EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Monday, September 23, 1996

.1312

[English]

The Chairman: We are here to address the issue of Bill C-6, An Act to amend the Yukon Quartz Mining Act and the Yukon Placer Mining Act. We're resuming consideration of clause 1.

Before we do that, I'd like to express our apologies to all of you who have waited so long. One thing mandatory in Ottawa is that when the bills ring, members of Parliament go vote. Because of that we are late in our schedule. We wish you to take the time that is allotted to you anyway.

I'd like to proceed. Because we're late, formalities will be completed as we go. We'll start with Mr. Stewart Elgie, legal counsel from the Sierra Legal Defence Fund. We try to stay to a maximum of forty minutes, allowing some time for questions.

Mr. Stewart Elgie (Staff Counsel, Sierra Legal Defence Fund): Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for inviting me here. I'll have no trouble sticking to that, since I have a 2 p.m. flight.

Let me start with a facetious statement, by telling you how disappointed I am to be here today. I was really counting on getting flown up to Whitehorse and looking at the people up on the screen up there. I can't think of any place in Canada where I'd rather be than the Yukon in September, so I'm very jealous. The Yukon is a special place, and I think it has probably touched anyone who has had the privilege of being up there the way it has touched me.

I want to talk a little about the mining legislation that's proposed here. I've prepared really an in-depth report, which is in far more detail than my comments will be today. I'll pass that around and I'll refer to it. It may make it easier for people if I just tell you what page I'm on in there.

[Translation]

I don't have the information in French. I believe that the translation is almost done. Since I don't speak French too well, I will speak in English today. I am sorry.

[English]

I'll try to give you a page reference for where I'm at as I go through, so you can maybe just keep note of which points I've touched on. I touch on only some of the most significant points.

The Yukon has many wonderful attributes. One thing it doesn't have, however, is legislation regulating the environmental impacts of mineral development. Its neighbour, the Northwest Territories, has had mineral regulatory legislation in place for thirty years. I congratulate the government on a process that's long overdue. The last time anyone looked at mineral legislation in the Yukon in any serious way, the Model T Ford was hot off the blocks, we hadn't yet invented television, and airplane travel was just science fiction. In the intervening seventy years.... This is certainly long overdue.

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Mining and mineral development can have a number of environmental impacts. It can cause habitat loss for wildlife, sedimentation, or heavy metals discharge. It can disturb wilderness, increase access to areas through the construction of roads and other infrastructure that can open it up to hunting. It can disturb heritage sights of aboriginal peoples. So there are a number of concerns that need to be addressed in this legislation.

Clearly, mining always has, and will continue to have, a place in the Yukon. But in my submission, it's important that the legislation ensures that there is an appropriate balance so that mining does not compromise other values that people in the Yukon hold dear, such as undisturbed wilderness, wildlife, biological diversity and heritage places.

At the moment, there are over 40,000 mineral claims in the Yukon on public lands. The cumulative impacts of the activities on these lands can be tremendously significant. I think it's no exaggeration that, cumulatively, mineral development is the most environmentally significant activity in the Yukon, so this legislation has a tall order to fill.

What I've done here in this paper is tried to compare what's proposed here with what's in place right now in the neighbouring jurisdictions to the Yukon. I've looked at the Northwest Territories, British Columbia and Alaska, because I think ecological and economic conditions are probably most similar in those areas, and they probably provide the best basis for comparison. I've looked at federal lands in Alaska because that's where the majority of mineral development occurs in that state.

To summarize, what I've found is that this legislation takes the Yukon out of the 1890s, but it only brings it into the 1960s. The legislation is not as strong, in many ways, as the Territorial Lands Act and regulations that have been in place in the NWT for thirty years. What I would propose to you today are a number of amendments that I hope will help to bring the act into at least the 1980s, if not the 1990s - and when I say that, I mean to make it comparable to other mineral regulatory legislation in neighbouring jurisdictions.

One document that I've referred to in the paper, and which I should just explain, is the Whitehorse Mining Initiative. That was a process begun by the Mining Association of Canada. It ended up involving a number of major industry leaders in mining, a number of major environmental groups, federal and provincial governments, and aboriginal peoples. It produced a level of consensus around mineral development and environmental protection that is rewarding and that hopefully will provide a basis for moving forward. I say that because this is the first major piece of federal mining legislation that I'm aware of that has come down since the Whitehorse initiative was signed. This legislation will in many ways be looked at as a test of the government's commitment to the principles in the Whitehorse initiative - whether or not they're more than just paper.

I'm sure you are familiar with the act and realize that a lot of the details, a lot of the specifics, on what types of environmental protection will occur are in the regulations. I won't go into those much today because my understanding is that the committee is primarily, if not exclusively, concerned with the act. I recommend highly that perhaps some comments may be due informally, if not formally, on the regulations, because that's where a lot of the guts of this thing are.

There are four different levels of activity. The act breaks down mineral development into four different classes ranging from I to IV, with I being the least disturbing activity and IV being the most disturbing activity from an environmental disturbance viewpoint. Classes III and IV activities are subject to formal approval requirements, while classes one and two are not. That's significant, because you need an approval requirement to trigger the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. So although there is some question as to whether or not the second class is eligible for CEAA environmental assessment, at the moment class I certainly is not.

I'd like to say a couple of words about class I - and I'm now on page 6 of my paper, if that helps anyone.

At the moment, class I activities require no notice for a person to go out and engage in them on public lands. On the one hand, class I activities are of lower intensity than others, but they're certainly not environmentally benign. A number of the activities in class I can cause significant environmental damage, particularly when they occur in environmentally sensitive areas. Even mild exploration, significant ground disturbance or human presence in a caribou calving area during a critical period, for example, can cause real problems. So to say that, by definition, everything below class one is safe is inaccurate. You have to look at the nature of the receiving environment and the season to know that.

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The problem with the current class I structure is that nobody knows what's going on out there. The government has no record and no way of knowing who's conducting what activities, because there's no notification requirement. Because of that, there's no way to coordinate with other land use activities to make sure that wilderness guides aren't going to be taking a tourist party into an area that's the beginning of an exploration camp, to make sure that people aren't doing work in critical calving areas at bad times.

I strongly recommend that a requirement of notice be built into class I activities so that the government at least will have the power to ensure that special places or special concerns can be addressed in these class I activities.

The fact that I'm not touching on some of these other points doesn't mean that I don't consider them to be significant. It's just that I can't speak quickly enough to read the whole thing in 25 minutes.

The one point I would make about the regulations - and even if it doesn't arise in this committee, I think it's significant - comes from page 10. On the top of page 10 I have a chart. I understand that you folks may have a somewhat similar chart. I've compared the regulatory standards in the proposed legislation with those that exist in the NWT, B.C., and Alaska. I've picked just one criterion here, but it's a significant one. It is the threshold level at which government approval is required for land disturbance activities. In many ways this is the ``biggy''.

What you see is that in the NWT the use of any machinery for earth clearing requires approval. In B.C. any surface disturbance by mechanized means requires approval. Similarly, Alaska, on federal lands, on incoming federal legislation, requires approval of any mechanized surface disturbance, in the new legislation coming in.

By contrast, the proposed legislation here would allow, without any government approval whatsoever, up to 200 square metres per claim of tree removal, up to 400 cubic metres of trenching per year on a claim, and similar amounts for stripping of vegetation.

So either the environment in the Yukon is more resilient than those in neighbouring jurisdictions or we're placing less value on it. We're offering it less protection.

That appears in the regulations, as I say, but this is critical to this act. I've given some more examples below.

For example, the threshold level for dynamite that requires approval is 20 times higher in the Yukon than it is in the NWT. Maybe there are a bunch of trigger-happy people in the NWT who can't be trusted with dynamite. I'm not sure. But it troubles me to see this disparity.

There's also a double standard in the Yukon. The territorial land use regulations apply to everything but mineral development in the Yukon. These proposed regulations will go hand in hand with the existing territorial land use regulations that apply all across the north. What it means is that the environmental protection standards you have to meet for building the road and moving the equipment up to your mineral claim are more stringent in some areas than the standards you meet once you cross onto that claim.

In my submission, this is an absurd situation and one that perhaps warrants the committee making some comment - although it does appear in the regulations.

My comments specifically on that point are in boldface type at the top of page 11.

The other point I would make on the classes and the approvals is that there are things called operating conditions. Operating conditions are the minimum on-the-ground requirements that must be met for all development activities. These are things such as revegetating and cleaning up your campsite.

The details of those are set out in the regulations. I don't want to talk about them at the moment.

What I want to talk about is this. Operating conditions are mandatory for class I activities. For the least disturbing activities, you must comply with the operating conditions. However, for class II, class III, and class IV activities, compliance with these conditions may be waived.

I can see no reason for this type of waiver provision.

What they've done, in effect, is say that the operating conditions are mandatory for the least damaging activities but optional for the most damaging activities, which is sort of the opposite of what you'd think it would be.

In fact, classes II, III, and IV have far greater potential to cause environmental harm, and the operating conditions ought, at a minimum, to apply to those activities - certainly what's required for the least disturbing activities.

You will see on page 14 my specific recommendations for how that could be achieved very simply with a couple of wording changes in the legislation itself.

I'll skip on and try to stick to the high points.

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Moving on to page 17, what may be the most significant point in the whole legislation is this. I have a quote there from Nietzsche that I like to remind my law students of at UBC when I teach my environmental law course there:

The most common stupidity lies in forgetting what it is one is trying to achieve.

This act, I say with all humility, has fallen into that trap in that there's nothing in this act that says you must protect the environment. It sets up an intricate process that requires approvals in some places and gives discretion to impose security, but nowhere in there does it actually set substantive environmental goals to guide the decisions being made in issuing permits and approvals and requiring security. There's nothing in there saying that you should be trying to avoid net loss of habitat, that you should be trying to minimize environmental effects, or that you should be trying to avoid loss of biological diversity.

Other jurisdictions do have these kinds of goals. The territorial land use regulations in the NWT require land to be restored to the same condition it was in prior to mineral development. B.C. has something similar. The new federal legislation in Alaska says land should be restored to a condition capable of supporting the pre-existing fish and wildlife uses. That's at the top of page 18.

What I recommend is set out in bold on the top of page 18. There should be specific environmental goals in the legislation to guide those making decisions on such things as permitting, posting of security, etc. There shouldn't simply be carte blanche.

I've given the three I would suggest: adverse environmental effects minimized as far as possible, no net loss of habitat or biological diversity, and lands and waters restored to their full ecological productivity. What you will get if those are in place is not just a good process but good results, and I think that's what the act is supposed to be about.

These are very doable, by the way. Proposed sections 136 and 139 of the act set out the approval sections, and all that would be needed would be a simple clause saying that in making approval or permitting decisions under section 136 or 139, the department shall have regard to the following conditions. Those would then be the guiding factors - the benchmarks, if you will - against which approval decisions would be measured, and it would still leave some flexibility as to how those should be implemented in any particular case.

Let me add, because there's some confusion sometimes on this, that the application of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act does not take care of this problem, because the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act merely requires consideration of environmental effects. It doesn't actually prescribe any level of environmental results that must be achieved. It's simply a consideration piece of legislation.

One thing that's missing with this act - and again it's something that will occur outside the four corners of the act - is there are two very critical regulations not yet in place. One is a regulation specifying what standards of reclamation must be met and the other is a regulation specifying processes for approving full mines - mineral development and production, not just exploration.

At the moment, without those regulations, there are two gaping holes in this act, and I think it's fair to say that reclamation is probably the most environmentally important aspect of mineral development. It's where most of the environmental damage can be restored and prevented if done in the right way.

We've been waiting for over two years for reclamation regulations to come into place. I realize they won't be drafted today, but I would recommend that this committee recommend to the minister that when the act is implemented or the bill is introduced, there be a specific commitment to a timetable for the development of those regulations so they don't get lost on the wayside and forgotten once the bill is through, as they appear to have been for the last couple of years. These are extremely important regulations.

Let me make a couple of more substantive points and then leave it open for questions.

The other environmentally significant aspect of mineral development regulations is the posting of a security. Those of you who are familiar with mining - more familiar than I, I'm sure - will recognize that a major portion of your environmental clean-up expenditures in a mine occur after your revenue flow has stopped coming in. At that time there's often a temptation to try to cut corners, or in some cases bankruptcy may intervene in a thinly capitalized company.

Therefore most jurisdictions require the posting of a security to ensure environmental clean-up after the mining work is done. The cost can be extremely expensive, in some cases running into the millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars. Those of you who have read the newspaper reports of Robert Friedland's disaster in Colorado know that in the worst case scenario the cost can be in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars, although that certainly is the extreme example.

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Under the current proposal the depositing of a security is entirely discretionary. It says the minister or the chief ``may'' require an operator to post security. I'm on page 21 now. Even where there's a significant risk of an environmental effect, posting of security is optional. The word ``may'' is used.

I would submit that security should be a requirement for all mineral activity, not because miners are inherently bad or trying to harm the environment but just because it's a real risk that goes with the business. Cleaning up the environment should be a cost of doing business.

The other thing I would note about the legislation is that the amount of the security is entirely discretionary. There is no requirement that the security posted be adequate to cover the full cost of reclamation. Again, that would be a simple thing to put in the act, that the security should be enough to pay the costs, and it would seem logical, but it's not in.

What strikes me is that the Whitehorse Mining Initiative reached agreement on this point. The mineral industry, the mineral departments of the federal and provincial governments, and environmental groups all agreed, as I've set out on page 22, that financial security at any point must be able to cover the reclamation liability. They all agreed to the polluter-pays principle. They agreed to internalization of environmental costs, that reclamation is a cost of doing business, and that there must be certainty of adequate funds.

This legislation falls well short of meeting those standards. I would say rather than being a polluter-pays principle this is a taxpayer-pays principle. If the reclamation security falls short, the bill gets passed on to the public. In my view that's not fair. Those who are reaping the benefit ought to be putting the security up to ensure the clean-up occurs. That's consistent with mineral legislation in many other jurisdictions in North America, and again, it could be done very simply, by changing a couple of ``mays'' to ``shalls'' and requiring adequate security to cover the costs.

One suggestion I make in here but I won't go into is that in some cases small operators will have trouble posting a bond. What other jurisdictions have done is they've come up with the idea of a bonding pool, like a self-insurance scheme, for example, where you contribute a certain amount into a pool, you get all but 5% back once you've cleaned up, and that small percentage stays in there and pays for the few bad operators that don't pay for the clean-up. That makes it easier for small operators to cover the costs of reclamation.

I won't go into it, because time is running short, but let me emphasize the recommendation I've made on pages 24 and 25 along similar lines. At the moment a mineral operator is not liable to pay the full costs of environmental clean-up incurred by their mine site. Without my explaining it further, let me just recommend that it's something the committee or staff may want to look at afterwards.

Let me also recommend the creation of a reclamation fund. Similar funds have been created in other jurisdictions. They are now becoming more commonplace under forestry legislation. Some of the royalty revenue derived from extracting the resource goes into the fund that goes back to reclamation. When there's no operator to clean up, there's a fund there to draw from. I would note that royalty rates are currently very, very low in the Yukon compared with those of other jurisdictions. A small increase in royalty would go a long way towards creating a reclamation fund so the taxpayer didn't have to pay any outstanding costs of reclamation. That recommendation can be found on page 25 of my report.

On pages 28 and 29 I point out that the fines, the enforcement provisions, under this bill are embarrassingly low compared with those of other major environmental legislation in this country. Most major environmental legislation put in during the last six years, such as the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, or the Yukon Environment Act, provide for maximum fines of up to $1 million. That's the maximum. It doesn't mean everyone gets it. But for the worst case scenario, and we're talking about potential damages in the millions of dollars here, at the far end of the scale.... In this case, maximum fines for mineral development range from $5,000 to $20,000. To my mind that's not sufficient to be an adequate deterrent for some of the worst case scenarios that may come up. I would recommend you look at the Fisheries Act. Certainly fish habitat shouldn't be treated differently from wildlife habitat in the Yukon.

There are other recommendations in there. Standard provisions you find in almost any act, such as liability for directors and officers, are not in this legislation; such as the fact that someone who violates the act should be required to pay back any economic benefits they've gained by breaching the act. That's not in there. That stuff is pretty boiler-plate these days in major environmental legislation and it's missing in here. I would recommend...it is very simple to put these kinds of things in. There are precedents all over the place in federal legislation on the books right now.

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One thing I feel strongly about is that there's no provision in here for private citizen enforcement. There are no means, if enforcement is not occurring or if a citizen is aware of violations that aren't being enforced, for someone to go to court and make sure it is enforced.

It was a Liberal election promise made by Paul Martin in a booklet called The Environment: A Liberal Vision that a Liberal government will guarantee citizens ``the right to use the courts to ensure that federal environmental laws are properly enforced and obeyed''. That's set out at the top of page 33.

Citizen enforcement provisions are being added in the new amendments to CEPA, and I understand they're being considered in the proposed federal endangered species act, consistent with this promise. Somehow this act seems to have fallen through the cracks, and I would recommend that the model being developed for CEPA be incorporated into this legislation as well, which would be consistent with the new Yukon legislation allowing for citizen enforcement under provincial environmental legislation.

The final point I would make is simply this: probably the largest flaw with the legislation, in my mind, and it's really a fundamental flaw that goes to the very core of the way we contemplate regulation of mining in the north, is the free entry system.

The free entry system was designed in the 19th century when we viewed our natural resources and wilderness as a vast frontier that we desperately wanted to be tapped and tamed. That may have been an appropriate way to look at our resources and our frontier then; it's not any more. Many jurisdictions in Canada and the world have moved away from free entry, and when I say free entry what I mean is this: that anyone has an absolute right to walk on to any public land in the Yukon that hasn't been withdrawn, stake their claim, and the government has no right to refuse them the right to mine on that public land. There is no ability to balance other competing land values with the right for mineral development. The government has abdicated its ability to balance competing claims on public lands.

We don't do that with any other resource. With forestry, you don't have a right to walk out and simply stake a forest patch. With oil and gas, you don't have a right to walk out and stake a claim to oil. What happens is, when the resource value is identified, the government then balances it against other competing values for that land, like wildlife habitat or recreation, and makes a decision on whether it should be used for resource extraction.

I would strongly encourage this committee to consider ways of moving away from a free entry regime, one that's really outdated in its way of looking at our north as a limitless resource pool and not as a place that's valued for things other than mere resource extraction. I know it's a tall order and probably one that requires some debate, and perhaps one thought might be for this committee to hold hearings, particularly on the issue of free entry in the north.

In the federal regime is where the issue arises, and it's the place in Canada where the problem is the greatest. It's an issue that I don't think has really been debated in Canada the way it should, and it might be an idea for this committee to consider.

