Nunavut HTO scolds Areva for bad behaviour

Baker Lake HTO chair Richard Aksawnee at a NIRB workshop in Baker Lake in February 2011. (FILE PHOTO)

Just days after Areva Resources Canada Inc. asked the federal government to reconsider its proposed uranium project in Nunavut, a local hunters and trappers organization has fired back.

In a July 13 letter to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development minister Bernard Valcourt, Baker Lake HTO chair Richard Aksawnee said Areva “has not taken community concerns seriously.”

The HTO was responding to a July 3 letter, written by Areva CEO Vincent Martin, which asks the minister to flatly reject the Nunavut Impact Review Board’s final report, which recommends Areva’s proposed Kiggavik project not go ahead due to a lack of firm start date.

Martin goes on to say the company is disappointed in the board’s recommendation, suggesting the board failed to use the environmental assessment process in the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement as a planning tool, or other “available remedies” to address the project’s lack of a firm start date.

But in the HTO’s letter of response, Aksawnee reminds Valcourt about the extensive final hearings into the Kiggavik project, which gathered HTOs and municipal governments, a wildlife board and an Inuit birthright association from the Kivalliq region — the majority of whom agreed the project should not be approved at this time.

The Baker Lake HTO even tried to suspend the March hearings into the project on those grounds.

“If you reject the NIRB recommendation, you will be overturning a decision by a board established by the land claim agreement, and designed to ensure that Inuit would have a voice in these discussions,” Aksawnee wrote July 13.

“Areva’s behaviour shows that it has not taken community concerns seriously, and had not approached the NIRB process in good faith.”

Instead, with Areva now airing its concerns through a direct letter to the minister, there is no way for the community of Baker Lake to participate in the discussion, Aksawnee said.

One of the arguments Areva made in their July 3 letter is that another mine it operates in Australia was given a go-ahead without a firm start date.

But Aksawnee said there is no way the community of Baker Lake can understand how that project can compare to Kiggavik.

“That would require research and consultation with experts, which we no longer have access to now that the hearing has passed,” he wrote.

“This is not the behaviour we expect from a company that says it takes Aboriginal people and community partnerships seriously.”

During the March hearings in Baker Lake, the company said it envisioned the project could be operating by some time in the 2020s or 2030s.

The Kiggavik project, which would have been located at two sites, Kiggavik and Sissons, comprised four open pits and one underground operation, with an estimated lifespan of about 12 years.

Letter from Baker Lake HTO to Bernard Valcourt