Nunavut’s radioactive issue
If the Nunavut land claims agreement actually worked the way its starry-eyed backers promised it would work nearly 20 years ago, there would be no need in Nunavut for a independent lobby group to scrutinize uranium exploration and mining.
But the public institutions and Inuit organizations set up to make the Nunavut land claims agreement work have so far failed in the performance of one of the land claim agreement’s primary tasks.
That task is to encourage the sustainable development of non-renewable resources: a form of economic development that serves human needs while, at the same time, ensuring the environmental damage caused by such development is kept to a minimum.
Because of a long series of foolish blunders, most committed within the past 10 years or so, no reasonable person can now claim that the environmental protection system laid out within the land claims agreement is capable of inspiring public confidence.
So it’s no surprise that this past November, a small group of Nunavut residents formed an independent pressure group called Nunavummiut Makitagunarningit.
This group’s stated objectives include the promotion of things that the Nunavut land claim agreement is supposed to provide for: community consultation, the protection of various imputed rights and the dissemination of information.
The Makitagunarningit group portray themselves as a source of “accurate information on uranium issues,” but this claim is undercut by their rhetoric. This is an anti-uranium organization. Their ultimate goal, clearly, is not to spread “information” but to stop the development of uranium projects in Nunavut. The group also appears to act as an Arctic subsidiary of Mining Watch Canada, a well-known non-governmental organization based in Ottawa.
This is good, but not because of the particular position this group holds on uranium mining. It’s good because it demonstrates that Nunavut residents do not think with one mind on that and many other important public issues. It demonstrates that Nunavut residents are capable of thinking for themselves.
This group also has the potential to do useful scrutiny of Nunavut’s shoddy environmental protection system. For example, they’re now raising questions about the behaviour of a company called Uravan Minerals Inc., which, they allege, is operating a exploration site without a licence and in defiance of the Nunavut Impact Review Board.
Nunavut’s various land claim bosses and the lawyer-consultant ventriloquists who do their thinking for them won’t like all this, of course.
But they brought it on themselves. Think back to 2007, when, in response to angry complaints from Kitikmeot business interests, Philippe di Pizzo was fired, without cause, as executive director of the Nunavut Water Board. The board’s entire technical staff, representing nearly all its actual brain-power, quit in protest, crippling the organization.
This happened because di Pizzo’s staff rejected a water licence application from the Miramar Mining Corp., likely delaying the Doris North gold project. By caving in to powerful commercial and political interests who wanted the project to move ahead fast, water board members destroyed their organization’s integrity. And they have yet to earn it back.
Consider also the Kivalliq Inuit Association’s spineless response to Areva Resources Canada, the company that hopes to turn the Kiggavik property near Baker Lake into a collection of open-pit uranium oxide mines by 2016. Instead of posing tough questions, the KIA gives them congratulatory plaques for “community involvement.”
It’s no surprise that Areva is good at “community involvement.” In 2008, the Areva group, which does business in about 100 countries, posted earnings of nearly $600 million US, based on global sales of roughly $18 billion.
This is a company that can afford to buy all the public relations it needs. But it’s unlikely even they believed the KIA could be suckered so easily.
As for Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., this organization became a shareholder in a new uranium exploration firm, called the Kivalliq Energy Corp., in a 2008 deal that NTI struck with the Kaminak Gold Corp. If this project, still in its early stages, leads to a feasibility study, NTI has an option to buy 25 per cent of the company.
Because of this glaring conflict of interest, NTI, therefore, possesses no credibility on any environmental or health issue related to uranium development. The organization cannot claim to represent Inuit interests on these issues with any degree of objectivity.
So it’s no surprise at all that there’s now a new group out there whose members think they can do better. JB
(13) Comments:
I am pleased that issues bring out people to action.
A vaccuum is only present in outer space and we have to be aware of things that are snuck past us in the dead of night. The profitering of mode in which businesses operate in vaccuums does no one well, take the recession of 09 as greed gone amuck as a case in point.
“NTI, therefore, possesses no credibility on any environmental or health issue related to uranium development.”
... and therefore the credibility of ITK and ICC - the national and international voice of Inuit including those in Nunavut- should be held as questionable as well.
No doubt that the uranium issue will keep coming up in the future, as AREVA continues to push the Kiggavik project. In fairness to KIA, there will probably be some very tough questions coming from them as the formal review starts up. But then there is the conflict of interest issue with NTI and uranium to consider, just mention uranium and you see the dollar signs flash in the leader’s eyes.
