Baffinland seeks creditor protection

Baffinland Iron Mines Corp, announced Friday it has sought creditor protection under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement Act.

The company, which operates the Mary River Mine near Pond Inlet, is seeking protection from creditors as it assesses “strategic alternatives,” according to a news release issued late Friday afternoon. Alternatives include restructuring its debt or the potential sale of the company, which is based in Oakville, Ont.

In a joint statement, Premier John Main and Community Services Minister Craig Simailak said the Government of Nunavut learned Friday that Baffinland “is undergoing court-supervised restructuring.”

According to the government’s release, Baffinland assured the Government of Nunavut that “operations will continue as normal for the time being, and that the firm will honour its agreement with the Qikiqtani Inuit Association.”

Main and Simailak said the government’s top priority is protecting Baffinland’s hundreds of Nunavut jobs, saying “the government wants to see the mine continue to operate well into the future.”

In November 2022, Federal Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal rejected Baffinland’s Phase 2 plans to build a railroad from its Mary River Mine to Milne Inlet and to double its annual shipping output.

That decision wrapped up a four-year review process that saw a public hearing dragged out between 2019 and 2021 due to COVID-19 and scheduling problems.

A few months after the federal government rejected Phase 2, CEO Brian Penney announced in Ottawa the company planned instead to begin work on its Steensby Inlet rail project — a 150-kilometre railway way connecting the mine to a deepsea port— approved in 2012, by the end of the year — if it could get the funding.