Photo by Dennis Jarvis.
The Crawford Nickel Project is one of the largest proposed mines in Canadian history. Its receiving waters, the North Driftwood, the West Buskegau, and the Jocko Rivers, are not industrial corridors. They are living rivers in Treaty 9 territory, supporting fish, birds, boreal caribou, and the harvesting rights, food security, and cultural continuity of nations that have depended on them since time before memory. The federal government’s own analysis values Canada’s ecosystem services at $3.6 trillion. A “low to moderate” economic contribution from a project with admitted significant adverse effects on fish, birds, and Indigenous rights, whose climate contribution is undemonstrated and whose consultation record is incomplete, does not clear that bar.
ORA calls on the Minister to withhold approval until the consultation record is complete, FPIC from AAN has been obtained or the legal consequences of its absence fully adjudicated, the fish habitat offsetting plan is finalized and publicly reviewed, the mercury methylation risk and the predicted seepage-face exceedances are resolved by precautionary conditions and best available treatment to background rather than post-hoc monitoring, tailings dam safety is brought to the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, climate change is incorporated into the cumulative effects analysis, and the ecosystem services value of what will be destroyed is honestly weighed against the economic value of what will be gained.