That's probably all I should say. I've said too much, I'm sure, and I thank you for listening.

The Chairman: The time is yours. I appreciate your presentation, and I do appreciate you identifying legislation and regulations.

I remind the members that we are not dealing with regulations; we are dealing strictly with the legislation. But it doesn't hurt to inform the committee.

We have about five minutes.

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand.

Mr. Bachand (Saint-Jean): I want to commend you, Mr. Elgie, for a very well-documented and thoughtful presentation.

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I have only one question. In your submission, you did not describe for us the Sierra Legal Defense Fund. I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to send our clerk a short description of your organization. In your submission, you gave us a fairly interesting overview of the things which, in your mind, should be changed, but I would like very much to know where you come from and I would like to have information on the Sierra Legal Defense Fund if possible.

Mr. Elgie: I will answer in English if I may.

[English]

That will be no problem. I'll tell you briefly. The Sierra Legal Defence Fund is a non-profit environmental law organization founded in British Columbia in 1990. We now have an office in Ontario as well. We provide free legal representation to environmental organizations, first nations and fishing organizations, to any people with concerns about the environment who couldn't otherwise afford a lawyer.

I spend part of my time being a law professor at the University of British Columbia, but most of my time with the Sierra Legal Defence Fund. I'll provide some documentation to the committee.

The Chairman: I'll ask the clerk to make it available to all members.

Mr. Stinson or Mr. Duncan, you have three minutes.

Mr. Stinson (Okanagan - Shuswap): It kind of sounds to me as if you'd like to see mining stopped all the way across up there. Do you really think we could take away the free entry system in regard to mining in the Yukon? Do you know how mines are found? Do you know this is done through prospecting, usually by individuals, and do you know they must have free access? I'd also like to know if you brought these proposals up in the Whitehorse, the....

Mr. Elgie: Do you mean in the new Whitehorse initiative?

Mr. Stinson: Yes.

Mr. Elgie: Most of these proposals are consistent with the Whitehorse Mining Accord. I've tried to draw on those principles and compare them with the legislation. I'm sure you know more about mineral development than I, so I won't pretend to talk about what's involved in staking a claim.

What I do know is that at least four jurisdictions in Canada have already abandoned free entry. Australia has abandoned free entry. It strikes me that the miners in the Yukon I've met are more clever and more creative for the most part than many of the other miners in other jurisdictions, and I don't see why they would need to have weaker environmental standards in order to be able to compete.

Mr. Stinson: I don't look at it as weaker environmental standards. I see these other places that you mentioned and I also see that the employment factor in mining has dropped substantially in these areas. In these provinces you refer to here, especially in B.C., mining jobs have dropped substantially. I'd say it's created a huge cost for the unemployment rolls.

Mr. Elgie: Actually, B.C. still has free entry.

Mr. Stinson: Yes, I know, but we're talking about some of these other standards. I think maybe you should also look at how some of the regulations you recommend here could have a negative impact on the Canadian economy and the Canadian job situation.

Mr. Elgie: If I may respond, it strikes me that economic development that sacrifices the long-term environmental integrity of the Yukon is probably cutting off your nose to spite your face. I know you're not suggesting that, but I think the people in the Yukon will recognize that the public lands are valuable for a number of purposes, many of which have long-term, sustainable economic benefits in a lot of ways.

The one thing our north has that's becoming a scarcer and scarcer commodity in this world is wilderness. That's the one thing we have less and less of all the time and it'll become more and more valuable as time goes on.

Mr. Stinson: I think the people in the Yukon are well aware of that. I also think that if you do not have a certain amount of income coming in at all times you will lose the wilderness anyway. You must generate income in order to keep the standard up.

Mr. Elgie: Yes, it's true.

The Chairman: Mr. Murphy, you have three minutes, Mr. Finlay, you have two.

Mr. Murphy (Annapolis Valley - Hants): Thank you for your presentation. I think you certainly have pointed out holes in the proposed legislation. I'm not for more regulations per se, but in terms of trying to get the mining industry moving more quickly.... It's a huge industry. I guess from the environmental point of view there are some gaping holes.

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You had mentioned the possibility that we might look at this, not necessarily in the context of making changes here and now with the proposed legislation, but to some timetable, to some of the overall environmental recommendations that are made in here in terms of clean-up of mining sites and things of that order. I just put that forward as something that we as a committee might want to look at. You may want to respond to that.

Mr. Elgie: I think I agree.

The Chairman: Mr. Finlay, a point was addressed to the committee, so you have your two minutes.

Mr. Finlay (Oxford): I want to say that I appreciate very much what Mr. Elgie has presented us with today. I can tell you, Mr. Chairman, that for this meeting I have done my homework, and he has answered most of the dozen or twenty questions that I have about this act.

Number one, it says nothing about the environment. It has no standards listed in it. Number two, for three years we have been talking here, around various committee tables, about cutting out duplication and about making some standards available across this country in order to encourage investment and so on. The way this act and its regulations are now written - and they are included in my binder and I have read them - fly in the face of that completely.

I would ask two questions. I have a chart here about confidentiality with respect to mining development, and I find that Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories don't provide any confidentiality; Manitoba and Alberta do, but they're thinking about it. Yet here we are saying that applications will be kept confidential for a year in the Yukon. I don't understand that.

The other thing I want to know is this. In talking to some mining people I've found out that mercury is apparently used extensively in placer mining in the Yukon. It is a toxic substance that is to be kept out of the environment, but I don't see any mention of mercury or any other heavy metal in the whole act. Am I wrong about that?

The Chairman: Would you take one minute to respond, please?

Mr. Elgie: Sure, I'll try to be brief.

In terms of the confidentiality point, I didn't focus on that, so you probably are ahead of me on it, but I have heard it used as a rationale for why class I activities shouldn't require any notification to government. It seems to me that there may be a legitimate interest in confidentiality for people who are doing mineral exploration, but it strikes me as odd that this outweighs all other competing land use values that would benefit from knowing someone is going out and is undertaking class I development activities, and that notification is a pretty minimal requirement.

In terms of the mercury, my guess is that it's dealt with through the Northern Inland Waters Act, which is now the Yukon Waters Act. Aquatic-based impacts, which I suspect would be mercury related issues from placer mining, would be dealt with through the Yukon Territory Water Board, the Yukon Waters Act and, to some extent, through the Fisheries Act. This act, as I understand it, is trying to focus mainly on the land-based and habitat-based impacts of mineral development.

The Chairman: Mr. Stinson, did you have a short comment?

Mr. Stinson: I would just like to state that I've also done my homework on this. I spent three weeks in the Yukon this summer, and in regard to mercury being used in the extraction of gold in the placer mines, I never ran into one case of that.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. I appreciate your presentation. It was very interesting. I don't know if you're going to make your flight or not.

Mr. Elgie: You don't have any pull in that regard, do you?

The Chairman: I do, but I'm busy. Thanks very much.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Elgie: Thank you, too.

The Chairman: From the Council of Yukon First Nations, I welcome Chief Steve Taylor.

While Chief Taylor gets set up, I understand the member of Parliament for the Yukon is in attendance in the Yukon today. If Ms McLaughlin is there, I'd like to extend our best wishes to her.

Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Stinson: Mr. Chair, before everything starts here, I'd like to move a motion that at the next meeting of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, the following motion be debated and voted on:

I move this committee urge the government -

The Chairman: I can't accept motions during public hearings, but I will allow you some time after the last witness today. Is that fair enough?

Mr. Stinson: That's fair enough.

The Chairman: Okay.

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Ms McLaughlin.

Ms McLaughlin (Yukon): I'm Audrey McLaughlin and I am present at these hearings. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Thank you for participating.

Grand Chief Shirley Adamson (Council for Yukon First Nations): Ladies and gentlemen of the standing committee, my name is Shirley Adamson. I'm the Grand Chief of the Council for Yukon First Nations. Accompanying me today are the chief of the Tr'on dek Hwech'in First Nation, who will be speaking on our behalf since he sat as the CYFN appointee to the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee; our senior legal counsel, Dave Joe; and our senior negotiator, Victor Mitander.

We shall endeavour to provide you with additional comments, should you wish, at the conclusion of our presentation. Now I'll turn this over to Chief Taylor.

Chief Steve Taylor (Tr'on dek Hwech'in First Nation): Greetings from Whitehorse. My name is Steve Taylor and I'm the chief of the Tr'on dek Hwech'in First Nation. I have been appointed representative of the Council of First Nations to sit on the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, also known as YMAC. I have been involved in this capacity since the beginning of YMAC in 1990.

In this presentation I wish to outline major concerns of Yukon first nations on Bill C-6.

As you may be aware, the Council for Yukon First Nations represents eleven Yukon first nations. Four of these first nations include treaty and self-government agreements with governments of Canada and Yukon on February 14, 1995. These treaties are constitutionally protected under subsection 35(1) of the Constitution Act, 1982. These treaties are also paramount to any other federal legislation including the Yukon Quartz Mining Act, the Yukon Placer Mining Act, and the proposed amendments to these pieces of legislation under Bill C-6.

The other member first nations of CYFN are currently attempting to conclude agreements with the governments of Canada and Yukon. These seven first nations, including my own first nation, have existing aboriginal rights within their respective traditional territories.

It is our position that the Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory Order of 1870 provides a constitutional requirement for the Crown in right of Canada to settle with Yukon first nations in conformity with the equitable principles that have uniformly governed the British Crown and its dealing with aborigines. This constitution obligation requires that a settlement be made with all Yukon first nations before any alienations by way of government grants, licences or permits to develop resources are issued. This has not occurred for approximately 75% of the lands within the Yukon Territory.

The Crown is also obligated to consult with Yukon first nations. The process to consult is specified within each of the four Yukon first nations treaties and contained within the common law for those Yukon first nations without treaties.

For the purposes of treaty, ``Yukon first nations consult'' means: a) to the party to be consulted, notice of a matter to be decided in sufficient form and detail to allow that party to prepare its views on the matter; b) a reasonable period of time in which the party to be consulted may prepare its views on the matter and an opportunity to present such views to the party obligated to consult, and full and fair consideration of any views presented by the party obligated to consult.

The common-law principles under the recent Jack case appears to require the Crown to advise first nations of the potential impact on their subsection 35(1) rights.

On October 25, 1995, Steve Morrison, director of mineral resources, Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, wrote to CYFN and the four Yukon first nations with treaties to inform them of the proposals for the regulation of mining exploration activities on mineral claims in the Yukon. There can be no doubt we have had sufficient notice and ample time to present our views on this matter. However, the Crown is obligated to give full and fair consideration to our views and must also, in our opinion, advise on the impact on our section 35(1) rights.

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As this appears to be the last opportunity to present our wishes, I wish simply to set out my concerns about Bill C-6.

First of all, Bill C-6 will not generally apply to category A settlement land. For 10,000 square miles of the Yukon Territory, developers must first obtain the consent of the first nation landowner.

For my portion of the 10,000 square miles, I would like to develop a regulatory system based on a unique and individual set of regulations and requirements that will meet the needs of my first nation and the developer on a case-by-case basis. These negotiated regulations will permit the developer and the first nation to customize regulations that will work with the specific conditions of each project.

By contrast, the proposed regulations will apply only to exploration work done on mineral claims and not to work on unstaked ground. This has the potential to set up a conflict between a first nation's category A settlement land and category B settlement land on which activities may be carried out without being subject to environmental guidelines and without the developer incurring any responsibility for reclamation.

The first nation will set standards respecting land use on category A lands but do so only to a limited extent for category B settlement lands. In my opinion, it would be better to do away with category B designation by converting all category B lands to category A lands, thus ensuring the new proposed regulatory scheme applies only to crown land. Otherwise the proposed regulatory regime has the potential to set up three separate categories of land management within the traditional territory of a first nation, and this does little to remove uncertainty in land use.

Secondly, the umbrella final agreement in chapter 12, on development assessment, commits the Government of Canada to introduce development assessment legislation by February 14, 1995. This legislation is to be based on a set of negotiated guidelines. The resulting development assessment legislation will recognize and enhance, to the extent practical, the traditional economy of Yukon Indian people and their special relationship with the wilderness environment. The development assessment legislation is also to provide for guaranteed participation by Yukon Indian people and is to utilize the knowledge and experience of Yukon Indian people in the development assessment process. Another objective of this agreement is to require project proponents to consider the environmental and socio-economic effects of projects and project alternatives and to incorporate appropriate mitigative measures in the design of projects.

The parties to the umbrella final agreement were to adopt interim measures for assessing a project. These measures were to be consistent with the spirit of chapter 12 and within the existing framework of law and regulatory agencies.

When we look at Bill C-6, we are concerned that the intentions of DAP have not been met. The classification procedure under Bill C-6 subjects only class III and class IV activities to formal approval requirements. The approval requirements under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act do not guarantee the participation of Yukon Indian people, nor do they recognize our economies or our special relationship with the wilderness environment.

Any new law is obligated to incorporate the features of DAP I've just outlined. Our concern is that class I and class II activities have been exempted from review and these classes of activities may be reviewed under the DAP legislation. It was our view that all of these matters should be addressed in the context of our agreement and not in the context of involving amendments to outdated mineral legislation for the Yukon, especially if the goal is to make the regulatory system more efficient.

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Third, I come from a region in which the early mining techniques have left enormous scars on the lands within our traditional territory. There were no reclamation requirements in the Yukon Placer Mining Act of 1906, and there are no reclamation requirements for the production and development activities of a mining development under the current bill. There are operating conditions in schedule III of the proposed mining land use regulations, but these are minimal at best.

For example, all archaeological sites and burial grounds are to be avoided and flagged and then reported to the chief. The site is not to be disturbed until authorized by the chief. The operator must then also know the existing treaty agreement of the first nation.

Consider when it's shown that this has not been done. For example, it's required that any person who accidentally discovers a heritage resource on settlement land of a first nation shall take reasonable steps in the circumstances to safeguard the heritage resource and report the discovery as soon as possible to the first nation.

In addition, the treaty makes it clear that any person who discovers a Yukon first nation burial site in the course of carrying on an activity may only carry on that activity with the agreement of the Yukon first nation in whose traditional territory the burial site was discovered. The point is that the operator must be mindful of his obligations under each treaty, as well as the stipulated requirements of Bill C-6 and the accompanying regulations.

We suggest that this is unnecessarily complicated.

Fourth, we feel the security provisions are inadequate. The activities approved on category B settlement land or on crown land within the traditional territory to a first nation will undoubtedly have a transboundary effect on category A settlement land.

The security deposit is discretionary. The operator may only be required to post security where there is a risk of significant adverse environmental effect from class II, class III or class IV activities, or from a planned development or production. The security deposit should equal the cost of full reclamation in all cases. There should be a minimum bond requirement for all mining activities. The discretionary nature of the security requirement should be subject to the financial ability of the operator to pay. Otherwise, the shoestring operators will always be relieved of any financial responsibility to pay in most, if not all, cases.

This leaves the first nation and the general public exposed to unnecessary risks to pick up the resulting costs of reclamation. This should not be the case.

Finally, the fines and enforcement provisions of Bill C-6 should be strengthened. The fines currently range from $5,000 to $100,000. By comparison, the Fisheries Act provides that first time offenders would face up to $1 million in fines and three years in jail for any harmful alteration, disturbance or destruction of fish habitat. Given that at least 6,000 square miles of settlement land and 170,000 square miles of traditional territory are exposed to these amendments and regulations, I believe that wildlife habitat is just as important as fish habitat and that the fines should at least meet this modern standard.

The first nations also note that our chiefs and councillors are responsible for their actions and could be sued by their citizens if there is a breach of their duties. However, the directors and officers of these companies undertaking these activities are there on their own right and are not to be held liable.

The Yukon Environment Act permits charges to be brought against responsible officers, directors or agents of companies who fail to follow the existing act. This, in my opinion, would strengthen the requirement of the companies to seriously conform with the required standards of environmental protection.

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In summary, I have focused my comments on five main areas. My comments should not be construed as being exhaustive for all Yukon first nations, as my role as CYFN representative on the Yukon mining advisory committee was only in respect of the terms of reference for that body.

The Crown still has its constitutional obligation to meet all Yukon first nations in various forums, and these obligations must be met.

I have also addressed the need to be mindful of the treaty requirements to conclude development assessment legislation by 1997 and to provide for interim measures. Development assessment is a piece of federal legislation that will more effectively involve Yukon first nations and better rationalize all relevant treaties, self-government agreements, and other relevant pieces of legislation.

I have also addressed only the key areas of the need for reclamation standards, the need for security deposits, and the inadequacy of fines.

I thank the standing committee for allowing me this opportunity to present my views on this matter.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for a fine presentation.

We'll move to questions. As a guide, we will start with six minutes, six minutes, and nine minutes, with my colleagues on the government side deciding how they want to share the nine minutes among themselves.

Mr. Bachand.

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand: I don't know if you'll get the translation in the Yukon. Do you hear me well in the Yukon? Yes?

So, Steve, how are you?

[English]

Chief Taylor: Pretty good. How are you?

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand: Very well. I have a very important question for you. Is the midnight sun still beautiful from the top of the Klondike's dome?

[English]

Chief Taylor: At this time of the year the midnight sun is quickly setting. We're getting less and less daylight.

[Translation]

Mr. Bachand: Let's move on to more serious matters. I have here a letter which you sent to our clerk on April 12. You say among other things, in point 4:

The Yukon First Nations Council has heard that complaints had been made regarding the approval by the government of a bilateral program which would legalize the illegal use and occupation of claims in the Klondike Valley.

You say further:

That program is viewed as a massive land grab.

And you say finally:

The impact of Bill C-6 was not at all taken into account when that criminal program was approved.

So the program is viewed as a massive land grab.

Could you explain to us what you meant in that letter, especially in point 4, where you say that you view this as a massive land grab?

[English]

Chief Taylor: In order for me explain that, you need to realize that up here in the Yukon, as the previous speaker talked about, all you need to do is go and put a stake in the ground and you assume all of these rights.

What happens in the Yukon is that people who are not legitimate miners go out and stake a claim for $10 and end up building a residence on it. The mining act is so wide and broad that people are allowed to do that. I think everyone realizes this, and it gives a black eye to the mining community.

The practice still goes on. However, the federal government has made an attempt to allow people who stake claims for residence purposes to become legitimate. As other landowners in the Yukon observe this, they're more and more perturbed that when they buy property on which to build a house it costs them many thousands of dollars, yet someone who doesn't have any scruples can go out and for $10 have a nice chunk of real estate.

The Chairman: Mr. Stinson or Mr. Duncan, six minutes.

