EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
As it looks for ways to expedite the extraction of Ontario’s natural resources, the Ford government has proposed changes to how prospectors secure lands’ mining rights.
Draft regulatory changes published by the province’s Ministry of Mines last week would tweak certain requirements and timelines that a claimant to a property’s mining rights must meet before the government confirms their claim.
They came just over a year after the government accepted submissions from the public on ways “to improve Ontario’s mineral exploration assessment work regime.” Mines Minister George Pirie’s ministry officially proposed a collection of changes in a posting on the province’s environmental registry last week.
The proposals, Pirie’s director of communications Sam McCormick wrote in an email last week, “Do not add burden but instead seek to expand the availability of public geoscience data that is already collected by (mining) claim holders, clarify reporting requirements, and minimize redundant processes associated with the current requirements.”
“Building Ontario’s geoscience database is useful for prospectors in their efforts to discover mineral deposits within the province leading to future mines,” McCormick added. “It would also help encourage mining claimholders to actively undertake exploration activities to keep their mining claims in good standing.”
The proposed changes would not impact the online mining claims system.
Ontario’s previous Liberal government created the online mining claims system a few months before they were defeated in 2018 by Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives. Using it, someone can, through a couple of simple and cheap processes, obtain a prospector’s licence and register exclusive rights to mining yet-unclaimed lands, including on public or private properties and territories of Indigenous communities.
Numerous First Nations and Indigenous leaders have argued in public statements and court challenges that the online mining claims system facilitates violations of their rights.
After registering a claim, a prospector has to complete various provincial requirements — which the ministry’s new proposals would adjust — to confirm their right to mining activities on the land.
In its posting on the environmental registry, the Ministry of Mines wrote that it anticipates the environmental implications of the mining claims changes it's proposing “should be neutral.” The ministry is accepting feedback from the public on its proposals via its online posting until Feb. 15.
The Ford government has made a couple of other mining-focused announcements within the past two weeks.
On Jan. 13, Ford proposed accelerating projects aimed at accessing Ontario’s Ring of Fire — which, in the north, is believed to hold large deposits of high-grade nickel that’s important for electric vehicle production — as a step toward strengthening economic ties with the U.S. Monday brought good news for this possibility, as the federal government reached what it described as a “milestone” agreement with 15 First Nations on terms of a Ring of Fire regional impact assessment.
In another announcement a week ago, Ontario’s Ministry of Mines announced that the province would spend $7 million on 17 projects “to accelerate research, development and commercialization of innovative technologies” to help the province meet global critical minerals demand.
