TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – The Assembly of First Nations of Quebec and Labrador (AFNQL) on Tuesday said it “strongly” opposed two specific issues of the new Mining Act and demanded the Quebec government to listen to what they had to say on these issues before its adoption on Monday night.
Section 2 of the Act proposed new consultation measures, but the First Nations said that this was not what was at stake, charging that without an exploration permit as a prerequisite, consultations would be meaningless, owing to Quebec not having control over the exploration work.
The Quebec provincial assembly was summoned Monday for an extraordinary session to fast-track adoption of Bill 70.
"Since the government has ignored our request to introduce in the current legislation the prerequisite of an exploration permit, despite its existence everywhere in Canada, including British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Newfoundland, the matter will inevitably be settled in court, as was the case in Yukon, where the First Nations won their case on exactly the same issue (Ross River Ruling).
“This means that after all those months of work on the reform, it will not be the end of it, with all the uncertainty that it will create for the mining industry,” chief Gilbert Dominique said.
The First Nations went as far as to say that the Mining Act constituted a significant setback in respecting First Nation self-governance, in relation to the status quo of the previous Mining Act.
The group was unhappy about Quebec's Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet, in Sections 59 and 79, insisting that, despite fierce protests by Quebec First Nations, mining companies would be forced to disclose confidential information contained in the commercial agreements they signed with the First Nations.
"As we repeatedly stated, and just like many stakeholders emphasised before the Parliamentary Commission on Bill 43, if the government was looking for the best possible means to worsening relations and increasing tensions between First Nations and the government, and to further increase the uncertainty in the mining industry in Quebec, it certainly got the right one.
“The AFNQL considers that everyone will come out losing in this manoeuvre: the government, the industry and the First Nations," chief Ghislain Picard said.
The First Nations added that Ouellet could have avoided what it termed “a new era of conflicts” in the mining industry, by eliminating this “paternalistic” measure of the Quebec government in this new law - a measure that was not found anywhere else.
“But the Minister opted for confrontation. The AFNQL is shocked about the fact that the government is prepared to clash with the First Nations, simply to continue with its desperate fight to come up with statistics on their confidential agreements.
"As we already indicated to the government, it has become extremely difficult to convince the chiefs who sit at the AFNQL about the sincerity of the Quebec government who claims its intention of building a nation-to-nation relationship. The new law adopted yesterday represents, unfortunately, another example of complete failure to understand the issues that are peculiar to the First Nations," Picard stressed.