There’s big bucks if you’re prepared to loiter

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Not even blockbuster movies or Christmas craft sales in Iqaluit get lineups as dedicated as these.

For a couple of weeks beginning in mid-November, a wind-burned bunch of mineral prospectors squatted outside Iqaluit’s Indian and Northern Affairs office near Mary Brown’s restaurant.

There were moments of laughter (“I sold my soul for this,” one screamed), but otherwise the troupe gazed blankly out of their parka hoods waiting for the calendar to reach December.

Since then, they’ve gone home richer men.

Mining and related prospecting companies pay their employees hundreds of dollars per day to stay on 24-hour rotation outside the mining recorder’s office until Dec. 1, when the government accepts prospecting permit applications for Nunavut, essentially a request for exclusive rights to scour unexplored land for gems, diamonds, and other precious minerals.

However painful to see – some local workers refer to the motley bunch as “the crazy people” – residents of Iqaluit should get used to it. This is the second year they have lined up outside the squat federal government building, and according to a departmental spokesman, the system is unlikely to change soon.

And at least one of the diehards outside the office said he couldn’t see how the government could improve the process.

Standing fourth in line, Ron Joly said the first-come-first-serve approach is better than a lottery system, which he feared would mean “any schmoe with $12 in his pocket” could be awarded precious land and not have the means to mine it. The current system requires a $2,000 application fee from a registered company.

Joly, a 40-year-old geophysical technician for Yellowknife’s Aurora Geosciences Ltd., who passed the time in line with coffee, cigarettes and a Harry Potter novel, said he and his competition were used to the current system, and the weather conditions.

“We’re used to working out on the tundra in -40,” Joly said, bundled up in a dark blue parka and new winter boots. “It’s no fun but it’s part of the job.”

Companies are trying to tap into the increasing amount of exploration activity around the territory, said Mike Vaydik, general manager of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, an umbrella group of consulting firms and mining companies based in Yellowknife.

Government officials estimate companies are currently spending more than $75 million on mineral exploration in Nunavut.

“It’s a pretty exciting time right now,” Vaydik said. “I think there’s potential for Nunavut to get back into the mining business.”