Mr. Duncan (North Island - Powell River): I was a bit unclear. You were talking about all of the self-government agreements in the Yukon. In the consultation process on legislation, are you saying there should be consultation with each of the 14 first nations? If that is what you're saying, does that mean the umbrella agreement really isn't the operative document? In your mind it's the individual agreements?

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Chief Taylor: I would like to refer that question to my legal counsel.

Mr. David Joe (Legal Counsel, Council of Yukon First Nations): My name is Dave Joe. I'm the legal counsel.

We have four agreements, as the chief advised, and these agreements require that the Government of Canada consults with the first nation. Those processes are specified in the context of their agreements.

With respect to the other first nations without agreements, there's a common-law duty to consult. That common-law duty currently may be construed to be greater than the statutory requirement to consult with those first nations that have existing agreements.

So implicitly, the Crown has a mandatory duty to consult with the four Yukon first nations that have treaties, and implicitly as well, the common-law requirements require Canada to consult with the other 10 first nations that do not have treaties.

So the short answer to your question is yes, Canada should consult with all Yukon first nations.

Mr. Duncan: I thank you for that answer. The practical ramifications in the legislative package....

In the future, I'm sure, we'll be looking at other types of legislation that will impact on the whole area of consultation as well. Do you foresee then that there would be a need for more than one legislative package to address an issue, because the concerns will obviously be different from first nation to first nation, or do you think the whole objective of the consultations will be to come up with one legislative package?

Grand Chief Adamson: I think it would be fair to say the intent is to represent to the best of our ability the views and legitimate interests of Yukon first nations governments and our citizens. Certainly it would be our intent to try to simplify the process, but unfortunately, as evidenced in the information we provided you, Yukon first nations' interests are not necessarily met when legislation is being contemplated.

We're saying now that we have legally protected language that provides us with a process for appropriate consultation and that's what we wish to follow. And certainly you're aware that there are subsequent court findings that reinforce the language of our agreements, reinforce the language of consultation.

Mr. Duncan: Right, okay.

One of the other areas that was discussed was the whole penalty provision aspect. You related it to the Fisheries Act. One of the great difficulties in enforcing the Fisheries Act is that because the penalties are so large, there has been a general hesitancy to use them, and when they have been used, on virtually every occasion it's a very royal legal battle.

So many people say that in actual fact the penalty provisions, because they're so onerous, lead people to not use the environmental part of the act very much. I'm wondering if you considered that concept in developing your statement about wanting larger penalty provisions.

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Chief Taylor: Rather than talk about the reasons for having a penalty so high, I think we should talk about having these low fines as part of everyday business. I could envision a person or a project paying these fines as a matter of doing business and just continuing on.

I think this legislation is important and needed. I would hate it if it got out into the general public, with the general public having a feeling that these fines aren't high enough, that paying the fines and continuing on could be a part of everyday business. I don't think the general public is ready for something like that.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Grand Chief Adamson: I'm not sure I agree with your interpretation that high fines are preventing the enforcement of legislation. The environment is the responsibility of every individual in this territory, and that means those people who inflict damage on the environment too.

I think there should be no reason why certain segments of society can get away with doing damage to a resource that belongs to all of us and not be subject to accountability, whether it's financial or otherwise.

I think much of the difficulties we as Yukoners generally and we as first nation citizens in particular have had with legislation and the inadequacy of legislation is not necessarily with the content of the legislation itself but with the enforcement of the legislation.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Now we have my colleagues on the government side, for nine minutes. Who will start?

Mr. Harper.

Mr. Harper (Churchill): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I welcome you, not necessarily to Ottawa, but to the screen. I see you on the screen.

I do have some important questions, but I want to leave some room for my colleagues. Of course, I am very concerned about maintaining our treaty and aboriginal rights all across the country, and I am also concerned for my fellow aboriginal people in different parts of Canada.

A mining act and regulations are being proposed here. I want to ask about the umbrella agreement that was agreed to and signed by the Yukon Indians. You mentioned there are also some treaty parts of Yukon. In those areas, do you have total jurisdiction to make your own laws in your respective treaty areas and settlement areas? Also, what kind of abilities do you have to make laws or to make your concerns known for crown lands that you have access to? Is there a difference between them? Who wants to answer the question?

Mr. Joe: I'll attempt to answer that question, if I may.

In terms of the law-making authority of the first nations, first of all we believe that we have the inherent right to pass our own laws. Although the four first nations that have treaties have an agreement on self-government, these specify that in some areas they have exclusive law-making authority unique to that first nation. So in those areas, that law-making authority, we would submit, is vested throughout Canada.

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So if it appears that any laws are in conflict - any laws of Canada or any laws of Yukon, or, indeed, even of B.C. - are inconsistent with that law-making capacity, they would fall.

Secondly, we have adopted a concurrent law-making authority on another category of what we call Yukon laws. These laws relate to matters and issues such as child care. If the first nation decides to occupy the field - i.e., pass a law - and it's in conflict with the Yukon law, at that point in time the Yukon first nation law becomes paramount.

I believe that the four first nations that have occupied the field or have final agreements at this point in time have passed about ten laws. Some of them are on the category A issue or matters, and some of them are on the second category of concurrent law-making.

Then we have a third category with respect to land use that's basically confined to settlement land. This currently would comprise about 6,000 square miles of the land within Yukon, although the agreement maintains and is consistent with the fact that we have 16,000 square miles of land in Yukon.

So the scheme we have is that the first nations could pass laws to the extent that they fail to occupy the field or pass laws. Then all laws that generally apply, including Bill C-6, would continue to apply. So if a first nation wants to move out aspects of Bill C-6, for example, they could do it in the context of their agreements.

The Chairman: The time is yours to share.

Mr. Harper: I have one more question. I want to share the time with my colleagues.

With respect to the jurisdiction, especially in the treaty area, do you have conflicts in that area? It is my understanding that you have treaty areas that extend not only within the Yukon boundary but also into the British Columbia boundary. I was just wondering how this may cause some problems for the first nations or the treaty Indian people in Yukon and in British Columbia with respect to this bill.

Grand Chief Adamson: There are indeed areas within Yukon first nations agreements that define the traditional territories and the game lands straddling the boundaries. We'll attempt to deal with those issues through transboundary agreements. At this point I'm not in a position to be able to speak on behalf of those first nations that have that situation, as they are not constituent members of the Council of Yukon First Nations.

Mr. Finlay: Chief Taylor, I'd like to ask you a bit more about the YMAC committee. According to the notes I have, this committee has representation from the Yukon Chamber of Mines, the Klondike Placer Miners Association, the Council of Yukon First Nations, the Yukon Conservation Society, the Yukon territorial government, and DIAND. It's been involved with the rewriting of these acts since the 1992 report, which recommended that the act should be amended to provide authority to establish mining industry specific land use and mine site reclamation regulations, which sound to me like something to do with the environment.

Then it says that, in addition to ongoing consultations, YMAC also conducted extensive public consultations in the Yukon during 1995.

I find that you have some objections to the act that are very similar to those of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, and to my own, and I wonder how this happens. If YMAC works as a consultative body, were they not concerned with protecting the future of the land and the rivers and so on? I can't imagine they weren't, so how come this act leaves all that very much to chance? Or so it seems to me.

Chief Taylor: As you've already described, I guess, the YMAC group is a very diverse one. Certainly a fine bunch of individuals worked on this act. We worked on a consensus basis, and it was probably the first time in the history of the Yukon that such a diverse group of people managed to come up with these regulations.

.1425

There was a concern for the environment. There was also a concern that mining should evolve on a sustainable basis. We know we need to protect the environment and we know mining has to go on.

Within this diverse group we managed to come up with these recommendations. As you'll probably hear throughout today and tomorrow, not everyone totally agrees with everything that's in it, but it's important to note that this diverse group did come up with something. I was personally very proud and happy to be part of this group. I think we've done a great job.

The Chairman: Thank you very much. We have time for three one-minute comments.

Chief, do you have any closing remarks? We didn't hear what you had to say.

Ms McLaughlin.

Ms McLaughlin: I'm sorry. I'm asking the chair if I might ask a question.

The Chairman: If it can be done in two minutes, with the answer.

Ms McLaughlin: Yes, very quickly. I want just to get a clarification from CYFN on the issue of consultation. This was a major issue, given the land claims agreement, which was of course passed by Parliament in Bill C-68, and the lack of consultation on that. The arguments on consultation on Bill C-68, I have to say, were generally disregarded by the federal government.

The Chairman: Ms McLaughlin, we are not here to debate Bill C-68. Please stick to the issue. We don't want to embark on any side issues.

Ms McLaughlin: I'm not embarking on that. It's the principle of consultation. My question for the presenters is what form of consultation would have been appropriate, in their view. This is an issue that comes up with other legislation as well.

Grand Chief Adamson: There is a very simple answer to that question, as described in our agreements. The description and consultation being in defined terms in legislation that has been signed by ourselves, certain of the Yukon first nations, and the Governments of Canada and the Yukon, bind us all to those agreements. But I think what we wanted to highlight yet again is that subsequent to the signing of those agreements there have been cases that require the Crown also to advise the first nations of the potential impact on our section 35(1) rights, and that obligation is as binding as our agreements.

The Chairman: I wish to thank Chief Taylor, Ms Adamson, and Mr. Joe for a fine presentation.

I now welcome from the Government of the Yukon, Mr. John Ostashek, government leader, and Mr. Jesse Duke, mining facilitator.

To the committee members, we will continue the way we are. I will be asking you about the extent of participation in sharing your time with Ms McLaughlin. I want you to be aware that it will be your decision. Personally, I have no objection whatsoever.

Please proceed.

Hon. John Ostashek (Government Leader, Government of Yukon): I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear before the committee and put the views of the Government of the Yukon on the record.

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Quite simply, we support the process that went through to bring forward the amendments for this legislation. It took quite a bit longer for the federal government to act on it than we would have liked. Nevertheless, we brought some very diverse views together to build a consensus that I believe strengthens the legislation and offers protection for the environment while offering certainty for the mining industry. I think it's a great accomplishment that we could bring these diverse groups together to reach a consensus.

I know some people are going to say it doesn't go far enough in some respects. Other segments and other interests may say it is far too severe. Nevertheless, it is a great step forward, and I believe the amendments should be passed in their entirety without cherry-picking through them at this time. If we start to do that, I'm sure it's going to unravel further than what it has now by waiting for the number of years that we have since the committee came forward with the recommendations. There was a lot of careful balance and compromise achieved by the YMAC in six years of discussions. As I said, this resulted from a lot of give and take by everyone at the table.

As I said earlier, we could go on and on to try to strengthen it for each interest group in terms of how they would like to see it go, but I think it's very important to the economy of the Yukon and to the quality of life in the Yukon that these amendments do go ahead at this time. The committee has agreed to stay in place for a period of time to watch how the implementation of this goes and to do any fine-tuning that may be required as we move forward in implementing these legislative changes.

I believe I'll just wrap up my presentation at this point and leave time for questions. Maybe then we can get into a discussion on the details. Thank you.

The Chairman: Does Mr. Duke wish to say anything at this time?

Mr. Jesse Duke (Mining Facilitator, Government of Yukon): Maybe what I should add is that a number of the comments and concerns that have been aired relate to the regulations. I think from our perspective it's important to remember that this bill, this enabling legislation, is clearly headed in the right direction, in our view. Some of the details, as Mr. Ostashek has said, can be sorted out during the implementation phase. By making sure this bill goes ahead now and provides for the regulations for production licence activity, as well as mining regulations, I think we set the stage for ensuring that we do have responsible mineral exploration up here.

Again, I think it's worth repeating the fact that one of the unfortunate aspects about this process is that your committee doesn't have the luxury of enjoying the in-depth discussion that took place in the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, where some of the details of these issues were discussed. I believe that by maintaining a stakeholder forum during the implementation period that's really going to be a useful forum in which many adjustments to the legislation, any changes that might be required in the future, can be discussed. That could then be done in full consultation with the various Yukon stakeholders.

The Chairman: Thank you.

We'll start with Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Stinson: First of all, I think you are to be congratulated for the time and effort you've put into this bill.

I had the honour and the privilege of being up in the Yukon for three weeks this summer. I went just about everywhere I could think of up there, and I talked to just about all the stakeholders involved in this. I came to the same consensus that you have in regard to this. As everybody says, it's the way to go; it goes forward.

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There are a few concerns on every side, which there naturally will be in this, but overall, I found that this bill was acceptable to just about everybody involved up there.

Number one, I think you are to be congratulated in the time and effort you have put into this in bringing it forward. That was my main thing. It was to say congratulations to you on that.

Mr. Ostashek: Thank you very much.

Mr. Finlay: I appreciate your presentation, sir.

Perhaps you'd outline for me three or four of the important aspects of this bill that you feel have moved things along considerably with respect to mining in the Yukon.

Mr. Ostashek: Thank you. I'd be happy to do that.

I think the most important part of this bill is that it's updating a piece of legislation that has been around for a long time that wasn't addressing the concerns of many Yukoners about providing the protection that was needed for the environment.

Having the different classifications of work that's going to be carried out on claims in the Yukon provides some certainty not only to the mining industry, which, as I stated earlier, is very important to Yukoners, but to people who are concerned about the environment.

I want to make it very clear here that my government is very concerned about the environment. We don't condone any type of economic development that is not sustainable or is going to be a detriment to the environment.

The amendments to this act provide certainty for all interest groups, be they environmental people, the first nations, miners, or people interested in economic development in the territory.

There is some real clarification as to what requires screening and about the level of screening. I guess I could emphasize that by saying what the mining community has told me over my last four years in office. It's not the environmental regulations they need to abide by that is causing them concern, but the length of time it takes them to go through a process to get a permit, or not to get a permit, which they need before they can get their financing in place for their project. So if we have some clear understanding as to what level of screening needs to take place on different classifications of work on claims, it's going to be in the best interests of all Yukoners and all Canadians.

Mr. Calder (Wellington - Grey - Dufferin - Simcoe): John, Jesse, as a farmer from southwestern Ontario, I quite frankly have to admit that the only mining I have ever done is digging post holes for a fence. But just going through some of the stuff you've got here, obviously these two acts have been in place for over 70 years, and this is the first review of these acts coming up.

I understand you have around 40,000 mineral claims in the Yukon at the present time, so the current free entry system should obviously be replaced with a more modern system. I was wondering if you could kind of describe the system to me, in particular what you just talked about, which is the system of screening. We obviously still have to keep our mining industry on a competitive level internationally too.

Mr. Ostashek: I'll have Mr. Duke answer those questions because they're more of a technical nature.

Mr. Duke: In terms of this piece of legislation, the purpose of it is to provide for an environmental assessment of activities on mining claims, which is, in my view, an entirely different issue from free entry. The free entry system is not something that was discussed with the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee. The focus and mandate of that group and the purpose of this legislation was to ensure that environmental assessments could be done on mining claims. So there was never any contemplation of the free entry system in this whole exercise.

The Chairman: Anyone else from the government side?

Would you have any closing remarks?

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Mr. Ostashek: I just want to say in closing that I again urge the committee to see that these amendments are passed in their entirety. It would not be very productive for any of the groups in the Yukon if these amendments were going to be subjected to cherry-picking, as I said in my opening remarks, with only some of them going ahead. I think it's very important after the tremendous amount of effort and cooperation that went in by all the groups to come to a consensus that these should not be now cherry-picked through, but passed in their entirety.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I'd like to remind the members and all of us addressing this issue that this is an agreement that was reached in the Yukon by Yukoners. It was made clear to us when we visited that everyone gave up something. When some of the presenters address issues in which they would like to take something back, I think it's important for us to be conscious that if one takes something back, others will want to take something back, because everybody gave something.

I share this with you. Please correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Stinson, because you were there also, as well as you, Mr. Ostashek and Mr. Duke. Is that a fair summary of what happened?

Mr. Ostashek: I think that's a very accurate summary of what happened. The mining industry gave up a lot in this. There were some things they didn't like, but they're prepared to live with them because they also understand we need to protect our environment. They felt they could live with these amendments.

The environmental groups felt that this gave better protection to them to be able to know what was going on with mining claims. The first nations also agreed that there was a tremendous amount of input into this.

I think that's the point I can't overstress. There was a consensus-building process here that was carried out and that was successful. I would not want to see that consensus-building process derailed at this late a date.

Thank you.

The Chairman: If Ms McLaughlin would like two minutes, I invite her. In the meantime I ask Mr. Stinson, do you agree that the statements as I made them correspond to what you saw when you went?

Mr. Stinson: That's exactly what I found when I went.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Ms McLaughlin, two minutes, please.

Ms McLaughlin: No, I have no comments on the presentation. Your summary, I think, was quite accurate.

The Chairman: From the Klondike Placer Miners Association, here is Mr. Stuart Schmidt, past president.

While we're waiting, committee members, if you find that I'm too strict on time or if there are things you would like to change, let me know. This is your committee. I'd like to do it your way.

Mr. Schmidt, please give us the names of your colleagues whenever you're ready.

Mr. Stuart Schmidt (Past President, Klondike Placer Miners Association): My colleagues here are Mike McDougall, current president of the Klondike Place Miners Association, and Rob McIntyre, a professional geologist and consultant to the organization.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, hon. members. Before I speak to the bill, let me tell you a little bit about placer mining, because all of you might not know everything there is to know about it.

I'm a placer miner, and I represent the Klondike Placer Miners Association. In placer mining, we search for gold in stream valley gravels. Some of these stream valley gravels are very old and remote from the current streams. We find economic deposits. We extract the gold by running the gravel through what's called a sluice box.

There are more then 150 placer miners in the Yukon. Most of them are family-based operations in which family members make a modest living from the mine. Many mines employ people outside the family. Sometimes the husband and wife are a couple who want to be together in the workplace and they have a number of employees. Altogether, this industry is estimated to provide jobs to approximately 700 people, who are directly employed in the industry itself.

The work is seasonal, but the employees generally make enough money to live out the year on this amount. For the family who owns the mine, of course, income is not always certain. A late spring, too much overburden, too much frozen ground, poor-paying gravels, etc., can take their toll on income.

.1445

One of our former presidents, who grew up on the creeks and whose family has mined for three generations in the Mayo district, says that we are the family farm of the north. We work hard, long hours, with few days off through a long season, but we're not complaining about it. We work hard for every ounce of gold we manage to extract, and we like to do what we do, with all its financial risk and uncertainty. We support ourselves. We raise our families. We like our life on the creeks, and we contribute to the economy and the social fabric of this territory.

