OPINION: Mining association spins tales of gold - TheChronicleHerald.ca

The Mining Association of Nova Scotia has been busy lately, filling newspaper pages with golden tales of the riches that mining could bring to Nova Scotia if only we would open up protected wilderness areas, even land sacred to the Mi’kmaq, and stop missing economic opportunities to be had by blasting, digging, and drilling away at our small province.

As for those with concerns about the risks that mining brings, the executive director of the Mining Association of Nova Scotia (MANS), Sean Kirby, contends that’s because we have “outdated perceptions” of the industry (Antiquated view of mining, November 4, 2017). “It is not your grandfather’s industry,” he says.

On this at least, he’s right. Most of the actual mining on this planet is not done by Ma and Pa operations or by companies owned by people from our communities, or even from our country. Instead, it is done by very large, wealthy and powerful multinational corporations that straddle the planet with spidery webs of subsidiaries that do a lot of shape-shifting, making it difficult to seek justice or costs when a mining operation results in human rights abuses, environmental disasters, and even death. Some have been found making use of tax havens, as shown in the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers.

But that’s not the only way that the mining industry has changed since our grandparents’ day. Today’s mines and quarries tend to be far, far bigger and environmentally disruptive than they were in days of old. Some of the craters made by open pit mines are so vast that they are visible from space. They have also been known to cause social mayhem and harm precious water supplies and farmland. Large mines produce massive amounts of tailings, toxic waste that is often impounded in dams, which frequently fail.

Still, we are being asked by MANS not to judge the mining industry by the “distant past” when environmental and safety regulations allowed for mining disasters. We shouldn’t worry any more because the mining industry sets “the highest standards for environmental management” and is “sophisticated and high tech.”

Are we really meant to believe that 1992, the year the Westray coal mine exploded and killed 26 men in Pictou County, is the “distant past”?

And to ignore some very recent mining tragedies? In 2015, Brazil suffered its “worst environmental disaster” when a tailings dam operated for mining behemoths Vale and BHP Billiton broke. That killed 19 and sent a tidal wave of mining waste overland, into rivers and down to the sea 600 kilometres away.

Even closer to home was the break in 2014 in the tailings pond for the open pit gold and copper mine in Mount Polley, B.C. It spewed millions of cubic metres of silt and mining waste into lakes and rivers. Three years later, Indigenous people describe this mining catastrophe as a “death that is not yet over. ” No fines, no sanctions. British Columbia’s auditor general issued a scathing report questioning whether the province had the ability to protect the environment from the risks of mining, given that permitting is not separate from monitoring and compliance.

The situation is not different in Nova Scotia.

MANS is now working to persuade municipal councils in Nova Scotia that the province should allow mining in protected wilderness areas by swapping land that it deems of equal value. So far, to its credit, the government is saying no to this. The mining association also says the province should lift the 2009 ban it put on exploration for and mining of uranium, legislation enacted to “protect the health and safety of Nova Scotians and the quality of their environment.” MANS, however, contends that uranium mining is “ safe and environmentally-responsible.”

Nova Scotia’s auditor general recently found that monitoring of projects by the environment department was “poor,” increasing risks to the environment, and that it was “not evaluating whether terms and conditions” of approvals it granted were even working.

Given all of the above, should we believe that the mining association has the best interests of the citizens and environment of Nova Scotia at heart when it spins tales of gold, pushes for more mining in Nova Scotia, even on our precious protected lands, because the industry isn’t as it was in our “grandfather’s” day?

I leave it to you.

Joan Baxter is a Nova Scotia journalist and award-winning author, who worked for many years researching and writing about extractive industries in Africa. Her most recent book is The Mill – Fifty Years of Pulp and Protest.