The Northwestern Ontario…

The Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association is committed to advocating in the best interest of the 37 municipalities we represent. Mining is a major industry in Northwestern Ontario and we support expanding this sector to support economic development in the region. However, we have a major concern with some amendments proposed in Bill 71.

Specifically, NOMA does not support the amendments that propose to remove the statutory role of the Director of Mine Rehabilitation and transfer this position’s decision-making authority to the Minister. This would provide the Minister with the direct ability to make statutory decisions related to matters under Part VII or delegate authority to ministry employees as needed (mine rehabilitation and remediation). It also will allow the Minister to exercise any power or perform any duty of the Director of Exploration, allowing the Minister to make early exploration decisions where the Director has not yet made a decision. The Minister would have flexibility to delegate decision-making authority to others within the Ministry and have decision-making authorities with respect to exploration and mine rehabilitation.

We strongly support Minister Pirie and his experience has been an asset to his position. However, he will not retain this position indefinitely and we are concerned that we may have a different opinion towards future Minister's. We do not support the changes in the Bill that provides the Minister decision-making power. We understand that the Minister appoints this person but the decision-making authority should remain with the Director to ensure there is a dedicated and knowledgeable person overseeing decisions. In addition, the Minister has many other political obligations and the focus should remain there and not be split as this could result in errors or things being missed or overlooked.

This bill could have serious future implications and we encourage the government to reconsider this change to the Bill. In Northwestern Ontario, generally speaking, mining projects are not delayed as a result of decision making delays by any level of government, rather it is meeting electricity demand for the mines and the exorbitant delivery fees to obtain electricity. NOMA believes the amendment to provide the Minister with decision-making powers will not improve the speed of completing mining projects and we ask the government to remove it from the proposed amendments to Bill 71.