Part of me supports the uranium projects for the jobs and money. The other part of me doesn’t, due to the toxicity of the mining and processing. Northern Saskatchewan has been screwed up in many ways due to their uranium boom - ask them how their caribou hunting is now.
Why not just ban uranium exploration outright. We have gold, diamonds, nickel and iron. These will generate jobs, income and waste. So does Nunavut really need uranium too?
In the 70’s I remember a proposal to have a small “Slow Poke” nuclear reactor in every community to replace diesel fueled generators.
Would we now be dealing with radio-active contamination and waste? How would be dispose of it? What about inevitable accidents?
Could you imagine some of the problems we might have today if that went ahead. Many of our smaller communities still struggle with proper garbage and sewage disposal!
JB, I can’t believe what you are saying: corporate interests aided by greedy lawyers and clueless board members can ruin a honest person’s life just for the sake of money and power…naaaah, that’s impossible, we’re in Canada, not in a banana republic!
Hurrah Jim!
I too, cannot believe in the idiocy of the so-called NTI
leadership drooling without thinking, over diggin’ dollars out of the ground.
It is easy for companies to whine and dine them and have them in their back pocket. Their shameless need to be pandered to and put in top quality suites, in far away cities on expense accounts, ensures they are easy targets for mining company manipulation.
Do they know about their fellow aboriginal peoples’ stands everywhere else in this country? Chiefs and band counsellors are going to jail in order to prevent uranium mining on their land.
But the clowns of Nunavut, greedy with dollar signs, flattered into cooperation with mining are three blind
mice who are too pompous and ill-informed to know they are leading us all on to very thin ice that will break under all of us!
I hope the new group skins them alive with good information - facts, not reassurances, we could really use it.
By this same token, everyone in Nunavut has no credibility on environmental management.
We cook off dioxins and furans and god knows what else from our community dumps almost everyday. We allow sewage runoff to enter our waters. Windblown plastics, diapers and whatnot stream continuously out of burn barrel type garbage cans that looked useless even in the 70’s even when we baked honey bucket bags in them.
We are pretty ignorant consumers.
The lack of awareness on the worst pollution Nunavut has ever seen voids all of our claims that we care for the land and the animals.
Get an advocacy group together for this and I will be truly impressed.
The difference between local waste management and a larger scale mining operation is that the regulatory agencies pay more attention to the latter. If and when uranium is mined in Nunavut, the operations WILL be closely monitored. AND check the new procedures and technologies concerning radioactive waste. We no longer deal with it like the 70’s. C’mon folks things change.
Public consultation should be conducted in every Nunavut community that discusses the pros and cons of Uranium mining and only after everyone’s questions are answered a plebiscite should be held to see what we all think.
For someone who could rely on it to earn a living and improve their family’s standard of living for a generation or two could mean everything.
However the land that this type of mining destroys and decimates may mean everything to another family that relies on the land to support their family.
After everyone is educated on the matter conduct a plebiscite to allow our residents to make a decision that we all have to live with this way every has a voice.
a vote just like land ownership.
NTI is the biggest joke when it comes to uranium mining.
NTI is supposed to be looking after the best interests of Land Claim Beneficiaries and they are not.
NTI should be the one conducting community consultations to educate Inuit what the benifits and set backs are of this type of mining. NTI should be the ones conducting a plebisite to see what Inuit what and need.
NTI’s silence on the issue is shocking. If NTI remains silent on the matter and not educate use I am thinking about filing a lawsuit against as a beneficiary. ANYONE WITH ME!
When are our territorial leaders, not only NTI but QIA, GN etc going to start doing their job and act like leaders and put a halt to uranium exploration until the people can make an educated decision on the matter?
I am with you Hunter, lets get our monies worth out of NTI. I have been a NLCB ever since the agreement was ratified and have never received any benifit todate while in Northern Quebec indiviuals get payouts, free flights, $100 flights etc. Makivik is one of the biggest employers in Northern Quebec while NTI does nothing for the people it is supposed to represent other than file lawsuits against the federal government….what a joke.
And WHO voted for the same clowns at NTI the last election a year ago and WHO acclaimed the third one again?
The other question is wheh do WE smarten up and put in other people who can do a better job!
Teriganiak - you are right, I’ll admit that I voted for the current president. However who else was I going to vote for? I had/ve no faith in the other candidates, so then what are Nunavummiut suppose to do?