Nunavut digs into Finland for mining knowledge

As Harry Ittinuar of Rankin Inlet (lower right) listens, Katarina Kinnunen, the director of economic development for Kittilä, said young people like her once believed they had no future in the region, but that Agnico-Eagle’s gold mine is now bringing them back home. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Sari Koivisto, a young Finnish woman who works as director of open pit operations at the Kittilä mine, holds advanced degrees in mining engineering from universities in the U.K. and Canada. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Dan Shewchuk, Nunavut’s environment minister, and Peter Taptuna, the economic development minister, listen to a lecture on Finland’s new mining law. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Visitors from Nunavut put on protective masks in preparation for a tour of the ore processing plant at the Kittilä mine. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Anna Mäkelä, the mayor of Kittilä, said Agnico-Eagle’s Finnish mine is “accepted and highly respected.” (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Eberhard Scherkus, the chief operating officer of Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd., said Finland is an attractive place to conduct business because of the openness and transparency of its government and its respect for the rule of law. “The law is the law,” Scherkus said. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

KITILLÄ, FINLAND — Harry Ittinuar of Rankin Inlet squints against the morning sunlight streaming through a Boeing 737-200 charter jet that’s soaring high over Norway’s northern mountains.

He and another four dozen bleary-eyed Nunavut residents are now en route to Sisimiut, Greenland from Finland after a grueling two-day tour of the Kittilä gold mine and the small Finnish town of Levi on March 29 and March 30, courtesy of the mine’s owner, Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.

In Finland, Ittinuar admired what he saw and liked what he heard.

“From what I saw, it [Kitillä] is a very impressive project and well-planned and benefits the whole region,” Ittinuar said.

But he didn’t need this tour to help him make his up mind about Meliadine. On that one, he made his decision a long time ago.

“It has total support from the HTO… There is no need for further delays on the [Meliadine] proposal,” said Ittinuar, who sits on the board of Rankin Inlet’s hunters and trappers organization and works at the local housing association.

But to give Kivalliq residents a better idea of what a mine at Meliadine might look like, last week Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd. flew a group from Nunavut to view its Nordic mine, which started production in 2009.

The group included Environment Minister Dan Shewchuk, Economic Development Minister Peter Taptuna, Community Government Minister Lorne Kusugak, plus numerous Kivalliq mayors, hamlet councillors, business people and Inuit association officials.

For four gruelling days, the jet-lagged Nunavut visitors managed only two or three hours of sleep each night as they sat through 12-hour days packed with presentations, lectures and tours.

On the first morning, they filed onto a Finnish tour bus that wound along a twisting two-lane blacktop road to the Kittilä mine through a birch-spruce forest broken only by the occasional dairy farm or tourist cabin.

There, they saw a flourishing operation that looks much like the project that Agnico-Eagle, which acquired Meliadine from Comaplex Minerals in June 2010, plans to build about 25 km north of Rankin Inlet.

Located about 150 km north of the Arctic Circle at about the same latitude as Qikiqtarjuaq, the Kittilä operation combines open pit and underground ore extraction — the same mining methods planned for Meliadine.

At a lengthy session held inside Kittilä’s municipal chamber, the Nunavut visitors learned about Finland’s new mining law, which the country’s Parliament passed just two weeks ago.

And they learned also about Finland’s environmental assessment regime and how Agnico-Eagle executives and municipal leaders in the Kittilä district have negotiated harmonious arrangements on jobs and environmental protection.

In Finland, the Nunavut visitors also saw what it takes to get jobs in the mining industry, when they met hard-hatted Finnish workers with master’s degrees in engineering and technology.

On the second leg of the tour, a visit to the Greenland School of Minerals and Petroleum in Sisimiut, they saw how an Arctic jurisidiction wants to make that happen for themselves.

In Greenland, authorities now throw all the resources they can muster in one direction: advanced, world-class technical and scientific education — conducted in English.

Okalik Eegeesiak, the president of the Qikiqtani Inuit Association and a Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. board member, said she’s impressed by the large proportion of local Finns — about 60 per cent — who work at Kitillä.

But after peering over the edge of a big open pit during a tour of the site, she also understands the environment doesn’t get off scot-free.

“Of course, there’s an impact, for sure. I saw the open pit. I saw where the keep the tailings,” Eegeesiak said.

But at the same time, she said she’s aware that the Saami, the indigenous people of northern Finland, do not enjoy any aboriginal rights under Finnish law, including any form of aboriginal title to land.

This means the Saami have no mechanism for negotiating impact-benefit agreements, royalties, or compensation for the use of territories they’ve occupied.

“In Finland, the structure is different. I think our structure is better for the Inuit,” Eegeesiak said.

Officials from the Finnish national government and the regional municipality raved about the jobs boom the mine brought to their region.

“The mine is accepted and highly respected. We say the gold mine is our gold mine,” said Anna Mäkelä, the mayor of Kittilä.

Mäkelä said that before Agnico-Eagle arrived in 2005, unemployment in the district had risen above 20 per cent and its population was in decline as young people moved elsewhere to find a better future.

Now, the municipality’s year-round population has risen to about 6,200 people from about 5,500 and the unemployment rate has fallen below 10 per cent.

She said Agnico-Eagle adds about three hundred million Euros, or about $412 million, to the region’s economy each year and provides year-round jobs that help support families when the winter tourism industry falls off in the summer.

Timo Kurula, the elected chair of the regional municipal council, said the Kittilä mine created 1,000 jobs during its construction phase, and now employs about 500 people, of whom about 300 live in Kittilä.

Katarina Kinnunen, a young woman who serves as the municipality’s director of economic development, said the mine has lured young, educated people — like her — back to their home community.

And she said no one in the region views the mine as a threat to the area’s thriving winter tourism industry, which attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year from southern Finland, the U.K. and Russia.

Agnico-Eagle began building the Kittilä gold mine, now the largest in Europe, in 2006, and began producing gold there in 2008.

They expect the operation to produce 150,000 ounces of gold in 2011, which would rise to an average of 173,000 ounces a year between 2012 and 2015

As for its latest Nunavut acquistion, Meliadine, Agnico-Eagle hopes to clear all regulatory hurdles and open the mine for production by 2014 or 2015.

The first step, construction of a 27.4 km all-weather road from Rankin to Meliadine, could start this fall if it receives a permit in time.

Junior exploration firms, especially Comaplex Minerals, have searched for gold at the Meliadine site, about 25 km north of Rankin Inlet, since the early 1990s.

For that reason, many Rankin Inlet residents feel they’re now more than ready for a job-creating mine.