We don't have hard economic data for the whole territory, but we do have information for the Dawson area itself. In 1994 the Government of the Yukon developed a thorough economic profile that demonstrated the importance of placer mining in the economic health of the local community. In that year the dollars we spent on goods and services essential to our mining made up approximately 65% of the community's income.

Dawson City is packed with tourists in the summer months, staying at local hotels or buying fuel and supplies for their motorhomes and campers. They come to experience the romance of the Klondike and see the destination of the great gold rush of 1898. There are only so many of them, but you could still easily believe it's another gold rush. We're glad to see these tourists spending their dollars, because it means more business for our friends who work and live in town. But at the end of the season we will have contributed more dollars to the community's economy than all the tourists combined will have.

Of course our dollars don't all stay in Dawson City or in the Yukon; they're spent elsewhere in Canada.

In 1995 we produced 100,000 fine troy ounces of gold, worth approximately $53 million. That's a respectable infusion of new money into our national economy.

For far too many years, federal government spending in the Yukon has been the main engine of economic life. In recent years, federal transfers to the Government of the Yukon, together with direct federal spending, have made up as much as 65¢ of every dollar coming into the Yukon economy. Even after recent cutbacks, spending by the federal government still constitutes over 50% of the economic income of the territory. Given such dependence on federal spending, it surely becomes critical to help, not hinder, the efforts of those who actually generate real wealth in this territory.

One critical way for government to help, not hinder, the efforts of those who generate real wealth is to ensure that regulations governing wealth-producing industries take into account the operating realities of the workplace.

At one time, very long ago, we mined with little regulation and government was not much in our lives. Today we are heavily regulated and government is very much in our lives. To deal with the government, a collective voice was formed, the Klondike Placer Miners Association. Our founding meeting took place in Dawson City approximately twenty years ago.

We try to work with government so that laws and regulations directly affecting our livelihoods will be drafted with thorough understanding of the operating requirements of our industry. Every law must of course achieve its purpose - as Stewart Elgie pointed out, Nietzche would certainly agree with that - but it must do so with the least possible hindrance to the industry it regulates.

I will add here something on Stewart Elgie's concern about the purpose of these regulations. I don't believe we lost sight of the purpose of them. We thought the purpose was inherent in them: that the purpose was to protect the environment and that we didn't see it as being needful to mention that every paragraph or so.

Bill C-6 is intended to protect the land on our claims and leases from long-term damage by our activity. But if, in achieving that end, it effectively puts an end to our activity, we will have lost our livelihood. Dawson City will have lost its largest economic generator and Canada will have lost a $50-million-a-year industry. So Bill C-6 needs to achieve essential protection of the land but do so in such a way that it doesn't hurt the economic and other operating realities of placer mining.

I might add, again further to Mr. Elgie's remarks, that he is quite concerned about the Canadian taxpayer footing bills for situations where the government might not have taken sufficient security. But the Canadian taxpayer will certainly foot a bill for transfer payments to this territory that could increase if mining ceases to exist.

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We believe the bill before you today provides the essential environmental protection, yet does so in such a way that we can continue to mine. The bill as written achieves its purpose, yet does so in such a way that we can continue to mine, because it is a product of intense negotiation and compromise in working sessions spread over five years with the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee.

The Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, which we called YMAC, was set up initially at the request of the KPMA, the Klondike Placer Miners Association, to ensure an effective consultation process for developing the new Yukon Waters Act and replacing the old Northern Inland Waters Act.

The committee included the Yukon Chamber of Mines and the Klondike Placer Miners Association to represent the two elements of the mining industry, hard rock and placer; the Yukon Conservation Society to represent conservation interests; the Council of Yukon First Nations to represent the first nations' interests; the Government of the Yukon, which used its membership to represent mainly its renewable resources conservation interests; and of course senior officials from the Environment and Natural Resources Directorate in Northern Affairs.

Again, I remind you that the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, with its membership, was established at our request to ensure effective consultation on new legislation that will have profound effects on the livelihood of Yukon placer miners. After completing its work on the Waters Act, the committee was given responsibility for recommending regulations to govern land use on mining claims and leases.

I said earlier that this bill is the product of intense negotiation and compromise. Let me tell you that from our perspective most of the compromise was ours. To begin with, we saw little need for land use regulations. We are so closely regulated in how we use and treat water that virtually everything we do on the land is already constrained by what we can do with water. Further, we are an environmentally benign industry, notwithstanding how some interests care to picture us.

I would like to assure the honourable member concerned about mercury that mercury is not used in placer mining today in the Yukon. We do not release toxic chemicals into the environment. We use water within the substantial constraints of the Fisheries Act and the Yukon placer authorization, which governs sediment discharge levels. We comply with fuel handling regulations, health regulations and other forms of waste disposal regulations.

The main difficulty is that we of course disturb the land surface in order to get the gold-bearing black gravels. That was one of Stewart Elgie's opening comments, that we are the most significant impact in the Yukon. But I'd like to remind you at this time that a fraction of one percent of the land mass of the Yukon is impacted by any kind of mining, 40,000 claims notwithstanding. There's nothing taking place on most of these claims. The city of Whitehorse has impacts on more land mass than does all of the mining in the Yukon, and the impact of the city of Whitehorse is, I expect, of much longer impact.

People who do not understand our activity or the power of re-vegetation over time see what we do as damaging the environment. But if you take people to those areas that were intensely mined in my grandfather's time or even in my father's time, they'd be hard pressed to know what parts have been mined and what parts haven't.

Only in the Klondike Valley floor do the coarse boulders of the dredge tailings leave such a striking mark that the impacts are moderately enduring. When you go up to the tributary creeks you're hard pressed to find any evidence of mining at all in some of them.

We did not see a pressing need for this legislation, but others did, so we debated and negotiated and searched for common ground among the various interests at the table. Often many hours were spent reaching consensus on a single vital point, and in the end we did have consensus.

Based on that consensus, a report went forward and based on that report this bill was drafted. We know currently that a representative from the Yukon Conservation Society, new to the committee, arriving at the very end of the process, looked askance at what had been achieved and convinced the society to withdraw its support, but we point out that we all worked in good faith through the long process of detailed discussion in every element of the report and that the then representative of the Conservation Society did join the consensus.

Similarly, some first nations in the Yukon may now feel this bill should be altered in some way, but we asked for and had representation of the Council of Yukon Indians at the table in YMAC. Their representative, whose concerns were dealt with in the discussions, took part in the discussions and was part of the consensus leading to the report. So we ask that this bill, the product of a valid consultation process with Yukon stakeholders, proceed without amendment.

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We certainly do recognize that Parliament, and not a committee of Yukoners working with officials in the federal and territorial governments, quite appropriately has the power to regulate our industry as it sees fit. But we do believe Parliament will best do its job if this case goes with the committee's recommendations as embodied in the present draft of this bill.

We have heard it argued that this is too easy on the mining industry, that it should be toughened up. We understand that some wish to see the fine levels increased. The bill presently provides for fines of up to $100,000 per day. This fine level is already a powerful deterrent. No placer miner could treat this as a cost of doing business in order to continue with a deliberate offence. Bear in mind that we are already subject to other legislation, including the Fisheries Act, which includes some of the stiffest fine levels in the country.

This bill creates for us additional fines for new offences, such as failing to backfill a trench, failing to contour a tailings pile, or failing to file a plan. For these kinds of offences, a $20,000-per-day fine is a huge deterrent. Further, any offence in land use that could warrant a greater fine would almost certainly have implications for water quality. They would trigger far larger fines under other legislation.

The KPMA advocates and expects compliance with all regulations. The present fine levels will be effective in disciplining compliance. Far greater fine levels will get no more compliance, but will certainly see a family bankrupt if, through mishap, an offence develops notwithstanding the best efforts of the miner to comply.

Some argue that a permit should be mandatory for any activity that a placer miner or a prospector might undertake. They appear to believe that without a formal permit, no environmental standards apply to an activity. But Bill C-6 is quite clear: all activities are governed by the standard operating conditions that prescribe legally enforceable terms and conditions for revegetation, erosion control, archeological sites, campsites, fuel handling, stream crossings, the removal of trees and brush, line cutting, the use of off-road vehicles, road construction and the use of explosives.

In the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee we reached a consensus that there were clear distinctions between classes or magnitudes of work within those activities. The lowest-level activity, class one, in each of these categories, such as trenching less than 400 cubic metres, use of low ground pressure vehicles, or the cutting lines of less than 1.5 metres, are governed by the general standards, but do not need a permit or special approval before proceeding.

In many hours of discussion in the advisory committee, we convinced our fellow committee members that if you have to apply for a formal permit and then go through a time-consuming approval process for even the most routine activities in the business of mining, you will simply go out of business. So, in effect, the bill says you should get on with your work, but sees to it that you comply with the standards. If you don't, you'll pay a fine.

You will likely hear it argued by some that the provisions for security are not tough enough, but the bill as written gives the federal government unlimited right to demand unlimited security. What the bill does not do is make this security automatic. The government is allowed the discretion of demanding security on a case-by-case basis, and we have placed our trust in government that this discretion will be used wisely, taking into account the miner's past performance and the potential threat to the environment. Posting security in advance of mining before being able to generate revenue from mining would be a financial hardship that few but the largest operators in our industry could afford.

We are the people who must make this new law work on our claims. Believe us, this is a tough piece of legislation as it stands. It was developed in painstaking debate, in many working sessions, and over a number of years. People with a stake in mining and in the environment were at the table. The product is a tough piece of legislation, but we can make it work.

Those of us in mining share a concern for the environment with our fellow Canadians. We actually live and raise our families out on our remote mining sites. We take great pleasure in seeing the moose and the bear, and we have a real love and affection for this land. My father was a placer miner, and my grandfather came over the Chilkoot Pass in 1898. I am here and my children are here. For four generations of my family, placer mining has been our life, but regulation increasingly affects the feasibility of placer mining.

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All regulation carries with it a cost of compliance. Many miners today feel that their livelihoods are at risk as one new law or regulation follows rapidly on another, in endless succession.

We have in your care now the latest new law to govern how we make our living. We ask, with a considerable sense of urgency, that you move it through the parliamentary process without amendment.

Thank you. There will be a written draft of this to follow. Ask questions, please.

The Chairman: Thank you.

Before we proceed to questions, quartz mining is hardrock mining; placer mining is surface mining. When we speak of $100,000 fines, we must, to keep it in perspective, realize that the majority of operations are family businesses. We're not speaking about Inco, Noranda, or Falconbridge when we refer to placer mining. That needs to be kept in perspective.

Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Stinson: I have a very short comment. I met some of you gentlemen while I was up in the Yukon and I congratulate you on the hardship you go through in order to try to make a living up there. I also appreciate that when you say you go south from Dawson for the winter, you go down to Whitehorse. I found that quite interesting.

How do you feel, up there, say 3,000-odd miles away, having people down here in Ottawa making the decision on something that I see pertaining strictly to the Yukon? We will play a direct role in how your livelihood could be made in the future.

Do you yourselves not feel that it would have been far nicer if it had been kept strictly in the Yukon, with you people deciding how your work and your lives will be run?

Mr. Schmidt: I don't know if I can afford to have an opinion on that one.

I would like to see some of these decisions being made in the Yukon, yes, but it's not happening in that way. I just have to deal with that.

Mr. Stinson: I find it to be very unfortunate that we have to look at things like that. I also am a placer miner, although not to the extent of some of you up there, and I find it to be very strange that in politics we sometimes have people who have no knowledge of what they're talking about putting into effect laws that will affect other people. I find this to be of great concern.

Mr. Schmidt: We're glad to have been able to participate as much as we have in the making of this law.

I guess I thought that's just the way politics are anyway - laws being made by people who don't know what they're doing.

The Chairman: In part, that's why we have the consultation process, public hearings, such as we're having now.

Mr. Finlay: I was just going to make that point, Mr. Schmidt. I thank you very much for your presentation, because I think we've all learned a good deal about how this bill originated, and particularly your part in it.

I would say to you and to my colleague across the table that I appreciate your statement earlier that you realize that we are responsible for laws in Canada and that you recognize that, because you will be the first people to ask us to do something to prevent the pollution of your environment, which comes not from you but from us and other countries below the Arctic Circle, and certainly far below the parallels upon which you live.

I'm talking about acid rain and POPs and heavy metals and the kinds of things that our aboriginal people and some of you experience in not being able to eat the fish and the country food that you're used to and that you look forward to - because it is contaminated, not by placer mining but by power plants in the U.S. and by dirty factories in Europe and Russia and even in southern Ontario.

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We are a country and these things in the environment know no boundaries, whether it's the Yukon, northern Ontario or Quebec or the Arctic. I too have been to the Arctic and appreciate something of the conditions up there.

I'm the one who raised the question about mercury, and you said it's not used. I'm not an expert, but I have some biology and scientific training. After you've washed the heavy things through the sluices, and that's what you collect, how do you extract the gold?

Mr. Schmidt: There are a lot of different ways people do this, and a lot of it depends on the associated heavy minerals that the gold is with, but it's all done by gravity separation these days, using jigs or shaking tables. By sizing all the particles they can have uniform particle sizes and then use gravity separation. That's basically the way it's done.

Mr. Finlay: So the old method of mercury amalgam has gone?

Mr. Schmidt: The method of mercury amalgam is gone. In fact a delegation of miners from the Yukon is going to Guyana to help the people in Guyana learn the alternatives to mercury amalgamations. Mercury amalgamation has been gone for approximately 25 years in the Yukon.

Mr. Finlay: That's excellent. Thank you.

The Chairman: Is there anyone else? Does Ms McLaughlin have a desire to address the committee?

Ms McLaughlin: I have a very brief question. I had two questions. One was on security, but I think that was very well answered in the presentation by KPMA.

The second question is one that people looking at this legislation might ask, and perhaps Stuart could clarify. In Stewart Elgie's first presentation, he talked about the fact that there should be a built-in requirement for notice. I wondered if KPMA could respond as to what some of the problems with that are, or how you would respond to that particular suggestion.

Mr. Schmidt: Thank you, Audrey. I thought you'd probably ask a hard question.

My view of Stewart's idea of notice is that your first notice is when you actually stake the claim.

Here I'd like to also add, because free access was up for grabs, that Stewart is mistaken when he says free access no longer exists in Australia and these other provinces in Canada. The system of staking has changed, but free access still exists. It's just that instead of actually physically going out on the ground and staking the claim, you now put your pins on a little map or draw a circle on a map and say you want it. It's still free access; it's just on a map instead of actually on the ground.

So first of all I maintain that we've actually given notice when we stake the claim. At that point the government has an opportunity to tell us they're either not going to allow that claim to stake or maybe the area is withdrawn from staking, as some areas have been in the Yukon.

The other is that if you're required to give notice then somebody is going to have to give you notice back. It's just the time element. We're talking about activities that are really not much different from someone going moose hunting or camping or on a river rafting trip.

I don't know how I can best answer that question sufficiently, but we're talking about minor activities by miners on claims. I'd also remind the committee that really less than a fraction of a percent of the land mass of the Yukon is affected by these activities.

Maybe I'd better shut up. It's a short season and we don't have much time. That's what my colleague here is telling me. We don't have time to give notice sometimes for these very small activities.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Schmidt. Did your colleague wish to add anything to the presentation?

Mr. Mike McDougall (President, Klondike Placer Miners Association): Thank you, no. I appreciate the opportunity for the Klondike Placer Miners Association to give representation to the committee and I thank Stuart for doing what I think was a very good job.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Schmidt, Mr. McDougall and Mr. McIntyre, for a fine presentation, for clearing up the issue on mercury and for offering a different perspective on the debate.

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I now invite the chair of the North Slope Wildlife Management Advisory Council, Mr. Lindsay Staples, to speak.

Mr. Lindsay Staples (Chairman, North Slope Wildlife Management Advisory Council): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and hon. members. This is about the fourth time over the last six years that I've had the pleasure of addressing your committee. I do so today for the same reason I did in the past. I'm speaking to you about an area that is extremely special and that has been given special recognition in federal legislation.

I'm approaching this proposed legislation from a very narrow vantage point, the vantage point of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. The Inuvialuit Final Agreement was the Yukon's first land claim agreement. It was negotiated by the governments of the Northwest Territories, Yukon and Canada, and of course the Inuvialuit, represented by the Committee for Original Peoples' Entitlement.

Our interest in speaking to this legislation is with respect to what the Inuvialuit Final Agreement provides in the way of certain protections for this particular area, which produce some fairly stark inconsistencies with the legislation before us today.

I would like to note before proceeding that this is the first opportunity we've had to speak to this issue formally. We were consulted - and I appreciate the consultation - back in the spring of this year by officials from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development. But I regret that the obligations on Canada that carry forward from the agreement did not enter into an earlier discussion with respect to the drafting of this particular legislation.

I will confine my comments to the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, some requirements under that agreement that I think need to be brought to your attention, and some areas of conflict between these two pieces of legislation that arise as a result.

First off, by way of background, the group I represent, the North Slope Wildlife Management Advisory Council, was established in 1988 following the negotiation, signing and proclamation of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement - or IFA, as we refer to it - in 1984. We have four members on our committee: one for the Yukon, one for Canada and two for the Inuvialuit. As I think I mentioned earlier, I'm the chair of the group.

The Inuvialuit Final Agreement established for the Yukon North Slope a broad conservation regime that is very, very special. Let me begin by defining the area we're speaking of here. The Yukon North Slope, as defined in this final agreement, this land claim agreement, essentially runs from the Alaska-Yukon border on the west to the Yukon-NWT border on the east. It extends inland about 120 kilometres from the coastline and extends out into the offshore along the meridians of longitude. So we're dealing with an area that is defined as both onshore and offshore.

It is because of the scope of this particular area, and the debate that has gone on for many years over this area, going back to the early 1970s with oil and gas exploration in the offshore Beaufort, that this has been an area of great interest to both industry and conservationists in the Yukon, across Canada and internationally.

Section 12 of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement is a unique section. It is the only section in the agreement that is dedicated to a very specific area of land, the area called the Yukon North Slope. So section 12 of the agreement is what we call the North Slope chapter. That chapter is devoted to articulating the Inuvialuit rights and the special conservation regime that applies in this area. For the mainland it establishes a national park, which many of you may be familiar with. It essentially covers the western half of this particular area and it goes by the name of Ivvavik National Park. To the west is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

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This particular area as well as the conservation regime that was set up for it was largely set up to protect the habitats of many important species of wildlife that summer in the area - certainly the calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. It was not set up just to protect wildlife and the habitat the wildlife depends upon, but also to protect the traditional use of this very large area by the Inuvialuit. The Inuvialuit have made this area in the northern Yukon their home for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, and the agreement goes to considerable extents and efforts to protect their rights and interests in this particular area.

