The Friends of the Porcupine…

In our opinion, these proposed changes to the Mining Act are irresponsible and lack environmental, social governance (ESG). It lacks environmental ethics. Our Ministry should bear the responsibility to ensure that mining companies are responsible for the destruction and permanent changes they cause to the land and water in which is habitat that many species rely on (including people).

The Friends of the Porcupine River Watershed would like to point out that if the requirements proposed for removal in the Mining Act were in place at the time when Kam Kotia Mine was abandoned, the closure and environmental considerations as well as financial assurance would have been forced onto the company instead of the taxpayers. This includes countless abandoned mines, unmarked shafts, and open holes in and around the Timmins area that are still present, without any safety precautions and to this day pose a safety risk to the people and animals that use the land. How will the Ministry ensure that qualified professionals are ethical and held accountable for what they approve to be sufficient in the closure plans?

Mine closure plans are an integral part of protecting the lands after mining companies are done mining the resources. We expect that with regulations in place, government can review and approve closure plans to allow corporations to extract resources. The proposed changes would allow companies big and small to start mining without any type of plan after they are done extracting the ore, or worse, gone bankrupt. Mining companies without sufficient funds for their projects are commonly seen, as investors come and go. For example: Gowest, a promising project that has halted a couple times due to funding issues. How will the Ministry ensure that the phased financial assurance is appropriate to the project status?

We understand that the current government is concerned about the speed at which mining operations can start, but we want to emphasize the fact that you should also consider the many decades and often centuries it takes for the ecosystems to be restored and safe after mining is completed. The proposed changes to the mining act are not only irresponsible but they would be detrimental to mining towns such as the City of Timmins. Towns where people live that are surrounded by mining projects, who swim in the lakes, eat the fish, hunt, gather berries, camp and enjoy the outdoors.

We support a strong northern Ontario economy, but we believe that protecting the environment has been forgotten in the proposed changes to the Mining Act. We believe that our Provincial Government can find a way to mine the critical minerals needed for the electric vehicle supply chain while fully guaranteeing that mining companies will rehabilitate the land.