathom there could be more of these after 30 years!
The NEB decision on the Mackenzie pipeline is pretty much exactly as expected. This pipeline is no longer a winnable battle, imo. The majority of Dene Chiefs in the NWT support the project, as does the public Government of the NWT, which has a Dene/Metis majority. The pipeline is not going to be stopped unless Imperialist Oil decides not to build it because they haven't extorted enough hand-outs from taxpayers to ensure the project makes them a "sufficient" profit, which is a distinct possibility. They're more interested in shale gas now.
The environmental footprint of the pipeline would also be minor compared to the devestation of mining in a pristine area. This thread is about opening a formerly protected area in the nwt to mining, not about generally questionable things in the arctic. The fight to protect Edehzhie from mining is very winnable, resistance to the pipeline is definitely not.
I'd like to see both opposed, right to the hopefully not bitter end.
So would I, but it's not going to happen.
I see your point, JR, but do you not think that the pipeline will provide energy to other industrial sites just in need of that energy to proceed...all up and down the valley and for some distance east and west of it?
Yes, it will. While the pipeline itself does not leave a big footprint compared to mining, it will spawn feeder pipelines and much more petroleum exploration in areas of the NWT that are currently too far from pipelines to be economically viable. Plus, most of the gas going through the pipeline will likely be used to fuel the tar sands. My main point, however, is that there is virtually no resistance to the pipeline in the NWT. Imperialist Oil has spent the past 10 years acquiring junior partners and allies. Virtually all of the Dene leadership sold out long ago and the eco groups are no better. I don't waste time fighting unwinnable battles, and this one is a sure loser. Anyway, at current gas prices Imperialist has said they won't be building it without massive corporate welfare subsidies from Ottawa. If you want to stop the pipeline, stop the handouts.
Edehzhie, on the other hand, is a very winnable fight. The Dehcho First Nations (9 Dene communities and 2 Metis communities) are solidly united in their demand to protect Edehzhie and have both a strong legal case and strong public support for their position. There's no question in my mind about where to focus energies on protecting land and resisting colonialism in the Arctic today.
You are one very astute fella. Can't argue with one damned point you've made.
What choices do they have? Is the government competing with private enterprise? Rest assured Canadian taxpayers will not compete with foreign energy companies as per usual. The bidding is rigged well beforehand. We remain wide open to American takeovers of our stuff, and that's the way our own bought and paid-for colonial administrators in Otawa prefer things to be.
The Globe this morning informs us that Enbridge's proposed Northern Gateway pipeline through the mountains to the Pacific, now in regulatory hearings, has been rejected by several chiefs, whose declatation opposing the peiplene has been signed by representatives of 61 B.C. FN groups, despite an offer of equity in the project (10 per cent).
At the same time, all three western provinces are promoting the pipeline and have teamed up to promote the sale of fossil fuels from an "energy powerhouse" to China and other Asian countries. The New West Partnership, formed in April, sent the premiers to China and Japan, and a memorandum of understanding between China National Petroleum and Saskatchewan was signed, whereby China's state-controlled company considers investments in coal, oil and carbon-capture projects.
PM Puts Duncan In Charge of Mackenzie Valley Pipeline
http://www.firstperspective.ca/news/1476-pm-puts-duncan-in-charge-of-mac...
"Prime Minister Stephen Harper has quietly handed over Cabinet control of the massive Mackenzie Valley gas pipeline project from former environment minister Jim Prentice and his temporary successor John Baird to rookie Indian and Northern Affairs Minister John Duncan, without key stakeholders in the $16.2 billion pipeline even knowing, say shareholders.."