The general provision affecting how we are to approach and treat this area is set out in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement in subsection 12(2). It very clearly says that the predominant purpose of this particular area is the conservation of wildlife, habitat and traditional native use. That is explicit, it's clear, and it's sweeping. However, at the same time, this chapter does recognize that there are exceptions that may be permissible if certain standards and tests can be met.

The agreement sets out a very stringent process for the environmental screening and review of all development proposals that would potentially occur on the Yukon North Slope. They are to be screened to determine what significant negative impact these proposals, activities, developments and uses might have on wildlife habitat or the ability of natives to harvest wildlife in this area. The test is extremely high, and the scrutiny of all uses is very, very close to ensure that wildlife habitat and native harvesting will not be negatively impacted.

In addition, the agreement maintains - and this is quite important as well - a withdrawal order over the mainland area. In addition to the national park and a territorial wilderness park on an island in the offshore, a withdrawal order was established to recognize the important conservation measures of the area. This withdrawal order is important, and I want to impress its significance upon you today. It removes the administrative ability of the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development under the Territorial Lands Act to grant development rights to surface or subsurface lands.

In other words, before any commercial development requiring the acquisition of rights to occupy land or extract resources from the area under withdrawal - that's this area on the eastern portion of the North Slope, east of the national park - before that can proceed, a federal Order in Council amending the withdrawal order must be made. The federal cabinet would have to deliberately make that decision on its own. Such amendments would have to be made before there could be any large-scale activity such as mining, oil and gas exploration or development of surface infrastructure.

The processes for amending this withdrawal order for the purposes of development are project- and proponent-driven, since they involve the rigorous criteria that I mentioned earlier with respect to the review and screening of development proposals for this area. After a due process, which is laid out in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and the laws of general application, the withdrawal order could be amended to the extent necessary to permit the approved project or undertaking. Consideration of development proposals in the withdrawn area and in the offshore, wherever development is not otherwise prohibited, is to be conducted by review processes and with requirements that are intended to be rigorous. As I've set out here, this agreement does set out a legally established, constitutionally entrenched screening and review process.

As a quick side note on that, there are two bodies - a screening committee and a review board. These are public bodies. They enjoy appointees from Canada, the Yukon, the Government of the Northwest Territories and Inuvialuit organizations. The people on these bodies are charged with reviewing the development proposals that come before them to make a determination as to whether, in the case of the North Slope, there is any significant negative impact with respect to wildlife habitat and traditional native use.

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An additional point I'd like to make is that the definition of ``development'' in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement is broad and sweeping. It refers to any commercial or industrial undertaking or venture, including support and transportation facilities related to the extraction of non-renewable resources from the Beaufort Sea other than commercial wildlife harvesting, or any government project, undertaking or construction, whether federal, territorial, provincial, municipal, local or by any crown agency, except government projects within the limits of the Inuvialuit communities. So again, this definition of ``development'' is sweeping and leaves very few activities excluded.

In addition, this agreement carries with it some very stiff and strong compensation provisions for damage to or loss of wildlife. I won't go on at any length about those, but I would simply like to note that it does lay out very clearly where the responsibility for damage to the environment, to wildlife, to habitat and in disruption of Inuvialuit harvesting occurs. It does lay out clear responsibilities and absolute liability.

Finally, with respect to the standing of the agreement overall - and I think earlier this morning when we heard from the Council of Yukon First Nations they made a similar point - these modern-day land claim agreements have a significant status not simply because they're constitutionally entrenched. In all of them there is a very specific provision that states that where there is any inconsistency or conflict between the claims legislation and other legislation, in this case, for instance, the Inuvialuit Final Agreement prevails and is paramount to the extent of the inconsistency.

This is an important point, because when there are inconsistencies between the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and this legislation, it's important to be clear on where they are and what the implications of those inconsistencies are. In short, the consequence is that unless otherwise rectified or addressed, it's the Inuvialuit Final Agreement that is paramount.

With respect to Bill C-5, against that backdrop now, this is paramount legislation. It's been with us for 12 years. At the same time it's continually frustrating, disappointing and even disturbing that a piece of legislation that took 10 years to negotiate and a tremendous amount of patience to endeavour...that notwithstanding the fact that this new legislation is produced and created, we still continue to find inconsistencies.

It's difficult enough to clean up the inconsistencies with existing legislation and regulations, but when we're dealing with new legislation and regulations that are overlooking in some cases these very obvious legal obligations that fall on the parties, it's disturbing.

Our council's greatest concern with Bill C-5 is the actual and potential conflicts and inconsistencies with the Inuvialuit Final Agreement that may arise in the future with the enactment of the proposed legislation. While the Inuvialuit Final Agreement provides the assurance that where such inconsistencies exist the provisions of the IFA will be paramount to the extent of the inconsistency, this does not provide the level of certainty that we would view as desirable in other legislation that applies in the Inuvialuit settlement region.

New or amended legislation provides a special opportunity to address prevailing legal inconsistencies so that this legislation is in conformity with the IFA. The proposed legislation does not do so, and we view it as a lost opportunity.

In the case of the proposed legislation, if legal inconsistencies and conflicts with the IFA are not acknowledged and addressed explicitly, it is difficult to perceive how to provide any real certainty for mineral development on the Yukon North Slope should it occur.

Based on some of the provisions of the IFA that apply on the Yukon North Slope and that I've referred to, it is possible to anticipate potential and actual conflicts and inconsistencies with the proposed legislation in a number of areas, and I'll speak very briefly to them.

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The definition of ``development'' in the proposed legislation is far narrower than that of the IFA and fails to include a range of exploration-related activities that the IFA can be viewed as encompassing and requiring environmental screening and notice requirements of. With respect to the mining industry, the development typically refers to that phase when you're bringing your prospect into production. The IFA doesn't make that distinction and indeed includes a much earlier range of activities that typically would fall outside of the definition of ``development'' in the proposed legislation.

The security and liability requirements of the proposed legislation differ considerably from those of the IFA, and the exposure of mining activities to the wildlife compensation requirements of the IFA are not addressed or not made known.

The process of permitting exploration-related activities to proceed in the proposed legislation according to various classes of activities with prescribed environmental thresholds and associated general operating conditions is also inconsistent with the regime established on the Yukon North Slope by the IFA.

For instance, the threshold level suggested for class I activities in the proposed legislation assumes minimum environmental disturbance from these activities with no form of notification of these activities being required. This assumption is clearly inconsistent with the requirements of the IFA as it applies on the Yukon North Slope.

The agreement clearly places the burden of proof on the developer or the proponent to demonstrate that their activity will not have a negative impact on wildlife habitat or native harvesting. A process for accomplishing this is established in the IFA.

Class I activities - which include the use of 1,000 kilograms of explosives per 30-day period for each program, line cutting, stripping, trenching, and drilling - have the potential to affect negatively wildlife habitat and traditional native harvesting.

The IFA provides a process for addressing these potential impacts before they occur. Part of this assessment requires notice to and comment from local communities and hunters and trappers committees.

Class I provisions of the proposed legislation fail to meet any of these requirements in this agreement. Nor do the class II activities meet the notice provisions of the IFA.

One of the greatest difficulties with this proposed legislation is that it is activity based without site-specific operating conditions. It proposes to regulate activities according to thresholds regardless of when and where these activities occur.

The IFA legally establishes a special regime for conservation and development in a particular area of the Yukon - the North Slope - the force of which is extensive and great. The purpose of this in the context of mineral development is to conserve wildlife habitat, notably wetlands and streams...disturbance of migratory birds and caribou, and any interference with Inuvialuit hunting, trapping, and fishing.

The conservation interests and values of this area have been well documented and accordance with the highest standards of protection and conservation has been established.

The proposed legislation needs to recognize this fact if it is to provide clarity and certainty for potential mineral development on the Yukon North Slope. Where, when, and how development occurs are questions that are vital to the occurrence of potential development on the Yukon North Slope. These questions and the process established in the IFA for addressing them are not acknowledged or respected in the proposed legislation.

Against this background, or with this dilemma with respect to these inconsistencies between a proposed piece of legislation and an existing piece of legislation that enjoys constitutional entrenchment, how are we to address these inconsistencies?

I would like to make some recommendations to the committee in this regard, recognizing at the same time the sense of urgency that some would attach to this legislation and recognizing at the same time the process that many have gone through to craft a proposal that, I guess at least in their mind's eye, enjoys something of a consensus amongst a variety of stakeholders.

I regret that the situation in fact has come to this, where these gross inconsistencies are with us. Again regrettably, it speaks to a certain lack of regard perhaps, or recognition, of what these land claims agreements mean - the effort it took to negotiate them and the status they enjoy.

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I would like to make three recommendations to the committee.

First, as a minimum, the proposed legislation should explicitly recognize the special regime and the unique requirements that legally apply to mineral developments on the Yukon North Slope as established by the Inuvialuit Final Agreement and the paramountcy of these arrangements. It should be clearly stated that this proposed legislation is without prejudice to the legal requirements and entitlements of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement.

Second, the federal government should undertake to address inconsistencies between the proposed legislation and the Inuvialuit Final Agreement through administrative arrangements and separate legislation dedicated to addressing the unique requirements for permitting mineral development on the Yukon North Slope.

Third, the withdrawal order should be maintained in full effect until such time as the appropriate mineral legislation reflecting the legal requirements of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement is enacted.

Just by way of conclusion, mineral development on the Yukon North Slope, with or without a withdrawal order, will only be possible if existing policy, practice or legislation is changed. DIAND should be encouraged to explore ways to pursue legitimate goals with respect to mineral and other types of development while recognizing the conservation regime and legal requirements established by the IFA on the Yukon North Slope.

Responsible operators want certainty above all else; they don't want to be confused. They don't want to be caught in conflicting standards, requirements and processes between a regulator, claims legislation and the assertions and expectations of claimant groups. Our experience with responsible developers is that they want to know what the rules are. It is government's responsibility to clearly set these out; it is not industry's responsibility.

The proposed legislation will be confusing to mining interests with the desire to pursue their interests on the Yukon North Slope. It does so by ignoring the regime and the requirements established by the Inuvialuit Final Agreement. It places would-be mining interests in a situation of conflict.

One of the basic elements of the environmental regime established in the IFA is cooperation. This is explicit. The Inuvialuit have a demonstrated history of cooperation with industry and government.

We strongly urge the committee to encourage DIAND to initiate discussions with the Inuvialuit to consider how the legal inconsistencies between the IFA and any mining legislation that would apply on the Yukon North Slope could best be addressed.

Thanks for your consideration today. I want to assure you that the text for my remarks today, along with the specific references to the provisions in the Inuvialuit Final Agreement to which I have made reference, will be part and parcel of the text I will convey to you here.

The Chairman: Thank you very much for a very good presentation.

I can assure you and other witnesses that the documents sent to us are being gathered into a binder by our researchers. So each member of the committee, as well as Ms McLaughlin, is receiving all the materials we're getting.

Mr. Finlay: I want to thank Mr. Staples for his presentation.

I guess you remind me of something I said at the beginning of this session. I had some difficulty understanding the limits of this legislation and some of the things that Stewart Elgie pointed out. I just checked my notes. Although I think you indicated it, the Inuvialuit were not part of the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee. At least I don't see them listed.

I guess you bring to mind the kind of thing brought up by this and other committees on the environment that I've travelled with in the Arctic. The particular agreement you mentioned came up with respect to other legislation in the Northwest Territories. In making an agreement with the Inuvialuit first nations, we don't seem to be able to consult them on any meaningful basis once that agreement has been made.

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I'm sure I'm exaggerating, sir, but I would like to know whether you can suggest how we arrived at this pass and why our representatives on the YMAC were not aware of this conflict. You were aware of it and I am sure the Inuvialuit are aware of it. It's the kind of thing my colleague Mr. Harper has brought up before.

Mr. Staples: I welcome the question and I don't want to suggest for a moment that this occurrence is unique to this particular legislation or to the development of this legislation. Indeed, it's occurred with other developments as well.

I think you're quite right. The Inuvialuit were not represented on the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, a YMAC initiative. In part, I think that might be simply because it's an area that's a long way away. It's not an area that is actively being explored right now. It can't be, because there's a withdrawal area across the entire area. So to some extent I think it has taken a back seat because there is no activity in that area right now.

I think what's discouraging is that there certainly are provisions in the agreement that would allow for such activity to occur, provided that people were prepared to invest the time and effort to develop the administrative arrangements that this particular agreement establishes. It certainly means doing business in a different way, but for people who are prepared to do that and to invest that time and effort, there are opportunities there.

My final comment would be that what's most discouraging is with respect to the senior government that does have responsibility for the implementation of these agreements. Where there are existing and possible conflicts between these land claim agreements that are being negotiated, signed, and enacted, I think it's vital that they become absolutely sensitized and aware of where potential areas of legal and indeed jurisdictional conflict may exist. I would suggest that this kind of sensibility and sensitivity is coming, but I think it's been slow in coming. Notwithstanding that fact, there are still some very significant blind spots.

Mr. Finlay: Thank you.

The Chairman: Ms McLaughlin, did you wish to have some input?

Ms McLaughlin: I have just a very brief question.

I think this is a somewhat similar issue to CYFN. Mr. Staples, could you clarify whether there was any consultation with the Inuvialuit at all around this legislation?

Mr. Staples: I can only speak to our own consultation, which was back in the spring. As I indicated, on our council we do enjoy two Inuvialuit representatives who are appointed by the Inuvialuit Game Council, which is the senior Inuvialuit body charged with safeguarding the collective rights of the Inuvialuit as they relate to wildlife habitat and harvesting rights.

I do want to emphasize that we certainly did appreciate and enjoy the representation we had from DIAND officials in Whitehorse back in the early spring or late winter of this year with regard to that. But at the same time, this was on the eve of this legislation being introduced into the House of Commons for the first time. So again, it was awfully late in the day.

Before some of us had a chance to look carefully at this legislation, we were of the view that maybe with some modest tinkering with respect to regulations or with a particular enabling clause that would provide more latitude with how regulations were drafted, we might be able to overcome some of these inconsistencies. Having reviewed the document, I would suggest that the inconsistencies are so extreme and so broad as to make this kind of tinkering or band-aid approach really quite unsuitable.

Actually, I referred to one of the comments made by one of the honourable members earlier. Do you accomplish this kind of work in one legislative package or several legislative packages, given the unique requirements that these claims agreements are producing? I cite the Northwest Territories as a case in point, where some very different legal provisions fall on Canada and on the Government of the Northwest Territories. Indeed, in the Yukon the requirements of the Inuvialuit Final Agreement, as distinct from the requirements of the umbrella final agreement here, are quite different. To try to encompass these kinds of differences in one and the same piece of legislation, I would suggest to you, is folly. Hence the recommendation that we may want to look at a discrete piece of area-specific legislation if there's going to be any meaningful and constructive way of addressing these inconsistencies in the future.

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The Chairman: Thank you very much for your presentation.

I wish to remind members that a status report on the Yukon first nation consultations has been made available to you, so you have a report of all the consultations.

I now invite the chair of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, Juri Peepre, to speak.

Mr. Juri Peepre (President, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society): Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and honourable members of Parliament. By the way, I appreciate the correct pronunciation of my name. That was a rare treat indeed.

The Chairman: I practised all night.

Mr. Peepre: I am the national president of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. I would like to thank the committee for this opportunity to appear before you today.

What I'd like to do today is give you a little background on our organization and why we are appearing before the committee. I'd like to discuss the free-entry system for a few minutes, talk a bit about the legislation as it is proposed, and then conclude with some specific recommendations.

The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society is a national organization with nine chapters working to complete Canada's protected area system and to ensure that natural areas are managed to preserve biological diversity. We have a broad interest in land use planning and resource development legislation as they both affect conservation. Our goals are similar to those set out by the House of Commons' unanimous declaration to complete Canada's protected area system, and our objectives are in line with the international convention on the preservation of biological diversity, to which Canada is a signatory. Our organization also signed the Whitehorse Mining Accord, which dealt, as you know, with land access questions and protected area initiatives.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Yukon is a magnificent landscape. It has some of the finest wild lands remaining on the planet and it is our organization's hope to try to protect the integrity of that magnificent landscape.

Yukon's mining laws have been in place since the turn of the century, and it has long been recognized that they needed to be updated to reflect modern mining standards and public concern for environmental protection. During the last century mining has brought many benefits to the territory, but not without environmental and social costs. These costs have been in the form of water pollution, wildlife habitat degradation, impacts on wildlife populations, wilderness disturbance and disturbance of heritage sites.

A very large proportion of these impacts has resulted from unregulated mining exploration activities. The cumulative effects of exploration work have had far-reaching impacts on sensitive northern ecosystems. These include a network of roads pushed into exploration sites that often are abandoned, as few sites become operating mines. The Arctic environmental strategy has spent millions of dollars during the last several years cleaning up fuel drums and other waste from abandoned exploration sites.

I am not suggesting that mining companies have been negligent under the law, although there is evidence of abuse of the lax laws that have been in place. The root of the problem has been a failure by government to develop and apply equitable land use and environmental laws to exploratory work on mining claims.

Mr. Chairman, mining has a place in the Yukon. We applaud the hard work of the many individuals in the Yukon who participated on the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee in an effort to improve mining standards in the Yukon. But we also draw your attention to the incomplete range of stakeholders who participated on the committee and the somewhat restricted public consultation during the late stages and the preparation of the legislation. In our view, a consensus has not been achieved on this legislation.

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We are appearing before the committee today to make one central point. The proposed revisions to the Yukon Quartz Mining Act will not serve the public interest into the 21st century and will lag behind modern environmental standards. Indeed, the proposed revisions will bring the Yukon only into the 1970s and will not reflect today's deep public concern for environmental protection and corporate accountability.

Neither does the proposed legislation live up to the commitments of the Whitehorse Mining Accord, which was achieved through broad consensus and signed by the federal and territorial governments, the mining industry, and environmental organizations.

Further, the Senate of Canada produced a document entitled ``Protecting Places and People''. It implored the federal departments administering northern lands to clear up policy conflicts and work toward protecting intact wild lands. In failing to address the conflicts and inequities inherent in the free-entry system of mining, the proposed legislation fails to address recurring problems in northern land use planning and conservation. The most fundamental issue of all is not so much what is in the proposed act but what has been left out, which is namely the revisions to the free-entry system of mining. Because of these shortcomings, we see the proposed legislation as an interim step only that will require revisiting in a few years.

I'd like to discuss now some aspects of the free-entry mining system. I appreciate, honourable members, that the free-entry system is not addressed in this legislation, but it has direct bearing on the recommendations I'd like to make later. Please bear with me.

