Giant Mine project requires fast action on perpetual care planning, local financial benefits

Key takeaways: 

• Oversight board says project lags on clear actions of local help.
• In 2022, the Giant Mine project team will revise its socio-economic plan.

Years into the Giant Mine remediation, the project’s oversight board states the remediation has dropped behind on essential proposals, including forming a perpetual care strategy and tracking financial benefits. 

The Giant Mine Oversight Board (GMOB) report states that although a five-year socio-economic strategy for the project and yearly published work, procurement, and training data, the benefits induced for local people are still “unclear.”

While the project team was highly committed to engineering and environmental problems, there were no “evident” or “high-quality” public engagements about the economy. It wants the project to make specific plans and metrics to show economic benefits are being spread locally. 

In 2022, the Giant Mine project group will update its socio-economic plan. Simultaneously, the territorial government is studying the long-term prospect of an N.W.T. remediation economy, and the board said this would help identify future labor demand. 

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The board calls for efforts to bring on local labor to raise Northern capacity to participate in that economy. 

Well-being and reconciliation

The oversight board said that the remediation project must also come with a sorry and payment for the Yellowknives Dene First Nation. While YKDFN follows a federal apology, the project group should be looking at the remediation and care stages of Giant Mine as “an option for reconciliation.”

Last summer, YKDFN and Canada signed new contracts drafting collaborations for compensation and an apology for the mine’s heritage, establishing a community benefits deal for the First Nation, and a framework for raising the number of work packages awarded to Indigenous businesses. 

Source – cbc.ca