https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Yukon government raised red flags about a copper mine’s environmental infractions days before the owner abandoned the site last month, an inspection report shows.
The new report filed this month by two employees of the territory’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources says they inspected Minto Metals Corp.’s mining site on April 26, finding that its storage capacity for contaminated water in an open pit and tailings waste management were unsatisfactory.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Deal includes tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments
The federal government and Yellowknives Dene First Nation have signed a procurement framework agreement for the cleanup of Giant Mine, one of Canada’s most contaminated sites. Ottawa says the agreement confirms its commitment to increase procurement opportunities for Indigenous people through the more than $4-billion Giant Mine Remediation Project, including prioritizing contracts with Indigenous-owned businesses.
The First Nation says the deal will increase its oversight of how the project awards contracts and provides for tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Company ordered to comply with its permits to operate, or face penalties
The federal government says Agnico Eagle Mines is not doing what it has promised to protect migrating caribou at the Meadowbank gold mine in Nunavut.
An order issued last month by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) says the company has failed “on multiple occasions” to meet its obligations under its project certificates for the mine, and under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act. The order requires the company to comply with its permits to operate or face potential penalties.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Sean Boyd is executive chair of the board of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.
Canada launched a new Arctic and Northern Policy Framework in 2019, supported by $700-million in dedicated funding. It correctly calls on all of Canada to strengthen our sovereignty, while building the kind of economic future northerners want, and doing it in a way that protects the environment. This was a positive first step.
But it is missing a component: the development of the Arctic’s abundant mineral resources, including critical minerals crucial for the decarbonized economy of the future. That must be an essential element of any Arctic strategy.
The latest sale of the Northwest Territories’ Ekati diamond mine is expected to be finalized before the end of the month, the current owners say. In a presentation posted to a public registry, Arctic Canadian says the “expected transition close-out” of Ekati’s sale to Burgundy Diamond Mines, an Australian company, is anticipated on June 30.
The deal is valued at almost $200 million. Ekati was last sold in February 2021, when financially troubled Dominion Diamond Mines offloaded the mine to Arctic Canadian, a company formed by some of Dominion’s creditors.
Lithium was once a forgotten element in the Northwest Territories. This summer, it’s sparking a hunt for profit.
For decades, nobody did much with the lithium-rich region east of Yellowknife. Suddenly, multiple companies are taking up the quest to find lithium and sending scouts to drill.
Drilling small holes across a property allows companies to get a sense of how large the deposit is beneath, and analyze samples for their lithium content.
For around half a dozen companies, that’s top of the to-do list. At least seven companies have NWT lithium projects in their early stages, most of them near Yellowknife. They hope to strike while the lithium iron is hot as demand skyrockets for the element’s use in the likes of electric vehicles.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
Six months after the Canadian government rejected a plan to double approved output from the Mary River iron mine on Nunavut’s Baffin Island, the mine’s operator, Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., is working to get the green light to move ahead with a different proposal.
The new plan, which the company calls a “Sustaining Operations Proposal,” surfaced in December, about a month after federal Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal rejected the earlier plan Nov. 16 to expand operations and double approved shipping output from the mine to 12 million metric tons of iron ore annually.
Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring three locations in northwestern Ontario to promote his new book I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.
WINNIPEG – For those living in Dryden, Ignace and Thunder Bay, Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring Northwestern Ontario to speak about a book he co-authored with Joan Scottie and Jack Hicks, called I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.
Bernauer, who currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Environment and Geography and the Natural Resources Institute, still calls Northwestern Ontario his home.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Osisko Metals (TSX: OM; US-OTC: OMZNF) is part of a rising trend tapping private equity to help build projects, but it’s wary of the growing role of “predatory” debt financing.
Appian Capital Advisory, a London-based private equity firm with mining projects valued at US$3.6 billion, is investing $25 million for a quarter of Osisko’s Pine Point zinc-lead mine in the Northwest Territories.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
The North of 60 Mining area hosts billions of pounds of copper ready to be delivered to a world craving this metal in sky-high demand for wiring the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure that would enable the envisioned low-carbon future. Whether enough of these copper-rich projects are developed in time to circumvent a short circuit of the clean energy transition remains to be seen.
Global Market analysts such as S&P Global have predicted that copper production will need to double by 2035 to meet demands driven by global net-zero emission goals. This means that even if every current copper mine was still producing at today’s capacity in 12 years, enough new mines would need to come online to match that production – both highly unlikely scenarios.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
Rio Tinto reflects on extraordinary people, spirit and innovation behind Far North Canada diamond mine.
Rio Tinto celebrates the extraordinary people, award-winning innovation, and pioneering spirit behind the 20 years of producing brilliant diamonds at the Diavik Mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Discovered during the great Canadian diamond rush in the 1990s, Diavik began commercially producing diamonds in 2003. Over the ensuing two decades, Diavik has produced over 140 million carats of rough diamonds through a combination of surface and underground mining. Most of the diamonds recovered at Diavik are white gem quality stones, with a small quantity of yellow diamonds in the mix.
POND INLET, NUNAVUT – The owner of an iron ore mine on the tip of Baffin Island says it needs to again increase production to prevent job losses, and several federal cabinet ministers are calling on a Nunavut environmental assessment agency to prioritize the request.
Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. wants to increase the amount of ore it’s allowed to truck and ship from its Mary River mine to six-million tonnes, from 4.2 million, for both 2023 and 2024. It says the increase is needed to ensure a stable supply of iron ore to customers and that if it’s not granted, it will have to scale back operations, including reducing employment.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Shares in Nighthawk Gold (TSX: NHK; US-OTC: MIMZF) jumped more than 20% after the company said its Colomac project in the Northwest Territories could pay for itself in about two years.
The open-pit project 200 km north of Yellowknife estimates annual production of 290,000 oz. of gold selling for US$1,600 each to generate US$464 million a year compared with estimated capital costs of $654 million, the company said in a preliminary economic assessment released on Wednesday. The after-tax payback period is pegged at 2.1 years.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
The final cost of the plant has grown from $20 million to $60 million
Mere months after a visit from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promoting the importance of critical minerals, Canada’s only rare earth mineral mining project is stopping the construction of its processing plant in Saskatchewan.
In a recent news release, Vital Metals, owner of the N.W.T.’s Nechalacho mine project, said the current scale of operations at its North T pit “will not achieve positive cash flow from the project.” Now the company is looking for new funding sources and partners “to potentially build a sustainable business model for the Saskatoon business.”
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
The Northwest Territories capital city of Yellowknife is emerging as a northern link in North America’s electric vehicle supply chain. Already home to Canada’s only rare earths mine, a 160-kilometers (100 miles) area around this northern mining town happens to be enriched with the lithium and cobalt that is in massive demand for EV batteries, along with numerous other minerals critical to both Canada and the United States.
A roughly 9,600-square-kilometer (3,700 square miles) area that extends 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Yellowknife to Vital Metal Ltd.’s Nechalacho rare earths mine is riddled with hardrock lithium sources known as pegmatites.