The free-entry system was developed in the 19th century, when governments wanted to encourage the extraction of mineral resources in frontier areas. The system is now out of step with modern public values and environmental protection requirements. Minerals are the only public resource that are given freely and exclusively on a first-come, first-served basis. The use of oil and gas, timber, fish, game animals, fur-bearing animals, water and other resources are granted on a permit or quota system or on an area lease or license system.

The free-entry system allows for very little public or government discretion over whether mining will occur in an area, only over how it might occur. This is inconsistent with today's public values, whereby environmental protection is an important concern. The public supports wildlife habitat protection, but the free-entry system is a major obstacle to achieving a balanced approach to land use.

Owners of mineral claims have unprecedented rights to use the land in the manner they wish for pursuing miner-like activity. Their rights stop short of surface ownership, but in practice, mining activities on claims generally take precedence over all other land users.

Barry Barton, who wrote the book entitled Canadian Law of Mining, said:

While the free entry system has distinct advantages for the private sector, it creates distinct difficulties in terms of public policy. The rule that a mineral disposition must be granted wherever it is sought constrains the discharge of government responsibilities.

The public and governments have very little, if any, control over where mineral claims are staked. They therefore have little control over accumulative impacts, such as through new access routes and roads, since access is guaranteed to the claim holder.

Withdrawal of areas from claim staking is possible, but is a lengthy and costly process. It is usually done through land claims processes or after extraordinary public pressure for protected area designation. Withdrawal is a clumsy tool and not an efficient way to manage resource uses.

Other legitimate land users have no say over areas where claim staking might interfere with alternative land uses. Mineral claims may be staked over critical wildlife habitats, such as nesting, lambing or calving areas, habitat for rare and endangered species, critical wetlands, areas of spiritual significance or places with other values. Several types of potentially harmful exploration activities may take place in these sensitive areas without any public notification or environmental screening. Further, the method of claim staking with two surveyed wooden posts is archaic, costly and inefficient for companies, individuals and government regulators.

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With due respect, we submit that the free-entry system is the aspect of mining regulation most in need of change in the Yukon. We would like to recommend to your committee that in the near future you entertain holding hearings on the free-entry system as it is practised north of 60. We recommend that the free-entry system be phased out and replaced with a regime that puts mining on an even footing with all other land users.

I draw the committee's attention to a conference held in Yellowknife just this past week, hosted by the Canadian Institute of Resources Law, which examined this very question. I suggest that a number of conclusions from that conference would be worth looking at.

The Whitehorse Mining Initiative recognized the need to consider all land uses, and I quote:

...no aspect of social, economic, and environmental sustainability can be pursued in isolation or be the subject of an exclusive focus without detrimentally affecting other aspects.

What the writers of the Whitehorse Mining Accord meant by that is that no one resource use should take precedence over all other land users. I would submit that by failing to address the free-entry system in this legislation, we have done just that. We have given pre-emptive rights to one industry over all others.

I would now like to turn to five basic principles that I think are important in the quartz act revisions as they are written, and then I'll conclude with some specific recommendations. There are many general principles, in our view, for effective legislation. I'll just summarize a few of them.

First of all, we feel that the legislation should provide an environmental protection regime as strong as or stronger than that of other jurisdictions in North America. We should ensure that mineral rights are not granted without considering other competing land use values. We should regulate all stages of mineral exploration and development. We should require security that will cover the full costs of reclamation. Finally, we should provide for special control measures for ecologically and culturally sensitive areas.

We have a few specific recommendations. It's a very lengthy bill in terms of the amendments, but we would like to focus on a few specific areas.

At the outset, we believe that the proposed act should set clear ecological goals to guide decisions. We feel that this component is missing, and it makes it very hard for the regulating body to decide what we are trying to achieve with the act.

Our main concern rests with the early stages of exploration, the so-called class I and class II levels of exploration work and regulation. With this particular legislation, class I and II activities do not require approval, and there is no ability to place conditions on the exercise of class I activities on mineral exploration sites. We therefore find it almost impossible to look at sensitive wildlife habitat across the territory and place any kind of conditions on mineral exploration activities on those sites. We believe that the conditions under proposed subsection 137(1) should extend to class I activities as well as the other classes already regulated under that part of the statute.

As was mentioned earlier today, we feel it is essential that prior to the undertaking of class I activities, public notification, or at least notification of other land users on that particular area, be undertaken as well. That is under proposed subsection 136(1).

In our opinion, the thresholds for the regulations are still too high and are not in keeping with neighbouring jurisdictions. For example, in British Columbia regulation starts the moment you bring heavy mechanized equipment onto a site. We believe that we should achieve the same standard as our neighbours to the north and south of us. We believe that under regulations 4 and 5, the class I and class II activities should be adjusted downward to ensure that approvals are required when heavy mechanized equipment is used on an exploration site.

The third point is that the approval period for class III and IV activities is too long. It should be shortened from ten years to three years. We believe a period of exploration over ten years could lead to extensive cumulative impacts that these regulations would not capture.

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A further important point relating to class I and class II aspects of exploration is that we believe there is a need to clarify what is a special public concern. You'll find that in paragraph 136(1)(b). The notion of special public concern is not addressed in the legislation. We believe it should be very specific and we have a specific recommendation to include the words ``special environmental, heritage or public concern'' to trigger approvals under the class I and class II levels.

Our final points relate to security and enforcement. In our view, the cost of environmental damage should simply be included in the cost of doing business. We believe security for reclamation and clean-up should be for the entire cost of reclamation and should be mandatory in all cases, not discretionary.

We also believe that the level of maximum fines under the quartz act should be raised to a level consistent with modern environmental legislation in the other parts of Canada.

Finally, we believe civil action should be allowed, with available penalties to include clean-up orders, etc. This would be consistent with the recent enactment of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act that was recently passed by the government in Ottawa.

In conclusion, we see this legislation as a positive step forward in the Yukon, but we see it as an interim measure that requires a thorough revisiting within five to seven years. We believe that in this legislation there should be a provision for that review period, starting with regulations two years hence, with a full review of the legislation within five years.

As I suggested earlier, I think it is a very appropriate time for the committee to hold public hearings into free entry north of sixty, to incorporate the abolition of the free entry system, and to replace it with an improved system that recognizes all land uses in the next stage of improvement in the way mining is regulated in the Yukon Territory.

Thank you very much for your time.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Peepre.

From the Village of Mayo we have Mayor Michael McGinnis.

Mr. Michael McGinnis (Mayor, Village of Mayo, Yukon Territory): Good afternoon.

Mayo has been a service centre for mining for almost a century. Changes in mineral prices and the cost of doing business are reflected through the booms and busts of our town's history.

The summary of proposed amendments to the Yukon mining regime represents a change in the balance between mineral prices and the cost of doing business by incorporating significant environmental protection not found in the previous acts. Passage of the legislation will make it more costly for miners to operate in order to preserve facets of the environment.

Mayo miners appreciate the consultative process that went into the development of these amendments, which will allow them to continue to make a livelihood. It is important for us to get across the importance of a healthy, viable mining industry in our area, one that is environmentally responsible, yes, but one that is equally economically sound.

Since the discovery of placer gold in the Stewart River in 1883, mining has been an economic mainstay in the central Yukon area. Aboriginal people who had lived in this area for thousands of years were joined by hundreds of people from southern Canada and the United States. Most of them became involved in the economy, which was driven by mining.

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Since early in this century, the Yukon Quartz Mining Act and Yukon Placer Mining Act have controlled these mining activities. The award-winning book Gold and Galena recounts much of this development. A copy of Gold and Galena is included here to elaborate on the importance of mining to our area.

From the time of its first settlement in 1903, the condition of Mayo and its residents has been a reflection of the state of the mining industry. Any proposal to alter the state of the mining industry will have a major impact on Mayo residents. Thus, we have requested this opportunity to make known our views on the summary of proposed amendments to the Yukon mining regime.

The health of Mayo has depended greatly on the viability of mining. When mining has been good, the people of Mayo have in large part been responsible for the success. When mining has faltered, we have gone back to being mostly a government town.

We understand that senior governments will have less money to spend in the future. For us, mining is a major key to future economic self-reliance. The mining jobs that open up in the Mayo area in the next few years would far exceed any possible government job creation program.

The economic health of the first nations people in the Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun is likewise much affected by any changes to the viability of mining operations in the Mayo area. The land claims settlement has opened new doors of responsible self-government and economic enterprise, but this has not lessened their need for a means of primary wealth generation such as the mining industry can provide.

There is great interest in the Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun for cooperative partnerships with mining companies coming into the Mayo area, to provide employment for any local people in the context of industry responsibility, including strict environmental controls. The Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun have pioneered the use of development assessment plans to analyse, become involved in and sometimes alter industry plans to pursue mineral development in their traditional territory, which includes much of the central Yukon. The DAP process includes assessment of both environmental and economic impacts in a workable balance that both protects the land and wildlife and permits development under negotiated environmental controls and safeguards.

But mining in the central Yukon is not easy. Weather conditions are very challenging, and many operations are seasonal. Operating costs are higher than in the south. People in Mayo are very much aware of the balancing acts that are ongoing in any mineral operation. What are the costs of operation, and is the price of minerals today sufficient to cover operating costs and pay wages? This is a very sensitive balance.

The people in Mayo held their breath when the price of silver dropped in 1982 and 1989, resulting in the closure of United Keno Hill silver mine in Elsa. While we rejoiced in the 1970s when high gold prices meant an exploration boom in our area, we now hope that improved silver prices and more efficient operating methods, with lower costs of production, will soon permit the resumption of production by United Keno Hill mines. But this is not a certainty.

Outside forces, such as the state of the world's economy, have driven the price of minerals, particularly gold, silver and lead, which have all been economically significant for the Mayo area. Local people and companies have had to cope with fluctuating, and sometimes very low, mineral prices by controlling operating costs in difficult physical conditions. At times this has meant wage roll-backs, lay-offs, and temporary or permanent mine closures, but at all times the spirit of the Mayo people has pushed for producing their livelihoods from the great mineral resources of the region.

The history of mining in the Mayo area has spanned more than 100 years. People there then reflected the society of the time, as we do in our own times. The awareness of society has changed greatly in that time, particularly in the last 20 years. A much greater consciousness has arisen in our society, and no less in the people of Mayo, of the importance of environmental quality.

Miners in Mayo are environmentalists too. They understand the need for development of new standards of acceptable practice more in keeping with our greater understanding of the potential impact of man on the environment. Miners, representatives of first nations, environmentalists and Yukon and federal governments work together to develop, by consensus, new Yukon mining land use regulations.

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The summary of proposed amendments to the Yukon mining regime represents a change to the balance between revenue from mineral sales and expense to recover those minerals. Generally, enhanced environmental standards will increase operating costs for miners. By involving all parties in the development of these amendments a set of standards has been reached that provide reasonable protection to the environment while not being impracticably costly.

In real life most solutions are compromises and reflect a pragmatic balance between different concerns, such as mineral production and environmental preservation. Miners in the Mayo area have repeatedly told the Village of Mayo council that the proposed amendments to the previously mentioned acts strike a reasonable balance that they are prepared to work with. More stringent standards imposed without a consensus process could significantly damage the mining industry in Mayo.

The proposed amendments to the Yukon quartz and placer mining acts represent carefully constructed workable standards. The Village of Mayo endorses the current proposed amendments of Bill C-6 and does not believe they should be changed. Thank you.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Now for members' questions. Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you for the presentation.

When you began your presentation the posture seemed to be that this legislation was viewed by many of the people in the industry as something of an overkill. At least that's the way I read your statements. Yet in your summary and wrap-up you're saying it's a reasonable compromise. Would it be fair to say both attitudes exist but that your wrap-up statement is the most appropriate, given all the circumstances?

Mr. McGinnis: Certainly both attitudes exist and there is some resistance even by some part of the mining community towards what we have here. But I think overall we could say the mining industry in the Mayo area is prepared to work with Bill C-6.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you.

The Chairman: Other members? Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Finlay: I'd like you to clear up one point with me. You mentioned DAF or DAP or something like that as an environmental assessment tool that is involved in this. We've heard it earlier, but I'd be grateful if you could just give me exactly what it means.

Mr. McGinnis: The development assessment process is coming from the land claims, as one aspect of the land claims. That is a mechanism to assess proposed projects in first nations' areas and that process is still in the development stage as far as a formalism goes. Locally in the Mayo area the Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun have developed their own DAP process and they're now engaged in that with local mining companies.

So the mining company and the Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun first nation sit down and sort out the environmental ramifications of a project. If the mining company has to tighten up somehow, then they have to tighten up. They have to come to an agreement locally. They also do the same thing on the other hand with an economic agreement. So it's who's going to be working, jobs for the area and so on.

Mr. Finlay: So it's development assessment process. Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan: I'd just like to pursue that a little further. Is there anything in this legislation that you're aware of that would prevent the local development assessment process from carrying on unimpeded?

Mr. McGinnis: Not as far as I am aware. But my point is that the DAP process has been a local solution for local concern and I think it has responded quite well so far.

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Mr. Duncan: This legislation wouldn't prevent that from carrying on; that's my point. As far as you know, this wouldn't prevent the local solution from carrying on.

Mr. McGinnis: No. With respect to the views of most people in Mayo, this legislation is workable. If more stringent legislation was adopted, that of course would pre-empt any agreements in our area and those more stringent requirements might make economic development impracticable due to cost factors.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you for the clarification.

The Chairman: Any other members? Ms McLaughlin.

Ms McLaughlin: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have just a brief question.

I think Mayor McGinnis has presented quite clearly the views of his community. I just want to ask one question in terms of the issues that have been raised today on liability and potential liability around environmental issues. As a municipal politician, does this give you any concern, or do you feel satisfied the security arrangements in this legislation would protect your municipality?

Mr. McGinnis: I can't speak to the security or the liability provisions of the legislation because I'm basically speaking about what the mining community has talked to me about and we haven't gone into that in any detail.

The debt process, though, does allow for liability provisions to be determined, again locally too, which I think is another plus for that process. But I can't speak to that issue in this legislation. I'm sorry.

The Chairman: Thank you, your worship. Thank you for accepting our invitation. Many of us are former municipal politicians. We have complained in the past that we were not consulted when we were in your shoes. So we made certain you would be invited and we appreciate that you accepted.

Mr. McGinnis: Thank you for the invitation.

The Chairman: Thank you.

I'd like to find out from the technician if our 1:40 p.m. Yukon time presenters, from Westmin Resources, are there.

A voice: Yes, they're there.

The Chairman: Do they agree to present at this time?

Mr. Harlan D. Meade (Vice-President, Westmin Resources Limited): We do, sir.

The Chairman: We appreciate that. That puts us ahead of schedule.

Welcome, from Westmin Resources Limited, Harlan D. Meade, vice-president. Please carry on.

Mr. Meade: Before speaking to the act and the need to proclaim Bill C-6, I would like to give you a little background information on Westmin Resources and myself.

Westmin is a mid-sized Canadian exploration and mining company, having its head office in Vancouver, British Columbia. It operates two mines in British Columbia, including the Myra Falls operation that is located within Strathcona Provincial Park in B.C. At Myra Falls we mine base and precious metals, and we've done so for more than 30 years. This operation is clear evidence that multiple land use is possible. The company recently won the environmental excellence award from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada.

I am currently the vice-president of exploration for Westmin and I've been so since 1990. Up to a few weeks ago, I was also the vice-president of environment.

In recent years I have worked very closely with the Mining Association of Canada and the Mining Association of B.C. on a variety of regulatory, land-use and environmental regulatory issues.

I am currently the co-chairman of the AQUAMIN Report on behalf of the Mining Association of Canada. The AQUAMIN Report is a national review that is a multi-stakeholder review, which has occurred over the last three years across Canada. It looked at the effects of metal mines on the aquatic environment and was undertaken to provide recommendations to Environment Canada with respect to amendments to the metal mines liquid effluent regulations, which are under the Fisheries Act.

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I've also been an active participant in the advisory committee that's advising government on the management plan for the Bonnet Plume Canadian heritage river system nomination in northeastern Yukon. You'll hear more about that momentarily.

In my remarks today I hope to give the committee members an insight into some of the problems faced by our industry with respect to our work under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. I will provide this insight by drawing on some of Westmin's experiences in recent years as it undertakes its exploration on its mineral claims. We've encountered these difficulties despite conducting our exploration with the highest standards and regard for the environment and public concerns.

I will begin with a review of our exploration history in the Yukon under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. We began this exploration in 1992, largely in response to strong encouragement and support for exploration by the new territorial government, who you heard from earlier. Secondly, it was a result of increasing frustration and - I underline this - uncertainty with the regulatory framework that existed in British Columbia at that time with respect to exploration and mine development.

Since 1992, Westmin and its co-venturers have spent more than $18 million on exploration on Westmin properties in the Yukon. This exploration has resulted in at least one major discovery at Wolverine Lake, which will lead to a mine being developed. This mine will likely employ several hundred people and generate revenues in the range of $50 million to $100 million per year for the Yukon economy.

Westmin's exploration activities have pumped this $18 million primarily into the Yukon economy, with most of it going to local contractors and through service contracts. It has resulted in employment and service contracts to the first nations in the communities near where we are working. It has also contributed to large exploration expenditures by other companies that have joined in our exploration.

Our exploration activity has not been without public controversy. It is important that the committee understand the cost and dysfunctional nature of this activity, its potential effect on investment in mineral exploration, and how this might have been remedied by the introduction of land use regulations under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act.

Various environmental and conservation groups have challenged our right to undertake mineral exploration on our mineral plain under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. These challenges have occurred in spite of the fact that Westmin and its co-venturers have followed the regulatory process and complied with all regulations. The challenges have been twofold, with legal challenges in the courts seeking injunctions to stop our work and have our permits revoked and media conflict that challenges the accuracy of the regulatory framework that undermines public confidence in the regulations.

I will first deal with the legal challenges. The Yukon chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, whose acronym is CPWS, initiated two legal actions against the federal government and mineral exploration companies in the Yukon in 1994. I will only discuss the action that involved Westmin and summarize the issues, the court decisions, the cost to Westmin and taxpayers, and the ramifications for investment in mineral exploration in the Yukon.

To understand the need for regulatory certainty governing mineral exploration, the committee needs to understand the issues underlying such actions from an industry member's perspective. The action brought by the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society in March 1994 was led by the Sierra Legal Defence Fund on behalf of them.

The background for this action is that Westmin applied for a land use permit to construct a winter road across crown land. It was largely over an existing winter road route. We wished to mobilize a caterpillar tractor during the winter of 1993-94 for construction of an airstrip on its mineral plain along the banks of the Bonnet Plume River.

