Imagine your lovely house and home with its wonderful yard
where you have gardens or your kids and pets play. One day a person approaches you to buy the
dirt from your front yard. He will pay
you a very good price for your dirt - guaranteed, cash up front, and more than
you ever imagined dirt could be worth.
He promises to replace the dirt, returning your yard to its original
state, and most importantly, he guarantees it will be restored on time and
exactly as it was found. He guarantees
it with a post-dated cheque amounting to the original cost of the dirt and the estimated
restoration costs: this is supposed to be your insurance policy. You check out his company and find it is legitimate. Your lawyer approves the contract for the
dirt and reimbursements. Confident you
are protected, you sign the contract.
On the day he arrives to collect your dirt, you meet the
company team. They are most professional,
they pay you cash, and you confidently head off to work. When you return you find that all the dirt
has been removed as planned and the team is gone. To your surprise they don’t show-up the next
day. Exploring the hole more closely you
notice that in addition to the dirt, they also broke through the main sewer
line and the hole is filling with raw waste water, including some nasty industrial
runoff that also collects in the pipe that is broken. You are obviously unhappy so you call the company. No answer?!
You go to the office address provided and read the sign on the door, “This
Company has declared bankruptcy”. What
now?! You go to the bank to cash the
post-dated cheque which you discover is worthless. You call your lawyer. She informs you that your only recourse is
trying to take the company to court, which will result in legal battles and
fees extending for years and if you are really lucky you might get some of your
money back. An assessment of your front
yard indicates the cost to fix the problem is 100x the amount you were paid for
your dirt. Now you have a gaping hole in
your property filled with contaminated waste that you can’t use and you are
left to wonder “where did I go wrong?”.
That is mining in Canada: a litany of abandoned mine sites
across this country, holes in the ground you may or may not see, piles of
contaminated waste rock usually covered by water to keep them chemically
“stabilized”, i.e., from killing living things directly, and most probably, toxic
water leaching from the site. The owner
is long-gone and environmental bonds intended to fix problems inaccessible because
of legal battles for company assets. If
there is an owner, then there are the legal battles to access bonds. If a bond is accessed, rarely are there
adequate funds to cover the current costs to restore the place to its original
state. And while the site sits constantly
leaching toxins to the environment via water or wind, there is the cost of
monitoring this pollution. If there is
no company, then ‘we’ (the government) pay.
Sometimes and mostly ‘we’ choose not to monitor at all because it is
expensive. Without a mine owner it is
our responsibility to restore, i.e., ‘we’ pay (see the 351 mines of ‘our’
>22,000 known contaminated sites across Canada waiting to be restored at http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/fcsi-rscf/home-accueil-eng.aspx). ‘We’ might get lucky and a company restores a
site. It has happened, but rarely do ‘we’
protect ourselves from any future failure of that restored site.
This is the legacy of mining in Canada and their dirty little
secret – not my expression, but one used by some retired mining professionals. In New Brunswick where I live, we have at
least 48 known and possibly >250 abandoned mine sites. Industry correctly claims that it is doing a significantly
better job protecting the environment today by meeting and most times exceeding
all government requirements (this is the environmental impact assessment
process). However, going from an “F” to
a “D” on your grade school report card probably wouldn’t have impressed your
parents much. Interestingly, Canada just
decided that companies can build small mines without a federal environmental
impact assessment, i.e., Canadian politicians think the mining industry has
been doing an acceptable job of protecting the environment on its own.
Canadians and others have supported this Wall Street model for
the mining industry that demands earning wealth for a company and its
shareholders. That is not necessarily a
bad thing, but citizens and governments around the world have yet to charge
companies for the environmental costs of their business, i.e., taxpayers have
given them significant subsidies by not charging for the cost to the
environment during operations or the restoration of their mine sites. The mining industry is not going to change itself
if that means reduced profits (don’t get mad at them; we as a society, i.e.,
company shareholders, are demanding more profits). Only governments can demand the real cost of
mining be incorporated into a mine’s business plan, and importantly including an
upfront guarantee of unfettered access
to the money required to address environmental problems when they arise and eventually
pay the restoration costs.
Current governments across Canada are pushing hard for new mining
ventures, including openly relaxing environmental regulations. These ventures are repeatedly supported by
the business community, newspaper editors, and journalists. All of these parties argue that our economies
need these mining ventures and moreover, regulations protecting the environment
are enough on their own to change the mining industry. While improving regulations may better
protect the people most likely to be affected by mining activities, i.e., those
living close to the mine, these regulations don’t address the actual issue
which is the real cost of building and operating an environmentally-sound mine and
then restoring the environment to a safe condition. It is disingenuous for our community leaders
to argue from an economic podium the case for mining development while
continuing to suppress the true costs of mining.
Canada has a wealth of natural resources. Canadians from First peoples to today know
the value of these resources. We also
have a wealth of science and engineering knowledge and experience capable of extracting
and processing minerals including oil and gas while achieving a minimum impact
on the environment. This mining industry,
in fairness, has invested millions of dollars on the issues of dealing with its
waste and site restoration, but only after they have created negative impacts
on the environment which they knew would occur (they report it in their
environmental impact statements). Extracting
and processing natural resources, i.e., mining, is acceptable to most
Canadians, but we should be investing in the research and development of
environmentally-sound processes before we start.
People might not like these real costs of getting the
minerals into the products they consume, delaying consumption until we learn
how to extract minerals innocuously, or earning less on investments, but we
can’t sustain these secret costs any longer.
The current yet unspoken financial debt for the impact to the
environment of all Canada’s past industrial activities is >$85B and
growing. ‘We’ have already spent about
$1.3B of our tax dollars “paying down” this environmental debt, i.e., trying to
fix the problems (http://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/English/parl_cesd_201205_03_e_36775.html#hd4b).
Ironically, everyone agrees that we need
to reduce our current levels of indebtedness, so why continue to knowingly grow
our debt by not charging the true cost of extracting and processing natural
resources? Is it ethical to grow these already
nasty financial and environmental debts we are leaving to our children and
grandchildren?
