All that glitters is not gold

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

If everything had gone according to plan for a German-owned company called Urangeselleschaft Canada Ltd. in the late 1980s, there would be a uranium mine in full operation today upwind and upwater from Baker Lake.

The company’s Kiggavik mine would have leached radon gas, a byproduct of uranium, across caribou calving grounds 75 kilometres west of Baker Lake from 1993, when the mine was expected to go into production, until 2004, when decommissioning was scheduled to begin.

But things didn’t go according to plan for UG, as the company is commonly known.

What began as a rumbling among the residents of Baker Lake soon became a powerful force of opposition as information about the company’s plans began to spread.

Open-pit uranium mining leaves behind a waste component that is almost as radioactive as the uranium itself. Some researchers condent the material, or tailings, remains hazardous for more than 250,000 years.

It is most often associated with an increased cancer rate among humans, in addition to birth defects, high infant mortality and chronic lung, eye, skin and reproductive illnesses.

That might have been enough reason for the people of Baker Lake, the community closest to the Kiggavik project, to oppose the plans. But the issue became a personal one for them when it came to involve the region’s caribou herds.

Baker Lake Inuit are known as Caribou Inuit because of their dependence on the land beasts. The only inland community in Nunavut, Baker Lake is too far from open water for people to rely on sea mammals for survival.

“If anything happened to the caribou we’d have nothing left but welfare,” said Baker Lake resident Joan Scottie in a presentation to the World Uranium Hearing in 1992.

Scottie was one of the founders of the Baker Lake Concerned Citizens’ Committee (CCC), a group of people who made it their responsibility to learn about uranium mining and inform others in the community in simple English – and Inuktitut.

“Our strategy was quite simple. We decided to participate in the federal government’s review process and try and make it work for us. In the case of the environmental assessment process for the proposed Kiggavik mine, the panel tried something new. They asked us what questions should be included in the guidelines,” Scottie said during her presentation.

“Many of the questions we raised were included in the final environmental impact statement guidelines that the environmental assessment panel gave to the company. This made UG’s job much harder.”

The CCC gathered strength as its message spread throughout the Kivalliq region. Residents of other communities collected 1,700 signatures opposing the mine, and soon the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the Keewatin Inuit Association, the Inuit Tapirisat of Canada, the Tungavik Federation of Nunavut, the Northwest Territories Federation of Labour, and a host of other organizations, pledged their full support.

Then, the Baker Lake hamlet council agreed to hold a plebiscite regarding the Kiggavik project. The vote took place on March 26, 1990.

“We worked flat out, just like for an election,” Scottie said. “I’ll never forget the tension of that night, waiting for the results. Finally the person we had scrutineering the ballots came out looking very happy – 90.2 per cent of the people had voted ‘no’ to Kiggavik.”

A few weeks later, the environmental assessment panel released its review of the EIS. “In general they trashed it and in particular they said that the social impact assessment was completely inadequate,” Scottie said.

And finally, on July 5, 1990, UG asked the environmental assessment panel for an “indefinite delay” of the review process.

It was a significant victory for the residents of Baker Lake, and it demonstrated the power of ordinary people.

As the Meadowbank gold mine 70 kilometres north of the community progresses, many residents are thinking about Kiggavik and wondering where all that power has gone.

But though people in the community admit to having many concerns about the Meadowbank project, the grassroots movement has been slow to develop this time around because many feel they simply don’t have enough information.

While the Kiggavik project description report was issued to residents in both English and Inuktitut, the Meadowbank document was in English only, with a one-page summary in Inuktitut.

Fred Ford, a long-time resident of Baker Lake and former member of the CCC, holds up a blackened photocopy of a map of the community, meant to identify plots of land the mine’s parent company, Cumberland Resources Ltd. of Vancouver, intends to use. The map is almost completely indecipherable.

“Now what the hell is that?” he asks.

“Right here,” he says, pointing to a spot among the blurred lines and smudges, “is where I keep my fish nets.”

The lot he indicates is the one Cumberland will use to store quantities of ammonium nitrate and cyanide, among other chemicals. Baker Lake hamlet council gave the company conditional permission to use the land near the lake this past June.

And while gold mining does not pose the direct health concerns that uranium mining does, the human and environmental costs could be even greater, Ford says.

“In my estimation, gold mining is a dirtier business than uranium mining. It uses more chemicals, like cyanide,” he says.

Scottie has heard concerns about the Meadowbank project as well. “The people that approached me weren’t too thrilled about it,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Baker Lake.

“We heard they were planning on storing some chemicals, what’s that, ammonium nitrate, cyanide and other stuff that they were going to be using at the mine.” Ammonium nitrate is a powerful explosive. Cyanide is a poison.

But she says ordinary people in Baker Lake have not been consulted about the project and the threats it may pose to their community.

“Cumberland Resources, they have held maybe a couple or three public meetings over the winter, but when they need approval they go to hamlet council,” she says. “We live here too. Our kids are here. Our grandchildren are here.”

However, a representative for Cumberland told Nunatsiaq News in late July that the company has worked closely with Baker Lake residents from the beginning.

“It’s a great community. We’ve been working long and hard and we’re in a partnership with Baker Lake,” said Craig Goodings, a Vancouver consultant working with Cumberland. “There isn’t a lot of issues here. The community wants it and there isn’t a lot of environmental red flags.”

To be fair, Nunavut and Kivalliq politicians have been working very closely with Cumberland. But that’s not exactly the same as community support.

“Our politicians have been pretty vocal, and I’m not sure they speak for everybody in the community,” Ford says. “The final veto should be here with the people.”

And the people have a lot of questions.

“I don’t know about this Cumberland because everything is so quiet, nobody talks about it,” Scottie says. “This Cumberland Resources, it’s not like a uranium mine, so we’re not as worried as before about its byproducts, but it’s still a mine and residents of Baker Lake should know what’s going on. I’m sure we have a lot of questions, but we don’t know where to begin.”

The promise of jobs in the mining sector doesn’t do much to persuade them. A few entry-level jobs won’t replace the loss suffered by thousands of Inuit if their way of life is threatened.

“We have concerns also about social issues,” Scottie says. “It’ll be good for the community economically, but what about all the bad sites?”

Cumberland has yet to release an environmental impact statement on the Meadowbank project. However, when it does, there will likely be a round of public hearings in the community to allow residents to ask questions.

“Mining companies have a poor history of what they’ve done in other places. They’re not here to preserve our way of life, they’re here for their investors,” Ford says.

“It will change the face of our community forever.”