The last part of the winter road was new and within Westmin's mineral plains. The engineer at DIAND issued a land use permit to Westmin in September 1993 allowing the construction of the winter road across the crown land. This permit was issued under the land use regulations of the Territorial Lands Act. It did so after it had conducted an environmental screening. The permit contained numerous conditions that the engineer considered necessary to protect the environment.

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Westmin commenced the winter road activity in late February of 1994, reached its claims in mid-March, and completed construction of the airstrip in late May of that year. For those of you unfamiliar with winter roads, they are constructed by walking a Cat over the snow with the blade up to minimize environmental impacts. They are routed to try to avoid the trees and find open areas to minimize that impact.

Westmin undertook the winter road and airstrip construction activity after conducting public meetings in Mayo and receiving the support of the community and the local Na-cho-ny'a'k-dun First Nation. I would like to state that this was a voluntary initiative by the company. No concerns were made to DIAND by any party with respect to the permit application. The local land use officer inspected the winter road activity and found that all conditions of the permit had been met. His report states that no significant environmental impacts occurred.

The legal action was filed in March 1994, and it sought a number of things: a quashing of the decision by the DIAND engineer, and this decision included the granting of the permit and restricting its application to crown lands, excluding the mineral claims. CEPA has also sought that the land use permit issued to Westmin be declared invalid; third, that the engineer subject Westmin's permit application to a proper environmental assessment under the EARP guidelines order; fourth, that the application of the territorial land use regulations to Westmin's exploration activities on its mineral claims include airstrip construction; fifth, that the DIAND engineer should exercise jurisdiction under the territorial land use regulations regarding Westmin's exploration activity on its mineral claims; and lastly, that the DIAND engineer be required to comply with the EARP guidelines order and require Westmin to do an environmental assessment on its mineral exploration activity, both considering the exploration activity that it proposed and possibly looking at any future development activity such as the opening of a mine. Keep in mind that we had yet to drill our first drill hole.

The action named the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, the engineer of DIAND, the Attorney General of Canada, and Westmin and its co-venture in Newmont Mines. There were numerous interveners: the Gwich'in Tribal Council, the Yukon Chamber of Mines and the Yukon Prospector's Association.

The case was heard in Federal Court in Vancouver by the Hon. Madam Justice Reed, with her decision given on November 29, 1995. CEPA's applications to the court were denied. In her reasoning for the order she noted the following: ``There is no evidence that Westmin or Newmont acted in an irresponsible fashion.'' Madam Justice Reed states that subsection 76(1) of the Yukon Quartz Mining Act ``operates so as to confer on claim holders the right to all minerals found, together with the rights to use the surface of the claim to the extent as the Minister may consider necessary for the efficient and miner-like operation of the mines and minerals contained on the claim''.

She says that this therefore ``precludes the operation of the territorial land use regulations to the mining activity in question, which is on the mineral claims''. The judge also notes that some activities on mineral claims are subject to the Yukon Waters Act and would trigger an EARP review; that is, exploration is not totally unregulated.

It was also found that the engineer did not err in requiring Westmin to obtain a permit for its work on its mineral claims. Madam Justice Reed was also of the opinion that the engineer did not have to consider the end use of the Caterpillar tractors on the mineral claims under the the EARP guidelines when it conducted its environmental assessment of the permit application.

I now wish to consider the cost and ramifications of these actions. Westmin and Newmont's legal and directly related expense was probably more than $200,000. Interveners and the Attorney General's department also incurred significant legal expenses. I would not be surprised if the total cost exceeded $500,000, all because Westmin obtained a permit by due process and complied with the law. I remind you that we had the support of the local community and its renewable resource council.

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The legal action had much more widespread potential impacts than the validity of Westmin's land use permit. It challenged the right of all mineral claimholders to enter onto the surface of their mineral claims and do exploration work. This was the prime reason Westmin and Newmont vigorously defended these actions. I would suggest it's also the reason the Yukon Chamber of Mines and the Yukon Prospectors Association intervened in the action.

This action also created uncertainty in DIAND's jurisdiction over mineral claims under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. The uncertainty in the regulatory framework created by this legal challenge increased the investment risk for exploration in the Yukon. Westmin and Newmont had to seriously reconsider their view that the Yukon was a friendly regime for mineral investment. Newmont's senior management became increasingly concerned about continuing to fund the Fairchild joint venture. Westmin would have had no choice but to launch a counter action seeking damages had Newmont withdrawn from the joint venture as a result of this action.

Had the jurisdiction of the Territorial Lands Act been confirmed on mineral claims, the regulatory uncertainty thereby created would have clearly made the Yukon a much less friendly place to explore, and investment would have declined dramatically rather than enjoying the increases in exploration expenditures that have occurred over the last few years.

These actions also raised concerns in the general public, particularly in small outlying communities that depend on exploration revenues, that exploration and mining companies might leave. You've already heard from the community of Mayo today.

Others in the public became concerned that there may be truth to the accusations in the media that exploration might actually be out of control - all of this at a time when the industry was actively participating in the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee and seeking land use regulations for its mineral claims.

I would like now to comment on the media controversy. The media controversy has largely been a misinformation campaign designed to cause fear that exploration is causing serious environmental degradation as a result of inadequate regulations under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. The intent of these initiatives is, I suggest, first to discredit mineral exploration companies and paint them as environmentally irresponsible; second, to pressure government to make mining claims subject to the land use regulations under the Territorial Lands Act; third, to create a sense of environmental emergency in order to rally support for park proposals and prohibitions against exploration; fourth, to create a cause for fund-raising initiatives; and last, general harassment of the industry to encourage them to go elsewhere with their exploration dollars.

A most recent incident occurred in July of this year when a group of river rafters, members of CPAWS, reported to CBC Radio a petroleum spill at our Bonnet Plume exploration camp. Investigations indicated no spill, with things exactly as they were two weeks earlier, when they were inspected by Westmin and Newmont. Members of a local renewable resource council who participated in the investigation were more than satisfied with the conditions of the exploration camp. Again, we encouraged managers to investigate the false spill report and have had to try to rectify the misinformation given to the public.

These facts may seem trivial; however, they are viewed as very serious by explorations people in our industry. We recognize that our right to explore and to mine flows from public support for mining. This is particularly true for the Yukon. If we lose the public's support, we will soon lose the right to explore and develop mines as regulators move to overregulate the industry, deny access and interfere with or prohibit development, etc.

We are concerned that the industry is being falsely painted in the local media as uncontrolled, irresponsible defacers of the land. If this perception becomes commonplace, we will soon lose our public support, and perception will become reality, irrespective of all our efforts to increase environmental performance and awareness in exploration.

Industry must therefore take the legal challenges and the accompanying media controversies very seriously. These conflicts are affecting our competitiveness. The dollars, time and effort used in addressing these controversies are largely unconstructive and are a misallocation of scarce resources, undermining our exploration efficiency and hence our competitiveness. This is exactly what those who are opposed to mining want.

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These conflicts also have a strong psychological effect on industry decision-making, those who will determine where exploration dollars are spent. It encourages them to seek other areas for us to conduct our exploration in, and thereby avoid the conflict and uncertainly created by such controversies. Many Canadian companies have done just that: they voted with their feet and went to South America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere.

Westmin has opted to stay and fight to preserve the right to explore and mine in Canada so as that all Canadians might benefit from Canada's mineral wealth. However, recently it too has felt that it must diversify its exploration efforts outside of Canada.

Westmin's success in B.C. and the Yukon, however, will ensure that we will continue to fight for a regulatory framework that is reasonable and fulfils the public's need to ensure environmental protection.

Westmin's experience with the exploration in the Yukon perhaps gives it a unique perspective on amendments to the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. It is Westmin's view that the recommendations of the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee should have been implemented much more quickly by DIAND and that the failure to move quickly to provide regulations sufficient to fulfil the public's desire for environmental standards for exploration is contributing to the public perception problem being encountered by the exploration industry.

Reasonable regulations for exploration, such as those suggested by the Yukon Mining Advisory Committee, should be implemented as quickly as possible to remove the regulatory uncertainty that undermines investment confidence. In this respect, Bill C-6 should be proclaimed quickly and regulations should be drafted. Regulations governing exploration on mineral claims should be made under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act, since the courts have already recently ruled that the Territorial Lands Act does not have jurisdiction. Furthermore, inclusions under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act provide for obvious administrative and regulatory efficiency.

The industry needs to be consulted at an early stage to ensure that regulations are realistic and administratively efficient. The regulations need to be clear and concise to remove an uncertainty of interpretation and application such that future legal challenges can be avoided. I suggest that certain sections of the act may already be open to legal challenges.

The regulations should be flexible enough to apply to industry needs; that is, to have made-in-Yukon solutions with a requirement appropriate for the environmental risk involved. A risk-based approach is necessary if we are to manage resources properly and ensure the sustainability and competitiveness of our industry. Participation by industry in formulating regulations can avoid ineffective overregulation.

Here are a few words on voluntary compliance. When feasible, voluntary compliance should be encouraged to minimize administrative and enforcement requirements, while retaining enforcement for those not complying with exploration standards and regulation. For several years now, the larger companies have been voluntarily conducting their exploration to similar standards as those existing in other jurisdictions, including reclamation activities.

Clearly, the proponents should be accountable under the act in its new land use regulations, but the government also needs to be accountable and must do a timely review of applications and issue permits or denials within established time lines. Furthermore, the process should be open and transparent, with a right of public participation. This public participation must be structured and well managed by government to ensure its effectiveness.

Amendments to the Yukon Quartz Mining Act should ensure the continuance of a free-entry system with a right to stake claims and explore them. A free miner would enjoy the same rights as today, subject to compliance with environmental regulations and standards as set out in the act.

I would also like to address certain groups' criticisms of the so-called free-entry system. The free-entry system was established throughout Canada more than a hundred years ago. At that time, government recognized that mineral exploration was an inherently risky business and required large investments with little guarantee of any return. Free miners were attracted nonetheless by the potential discovery and the creation of wealth. Governments also recognized that free miners needed unencumbered access to large tracts of land to explore. The use of the land for exploration did not preclude other land users' use.

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Today the explorationist still requires unencumbered access to large tracts of crown land. Similarly, it does not pre-empt other land users from using the land, except in the case where a mine is actually developed. That is such a small portion of the land base, as we heard earlier today. It's much less than one percent of the land base.

It is estimated that on average approximately $100 million of exploration is required to find a mine in Canada. Exploration methods have improved and geophysical and geochemical methods have replaced more intrusive methods. The public seeks to minimize environmental impacts from exploration activities and the user is expected to pay. Governments remain the main benefactors of all this investment through direct and indirect taxation.

I conclude that the access to crown land for mineral exploration is anything but free. It is also not a windfall. Although significant wealth has been created for a few, the historic return on mining investments has been lower than in most other industries. Nonetheless, it remains one of the great wealth generators for Canadians.

In conclusion, I strongly encourage you the committee to proclaim Bill C-6 and make the necessary amendments to the Yukon Quartz Mining Act to include land use regulations on mineral claims. Other parts of the act could benefit from revision. However, it is more important for you to focus on the need for land use regulations and address these and other issues at a later date.

Furthermore, I ask you to ensure the mineral industry is involved at an early stage in the drafting of these regulations to ensure the workability and that the costs and benefits are reasonable and provide sustainability of our industry in what has become a very competitive international exploration arena. The Yukon depends on a healthy mineral exploration industry. Keep mining in the Yukon.

Thank you for the opportunity to address you today.

The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Meade.

Questions from members. Five minutes between the two of you.

Mr. Stinson: Do you want to go first, John?

Mr. Duncan: Yes, I'll go first.

The Myra Falls operation is in my riding. I had an opportunity to attend your thirty-year celebration this summer. I ask specifically to be invited to the sixty-year celebration because I know that mine will still be operating.

I would also like to take the opportunity to talk about the fact that in the community Westmin is certainly considered to be a great corporate citizen. I think the initiative you've taken on public tours of the mining operation speaks volumes.

When you gave us your story about the costs of litigation and red tape, it should be a reminder to all of us that those costs in many cases exceed the taxation provisions. I'm sure that's a major concern for the mining industry in Canada.

I'll just leave it at that and let Darrel carry on.

Mr. Stinson: Thank you.

I had the opportunity this year actually to go up on your Wolverine property. I have to congratulate you. All the way in there - and I flew over the total property - there was absolutely no sign at all of road work and how you got in. I think you are to be congratulated on that.

You mentioned the changing goalposts all the time. Basically, once mining companies make an investment and they go for it and put the money up, it seems a new law comes into being. It's almost as if they know you've got too much in to pull out now and you have to go forward. It seems to be a major concern, not only in the north but all across Canada, and it seems to be chasing the mining companies out of Canada.

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So in that regard I'd like to know if anything has happened here that has chased any part of your company out of Canada when they could have just as easily stayed here and created employment for our people.

Mr. Meade: The major thing that undermines investment in mineral exploration and mine development is the uncertainty of regulations. It is not the regulations themselves we fear. For the most part, we believe every mine that is developed today has little or no impact or it will never receive its permits. So it's not what we're required to do under the regulations. It's the bureaucracy and the difficulty and the frustration we go through in trying to do our business. By nature we like to have quiet enjoyment of our rights. In today's world that just does not seem to be possible. We seem to have to defend our actions at every point, and that becomes very tiring.

Mr. Stinson: I'm also glad you cleared up the free-entry set-up here in Canada with regard to prospecting and mining. It's strange how we can get misinformation from someone who comes into this committee. In particular, they said the free-entry system had been taken out of Australia, and so forth. It turned out they are allowed to map-stake in Australia. Would you see map-staking instead of actually going out there onto the property as a benefit in Canada with regard to mining?

Mr. Meade: I think the current method of staking in the Yukon does have more impact on the environment than it needs to. I'm not certain I agree with map-staking, but I think some variation very similar to that, which is a minimum amount of location required for a mineral claim on the ground, would be both more efficient and a little more environmentally friendly than the current system.

Mr. Stinson: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Godfrey, four minutes, please.

Mr. Godfrey (Don Valley West): Mr. Meade, I was interested to hear you talk about the Bonnet Plume. It's a river that by accident I happen to know. I have actually been on it. I flew into it in the mid-1980s and then canoed down the whole length of it.

Tell me, if I were to have returned last summer and were to have canoed it, what would I have seen close to the river in terms of the exploration activity? What sort of impact would I have seen? If it turns out the exploration phase yields to a development phase, what could I image in a future canoe trip I might see close to the river, how far from it, how much impact?

Mr. Meade: The main activity we have done that has drawn all the public concern is the construction of the airstrip and our camp on the banks of the Bonnet Plume River. Neither of those is visible from the river. So I would suggest that if you were rafting down the river, you would see nothing from the river unless you knew it was there.

We were not active in that exploration camp this year, but if you had done it last summer you might have seen the helicopter activity and that sort of thing. Other than that I think you would have seen very little.

It's not prudent for me to speculate about what future developments might occur there and where a mine would be, because at this time no ore body has been defined. Hence I can't speak to what sorts of visual impacts there might be from mining.

Mr. Godfrey: Typically, though, do such activities, when you go down a river, tend to be close to the river?

Mr. Meade: In drafting the management plan for the Bonnet Plume River, we have supported the concept that visual management should be done on all activity in the corridor or the main stem of the river. To the extent that facilities, or access roads, or whatever, can be located so that they're not visible from the river, it behoves all developers to do so.

Mr. Godfrey: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Finlay: Sir, I wanted to ask whether you or your company were involved in the development of the Whitehorse Mining Initiative, about which we've heard a good deal today.

Mr. Meade: I was not directly involved, but one of our other senior officers was very active on the land use regulations committee. Mr. Bruce McKnight, our president, was very active on one of the umbrella committees for the Whitehorse Mining Initiative.

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Mr. Finlay: You did say that certain sections of the present act may be subject to legal interpretations, partly because of the delay in approving it. I know that gives you some concern, but I think it's a fact of life and we're simply going to have to live with it. People will challenge things if they feel they have a right or a need to do that.

You did say that you've supported the public's need for environmental protection, with reasonable regulations following the YMAC agreements, and I agree with that, but I think you said that mining should not be subject to the Territorial Lands Act. Could you tell me why mining, unlike other industries and development, should not be subject to that act?

Mr. Meade: The Territorial Lands Act governs a lot of different land users, from people who would build hydroelectric facilities to whatever. It's much broader than the mining. As a result, it's a rather blunt tool to regulate mining.

What we suggest, too, is that by regulating mining under the Territorial Lands Act we undermine the authority of the Yukon Quartz Mining Act and we set up the potential for conflicts and discrepancies between other parts of the act. I would rather see the environmental regulations under the Yukon Quartz Mining Act.

Mr. Finlay: Then you might agree with my contention earlier today that there wasn't a sufficient definition of what those environmental results and goals should be. We heard other witnesses who suggested that the environmental things are under the Territorial Lands Act or the umbrella agreement or the Inuvialuit land claims and that we don't need them in the Yukon Quartz Mining Act. This is interesting; you're suggesting to me that yes, that's where they should be vis-à-vis mining.

Mr. Meade: That's correct. That's the position I take. The Territorial Lands Act would apply when you're not on mineral claims. I'm not saying that should not be the case.

The Chairman: Thank you very much, Mr. Meade.

From the Yukon Chamber of Mines we have Jim McFaull, president, and Dennis Ouellette, member.

Mr. Jim McFaull (President, Yukon Chamber of Mines): Good day to you, gentlemen and ladies. Thank you very much for providing us with the opportunity to present you the views of the Chamber of Mines concerning Bill C-6.

The Yukon Chamber of Mines has been in existence for more than 40 years. The membership of the chamber varies from individual prospectors to major corporations with Yukon mining projects. The chamber also has a very large and resourceful service and supply membership of drill contractors, aircraft contractors, etc.

The chamber is frequently asked to provide information and opinion on all aspects of the industry to government agencies and to the general public. We collaborate on the collection and dissemination of information pertinent to the industry and have participated with government in the discussion and development of all issues affecting the industry. The decisions and views expressed by the chamber are informed decisions based on practical experience and extensive knowledge of the industry.

There are three important thoughts I would like to express today. First, exploration and mining contribute significantly to the Yukon's economy and to self-sufficiency within that economy. Secondly, mining activities are already strongly regulated in the Yukon.

The intent of Bill C-6 is to provide a measure of environmental mitigation during advanced exploration phases of development, and the chamber fully supports Bill C-6. I'd stress that again. We fully support Bill C-6, with the proviso that the regulations be drafted within the spirit of YMAC and harmonization, as promoted by the Whitehorse Mining Initiative, and we stress that Bill C-6 be passed without any further amendments.

