Western Nunavut gold mine project gets review board’s final approval

This map shows the location of TMAC Resources Inc.’s mining activities near Cambridge Bay. (FILE PHOTO)

TMAC Resources Inc. can move ahead with plans to expand its existing gold mine in western Nunavut, now that it has received a project certificate from the Nunavut Impact Review Board for Phase 2 of its Hope Bay Belt Project.

But the project certificate, issued on Nov. 9, comes with a caveat: TMAC will report and examine “barriers and opportunities to achieving high levels of Inuit employment.”

The certificate follows the board’s review of the project’s potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. This was accepted, with some recommendations, by the responsible federal ministers in October.

The project certificate applies to the development of three gold mines and related infrastructure at Hope Bay, located about 150 kilometres southwest of Cambridge Bay and 700 km northeast of Yellowknife.

The project certificate contains 54 terms and conditions so that the project is “developed, operated and reclaimed in a manner that does not unduly and adversely impact the ecosystemic integrity of the Kitikmeot Region and the Nunavut Settlement Area,” said Elizabeth Copland in a Nov. 9 news release issued by the NIRB.

Before the project was issued, the NIRB conducted a workshop via teleconference on Nov. 1, with TMAC., the Nunavut Water Board, the Kitikmeot Inuit Association, the Government of Nunavut, Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada and Transport Canada.

Based on their submissions, the NIRB revised the wording to one condition of the certificate. It now makes it clear that TMAC must “monitor the socio-economic effects of the project, including employment, on affected communities of Nunavut and compare these effects to the impact predictions made for the project.”

When the federal ministers accepted all the terms and conditions already recommended by the NIRB to accept TMAC’s project, they agreed with a call from the KIA to change one recommendation on Inuit employment, so TMAC would now be obliged, through various committees, to report and examine “barriers and opportunities to achieving the high levels of Inuit employment.”

“Higher numbers of Inuit with meaningful employment on major infrastructure and resource development projects in Nunavut is an aspirational goal,” the ministers said in their October letter to the NIRB.

According to information from last month’s KIA annual general meeting in Cambridge Bay, Inuit employment represented only 12.8 per cent of the workforce at the mine site during the last six months of 2017.

But it dropped after that. No percentage was given at the AGM, but TMAC said “contractors have not maintained 2017 employment levels.”

Inuit employees come mainly from Cambridge Bay, from outside Nunavut, and from Kugluktuk, TMAC said at the meeting.

The project’s water licences are expected to be issued in the spring of 2019.

TMAC has operated the Doris North gold mine at Hope Bay since early 2017, after acquiring the 1,600-square-km property earlier from Newmont Mining Corp.

TMAC hopes to expand into three new mining operations, at its Madrid North and Madrid South deposits by 2020, and at its Boston deposit by 2022.

The company said it plans to hire 70 people during the first year of construction, and up to 300 by the third year of construction. During operations, the company would employ about 800 people.

Jason Neal, TMAC’s president and CEO, said in a Nov. 12 news release that “TMAC looks forward to working with the Kitikmeot Inuit Association and responsible government agencies as we enter into the development and monitoring phase of the Madrid and Boston Project.

“This project will provide significant long-term economic prosperity and employment in the Kitikmeot region.”