Mar. 16, 2022: Timmins Today – A coalition of conservationists, environmentalists and lawyers want Ottawa’s Ring of Fire environmental assessment process to be broadened in size and scope to include industrial centres like Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury. In a March 15 letter sent to three federal cabinet ministers, the group is calling for a pause in the two-year-old Regional Assessment process in order to rejig the structure and governance to allow Indigenous communities in the region to take the lead.

It’s the same proposal put forward earlier by an alliance of remote First Nation communities in the James Bay area. 

The correspondence was sent to Steven Guilbeault, Canada’s environment and climate change minister; Jonathan Wilkinson, the natural resources minister, and Marc Miller, the minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations. Some of the signatories to the letter include representatives from the:

• Wildlands League
• MiningWatch Canada
• Greenpeace Canada
• The David Suzuki Foundation, an
• World Wildlife Fund-Canada
• Coalition for a Liveable Sudbury
• the Wilderness Committee
• Northwatch, Clean North
• Canadian Environmental Law Association
• Ontario Nature and
• the National Audubon Society.

From what they’ve viewed in the draft agreement, released by Impact Assessment Agency and spelling out the ground rules, the group answered that this method disregards treaty rights, disrespects traditional Indigenous knowledge, and “betrays” the promise to engage and work alongside First Nations people.

In their letter to Ottawa, the group said they initially welcomed the regional approach, but what they see shaping up is a narrowly focussed one that places an emphasis on studying the impact of mining on the landscape. The kind of comprehensive assessment they want to see would examine the broader global implications of “massive industrial activity” on significant wetlands and watersheds of the greater Hudson Bay area.  “A proposed new mining district, approximately five times the size of the City of Toronto, should not (be) treated as fait accompli in this day and age,” the letter said. Disturbance of this undeveloped area, they claim, would result in the release millions of tons of greenhouse gases stored in “one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on the planet.”

The group wants the study area opened up to include entire northern watersheds — namely the Ekwan, Attawapiskat and Winisk systems — the ecosystems of the region’s peatlands, wetlands and boreal forest, and want the scope expanded to include “all human activities” and the various factors that influence climate change. On the mining front, the group said this assessment must address the “social and environmental consequences” of the industry’s extraction, transportation and processing aspects, which means noting the concerns of residents in Sault Ste. Marie and Sudbury where Ring of Fire ore would be processed.

The group added Ottawa needs to restore public trust with a credible process, make good on its legal commitment to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and follow through on its obligations to climate change. “Canada may not be able to afford the carbon costs of full mining exploitation in the Ring of Fire given its location in one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems on the planet,” the letter said.