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Thirdly, if poorly implemented, Bill C-6 has the ability of destroying the presently encouraging exploration and mining resurgence in the Yukon. I'm trusting that won't happen.

From the discovery of gold in the early 1880s until today mining has played a significant role in the social and economic development of the Yukon. The value of mineral production for 1996 will exceed approximately $400 million and exploration and development expenditures will total an additional $100 million.

Two new mines were opened this year, providing direct employment for an additional 250 people. The current resurgence in exploration and mining could result in the opening of another six mines by the turn of the century. The exploration and mining industry still offers the best chance for the Yukon, with its current population and infrastructure, to maintain the standard of living we currently enjoy.

The Yukon is situated along the Pacific Rim and circum-Pacific trading has increased dramatically in the past decade. The Yukon mining industry is taking advantage of these new trade routes. Our mining concentrates are making their way to destinations such as Japan and Korea, which improves our balance of foreign trade, and companies from around the world are currently investing in the Yukon's mining industry. The Yukon's mineral resources are substantial and will play an increasingly large role in supplying the world's needs for mineral resources.

Currently, the Yukon is dependent on federal transfer payments for much of its economic development. The payments are structured so that they discourage investment in development: the more development, the fewer transfer payments. Devolution and the reduction of transfer payments necessitate the development of the Yukon's resources. The alternative is the depopulation of the Yukon or a continuation of the Yukon's dependence on southern taxpayers.

The Yukon is moving into a new era of self-sufficiency and self-determination and our industry is playing a large role in the economic renewal of this rural jurisdiction.

The Yukon Quartz Mining Act was written in 1924 and it was written to protect the miner and to ensure legal certainty to mineral title as an essential component of a healthy industry. The Klondike gold rush occurred after the rushes both in Australia and California. Those preceding gold rushes acted as a testing ground for the development of modern mining law. In fact, men died in Australia at the hands of British government troops during the Ballarat miners rebellion, which resulted in the replacement of mining licences with miners rights. The Yukon Quartz Mining Act was written based on those rights.

Environmental issues have now become an additional priority for Canadians and the act must be revised to reflect those issues. Most miners accept the introduction of mining land use regulations but insist the rights of the miners not be compromised in the process.

The industry can be regulated without destroying its ability to operate. But, as an example, the recent collapse of the Yukon forestry industry due to poor regulation is an object lesson we wish to avoid. In early 1990 the Yukon Chamber of Mines embarked upon an initiative to negotiate mining-specific land-use regulations. A great deal of pressure was being exerted upon the industry to formalize some sort of land-use regime because the perception was that the industry was unregulated.

In fact, the industry is far from unregulated, even at this time. Production is closely controlled. The Yukon Waters Act currently requires a water licence before any mine can go into full production. This results in a full review of the project, which includes public consultation.

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Pre-production decisions are reviewed by DIAND, which must also ensure full CEAA compliance under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. A large operation will trigger a full CEAA review similar to the BHP Diamonds mine in the Northwest Territories.

Attached to the water licence are requirements for daily water monitoring, solid and liquid waste disposal plans and final closure plans. All mining activities of quartz claims are subject to the Territorial Lands Act.

The Yukon Mining Advisory Committee was the vehicle chosen to develop guidelines for legislative change in this process. Consensus was reached in 1991 and a report stating the purpose of YMAC was released.

By April of 1992 the committee had developed a comprehensive report outlining the land use system and our proposed amendments to the act. The report stated the goals of the legislation should be to provide the necessary screening mechanism to allow the minister to assess projects as outlined in EARP and also to ensure resultant legislation would provide the encouragement needed for a competitive exploration and mining sector.

All that was required was the writing of the legislation. However, an untimely election and the Charlottetown accord got in the way and the YMAC report was shelved for a full two years. In early 1994 the report was resurrected. The committee was reinstated and put to work reviewing the draft legislation. This took another two years with the same stakeholders at the table. At the last moment the Yukon Conservation Society chose to withdraw its support for the legislation.

Although the opinions vary widely among industry people, most do not believe environmental regulations will have an adverse effect on the industry's ability to operate in the Yukon. The mining land-use regulations will result not only in the industry becoming more accountable for its exploration practices but also in the creation of a more transparent exploration industry.

The purpose of this environmental legislation is to ensure that minimal disturbance occurs during the exploration phase of mineral development and to provide a process by which the general public can be assured of environmental compliance. It will also provide a venue at which the public can comment on the development of the territory.

Although the bill concentrates on the exploration phase of development, it ultimately covers all aspects of the industry from exploration through mining production, final closure and abandonment.

The Yukon Chamber of Mines understands the concept of environmental conscientiousness. The chamber has repeatedly asked, however, that environmental regulations be based on sound scientific principles. This request for a reasonable common sense approach to environmental stewardship has been misinterpreted as being reluctance to accept any form of environmental regulation. We'd like to dispel that concept.

In the early 1970s the chamber was successful in stopping the introduction of the Yukon Minerals Act, which would have destroyed our exploration industry and eventually the mining industry. This has given us a certain suspicion with regard to new legislative initiatives. However, we're still prepared to deal with this.

I would like to point out that Bill C-6 is not operating within a legislative vacuum. Since 1990 other legislation has entered into the picture. The umbrella final agreement signed in February 1995 has made land claims a legislative reality. Of the 14 Yukon first nations, seven have successfully negotiated self-government agreements and finalized their land claims.

Under chapter 12 of the umbrella final agreement there is the creation of the development assessment process, the DAP as we call it, which must be completed by February of next year. The DAP legislation will have the authority to amend existing laws where necessary to ensure DAP is effective. DAP will be designed to review the environmental and socioeconomic effects in the Yukon of development, using the concept of sustainable development.

Since the legislation has not yet been brought forward for public consultation, however, we don't understand the DAP completely. This uncertainty is a worry to us. We also don't understand how it's going to relate to Bill C-6.

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The umbrella final agreement allows for the creation of several boards charged with the responsibility for determining and resolving conflicts arising from land and resource usage. The boards and councils, which are created through land claims for each of the 14 Yukon first nations, are: the development assessment process, the Yukon Land Use Planning Board, the Yukon Surface Rights Board, a fish and wildlife management board, a heritage resources board, and the Renewable Resources Council. All of these boards and councils will have some effect on the way our industry does business.

The land claim process has been a long and challenging one and will require a period of adjustment for all Yukoners. The completion of land selections should certainly provide more certainty for the mining industry. It has already resulted in several agreements between some first nations government and mining companies. Partnerships between first nations governments and mining companies is one way for first nations people to realize their self-determination.

The old EARP guidelines order has been replaced by the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which is itself undergoing revisions. Bill C-6 formalizes the need for a production licence and a mine closure plan. The need for a water licence under the Yukon Waters Act already exists. There has been some concern expressed about the possible duplication of licensing requirements for producing mines in now having to get a water licence and a production licence under Bill C-6.

Under the umbrella final agreement, the development assessment process will also require extensive studies and public consultation. Again, this may lead to more duplication.

So we would like to stress that Bill C-6 is not going to exist in a vacuum of regulatory legislation; it's going to have to mesh with all these other regulatory initiatives, and there's been very little said about how that's going to work. We're certainly concerned that this may result in duplication, triplication, or quintuplication of licensing processes. We certainly don't want to see that.

Canadian mining is undergoing change in the spirit of the Whitehorse Mining Initiative. Other jurisdictions are rewriting their mining legislation to ensure harmonization. Land use planning and environmental assessment are part of these initiatives to harmonize the process. Bill C-6 is not a stand-alone piece of legislation.

A federal jurisdiction requires the application of other federal legislation in a manner not seen in provincial jurisdictions. Also, as we said, land claims have allowed for the creation of new legislative initiatives that burden the process of an efficient environmental assessment.

One of our greatest fears here is that the splintering of environmental reviews between the mining land use regulations under Bill C-6, the development assessment process, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, and the water board will result in an excessively long review period for the permitting of exploration and development decisions.

We would request that your committee review this legislation of Bill C-6 in light of the other applicable legislation and test it against section 134:

The purpose of this Part is to ensure the development and viability of a sustainable, competitive and healthy quartz mining industry

We absolutely have to have that.

In summary, I have emphasized three points in our presentation. The Yukon is moving into a new era of self-sufficiency and self-determination. Our industry is playing a large role in the economic renewal of this rural jurisdiction. Recent economic downturns have only emphasized the fact that a strong exploration and mining sector is instrumental in a healthy Yukon economy. With a practical and harmonious environmental regime, Yukoners can enjoy the benefits of a competitive and healthy mining industry within a healthy, natural environment, so we support the passage of Bill C-6 without amendments.

Here's a final caution to be expressed. Again, a coordinated effort must be made between CEEA officials, DAP builders, the water board, and yourselves in writing the MLUR regulations under Bill C-6 to ensure harmonization. Excessive regulation is not going to provide a sustainable, healthy and competitive mining industry. This is our livelihood. Exploration and mining are essential for a strong Yukon economy. Mining activities are already strongly regulated, and we would ask that Bill C-6 be implemented with caution. A harmonized, one-window approach to permitting of exploration and mining activities is required to ensure a competitive and healthy mining industry.

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Coupled with the act of passing this amended legislation is the responsibility of ensuring that Yukoners are able to continue enjoying the benefits the mining industry provides. It would be negligent to assume that the passing of this legislation will not negatively affect the ability of the mining industry to operate in this jurisdiction. I'd like to stress that we're here to protect not only the environment but also the mining industry of the Yukon territory.

Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Thank you very much.

Members' questions? Mr. Duncan.

Mr. Duncan: I'd just like to utilize you here, in perhaps the main focus, to explain to the committee the importance of mining in the Yukon from the standpoint.... I believe when I was up there - it would be two-plus years ago - the Faro Mine by itself was then calculated to be, when it was operating, about 15% of the Yukon economy. I believe government spending at that time was 70% responsible for the Yukon economy. So without that one mining operation you'd suddenly change the variable quite a bit.

I understand there has been quite a change recently. You're talking about a resurgence of mining and mining prospecting as opposed to what appeared to be receding at that time. Can you give us any numbers we can grab onto here in terms of percentages, or is it too fluid for that?

Mr. McFaull: I'll let Mr. Ouellette answer that.

Mr. Dennis Ouellette (Member, Yukon Chamber of Mines): The ways in which you can calculate the importance of the mining industry to Yukon are varied. If we use a standard multiplier, for every direct mining employee we have a further person who's indirectly employed because of that mining operation.

Certainly when the mine closed down, with its workforce of almost 500 people, it was easy to see that at least 1,000 Yukoners lost their jobs. Unfortunately, over the interim, the actual effect of Curragh shutting down - and at that time it was Curragh Resources - was tempered by two things. One, a good number of the people who lived in Faro at the time left and went to seek mining jobs in other jurisdictions. Two, the Yukon economy, as Jim stated, is falsely bolstered by transfer payments, payments that for a citizen in the territory here would equal somewhere between $12,000 and $14,000, much higher than any other jurisdiction in Canada, with the exception of the Northwest Territories.

The exploration industry in the Yukon in the past two years has exceeded $40 million, equal to the amount generated by the tourism industry. The renewable resources income probably is around $10 million. When a mine is going into production, a great deal of capital expenditure is required. This year we're looking at $50 million to $55 million being spent on development. Once the mine is in production, we have full-time employees and also the generation of the mineral wealth itself, which has in the past exceeded $400 million.

Mr. McIntyre has kindly passed to me the exact figures. The 1994 figures show government providing 57%, mining providing 30%, tourism providing 10%, and renewable resources providing 3%.

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Mr. Duncan: So those are 1994 statistics and if anything, the 30% would be bigger today?

Mr. Ouellette: We have two new mines opening, so it would increase, yes.

Mr. Duncan: Thank you.

The Chairman: Mr. Stinson.

Mr. Stinson: I just want to talk a little bit more about the Faro project and what happened up there when Anvil Range took over.

I believe Anvil Range is the first mining company that has gone in there that has not been directly subsidized or subsidized by the federal government. They're going on their own and doing quite well. My understanding is that it is the biggest private employer in the Yukon.

Mr. McFaull: Yes, that would be correct.

Mr. Stinson: So would it be safe to say then that without Anvil Range being active the way it is, there would be no town the size of Faro?

Mr. McFaull: Yes, the entire town of Faro is based on that mine.

Mr. Stinson: Thank you. I just wanted to have that clarified, and also to congratulate you people for working so hard on this bill.

Mr. McFaull: Thank you very much.

The Chairman: Mr. Finlay.

Mr. Finlay: Mr. McFaull, I'm very interested in your testimony, but I must say that we get testimony from the mining association and from Keep Mining in Canada. Mining is pretty important in every province in this country. You did mention the Yukon, the Whitehorse Mining Initiative, and so on.

I asked a question at the start of this session today and I'm still wrestling with trying to get an answer for it. We've heard a lot about your concern for harmonization for land use regulations that make sense and that have less duplication. I take it that more standardization across Canadian provinces and territories with respect to mining might be something you would welcome.

What I'm leading up to is that it seems to me that we had an opportunity to reduce some of the duplication and some of the different standards in developing this act for the Yukon. Yet when I look at some of the rules for the Yukon and some of the rules for the Northwest Territories and some of the rules for the rest of the provinces, I find they're very different.

I'm not suggesting that you would want to simply adopt other people's regulations willy-nilly, but it does bother me a little that you don't need approval for using anything up to 1,000 kilograms of explosives in a 30-day period in the Yukon, while in B.C. you can only use 50 kilograms of explosives before you have to get somebody to make sure you're doing the right thing with it.

I could go on with rights of ways, with person days in camp, with weight of vehicles, with the amount of area you can clear without any approval. It's given us four clearings in the Yukon and a lot fewer in B.C. and in the Northwest Territories. In Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, New Brunswick, and even Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland, you practically need a permit in order to go over the land to get somewhere. You're saying that in the Yukon your mining can only survive if you have free entry. I need some help with that.

Mr. McFaull: Yes, sir, you certainly do. I would just point out to you that regarding the comparison between here and British Columbia, for example, this year we will have over $100 million expended on exploration in this territory. British Columbia will be lucky to see a tenth of that. That pretty well answers that question.

If you overregulate, sir, you lose your investments. That's the whole point of our statement. We're not looking to have no regulations; we're just looking to have some workable ones. Other jurisdictions are not particularly workable, and it shows in the amount of money being spent there. British Columbia is a prime example. That place is dead and it's dead because of overregulation. There it is.

Mr. Ouellette: In fact, at the recent mines ministers conference held in Yellowknife last weekend, there was an exercise by agents of the departments of mining of each of the provinces. What they're doing right at this moment is an exercise that will lead to the harmonization of all mining-related regulations and legislation within their jurisdictions. There is clearly duplication, triplication, etc., already existing in other jurisdictions. They are reviewing and rewriting all their mining-related legislation to ensure that there is harmonization. The fact that you need a permit to take a walk with a rock camera in British Columbia doesn't necessarily mean this permit is.... Does that mean hikers in the future will require a permit to go for a hike? Would this be the perfect world? I don't think so.

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Mr. McFaull: I would just point too, sir, with regard to the free-entry system statement you made that I think you would find in most jurisdictions the stronger the free-entry system, the healthier the mining industry. The less the free-entry system is used, the smaller the mining industry is. That holds right across Canada and around the world. I think that's a fairly safe statement to make.

The free-entry system has been around for a very long time. It's been around for a very long time because it was a workable system. It took 500 years to develop, and they've worked the bugs out of most of it. It's not a perfect system, but it does work. It does what it's supposed to do, which is to allow us to go to work in the morning.

The more you detract from that system, the more you strangle the industry. That is certainly seen over and over again in jurisdictions around the world where they have reduced or revoked the free-entry system. Their mining industry dies and the investors go elsewhere. Australia is a prime example. About 10 years ago they basically revoked the free-entry system and wiped out their mining industry completely. It is just now recovering, 10 years later. It is still so badly beaten that Australian mining companies are currently coming to the Vancouver Stock Exchange and taking Canadian money back to Australia to do their business. The Australian investment community still won't touch them, even though the regulations have been changed back toward a free-entry system. It's going to take them a long time to recover from the economic beating they took down there.

Again, I would caution you that this could easily happen in this jurisdiction. There is nothing different here from Australia. I speak from personal experience, because the company I work with just took down a major joint venture on an Australian mining property. We're working down there now. That speaks for itself as well.

Mr. Finlay: I thought just now you'd warned me against that sort of investment.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh.

Mr. McFaull: It's a gambling business, sir, and you have to take risks once in awhile.

The Chairman: Again, to put things in perspective, I'm from a hard rock mining town. The formula used for blasting is fuel oil and fertilizer. So when we talk of ingredients used to blow up mountains, they are things we have in our own homes.

Do any other members have questions? Ms McLaughlin?

Ms McLaughlin: No, thank you very much. I have no questions.

The Chairman: Before we bid farewell until tomorrow, I'd like to thank Ken Hutchinson from DIAND, who has coordinated efforts at the other end, and our two technicians, Isabella Fallinger and Mike West. Thank you.

I would now ask the members to remain. Mr. Stinson has asked to present something to the committee.

Mr. Stinson: Mr. Chairman, I would like to request that at the next meeting of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development the following motion be debated and voted on: that this committee urge the government to guarantee the rights of Canada's native people by protecting their Canadian citizenship and their right to remain part of Canada if they so desire in the event of the unilateral declaration of independence by the Parti Québecois government.

The Chairman: First of all, I can only accept it as a notice of motion.

Mr. Duncan: Notice of motion.

The Chairman: Secondly, we will have to talk about it together as a committee, because we now are in a process of establishing legislation in case something happens - highly irregular. But for the time being, I will receive the notice of motion. We'll have a discussion, and we'll advise you.

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Mr. Stinson: On one other topic in regard to the vote taken today, I wish to record that we were misinformed as to how and when that vote was to take place. I would like to make sure that's registered as one reason why I was not here for that.

The Chairman: It's so noted.

Mr. Murphy: Can we get a copy of the motion?

The Chairman: Yes, you will be presented with the notice of motion.

Mr. Stinson: Yes, the copies are here.

The Chairman: Do you agree that I bring this notice of motion to the steering committee? It may be the best place to address it. Do you have other suggestions?

Mr. Duncan: That wouldn't occur before tomorrow anyway, would it?

The Chairman: No, this motion won't come back tomorrow.

Mr. Duncan: It won't occur tomorrow, so can I get back to you at the start of the week or tomorrow as to whether or not that's okay?

The Chairman: Sure. We'll be in touch. Okay.

Mr. Duncan: Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Chairman: Is there anything else for the good of the club? Thank you very much.

The meeting is adjourned.

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