Provincial governments and federal election candidates are falling over each other in a rush to expedite approvals for mining, as their response to the damage that U.S. tariffs are just beginning to do to the Canadian economy. It’s important to take a closer look at what is really happening, what is really going to result, and what we should do instead.
The mining industry is exploiting tariff-related economic uncertainty to try and demolish hard-fought measures to at least try to protect the environment, recognize Indigenous rights, and give the public a say in development. This would, of course, result in more profits for mining companies – but also more environmental disasters, more conflict with communities and Indigenous Nations, and huge public liabilities for clean-up.
In this unpredictable moment, what we need is a robust regulatory framework that respects Indigenous rights and title, protects communities and the environment, that creates a mining sector that is more stable and integrated, and benefits communities and the public, not just executives and investors.
The deregulation being promised by both major federal political parties, and already being implemented by a number of provinces, will have serious repercussions for the environment, mining-affected communities, and especially, the rights and lives of Indigenous peoples. Whether it’s framed as fast-tracking, streamlining, pre-approval, cutting red tape, or straight-up exemptions, what it means in practice is reducing or eliminating protections that have been developed over decades in response to damage and destruction that could not be allowed to continue.
In many cases, we are still paying for those impacts through taxpayer-funded cleanups (such as the Giant Mine in Yellowknife), contaminated waterways (like the Elk and Kootenay Rivers in B.C.), and ill health (e.g. uranium mine workers). We can’t afford to go backwards.
Ontario has just introduced legislation to create special economic zones where mining projects would be exempt from regulation; B.C. has announced a “fast track” for 16 extractive projects; federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has promised to repeal the Impact Assessment Act; and Prime Minister Mark Carney has promised to permit major projects with provincial and territorial approvals alone.
Could mining permitting, environmental assessment (EA), and regulatory compliance be made more efficient? Absolutely. These measures have been developed sort of piecemeal over the years, and vary between jurisdictions. Their requirements could and should be better coordinated and synchronized.
We know this can be done. In the 1990s, harmonization agreements on environmental assessments were implemented between provincial and federal governments, and many projects underwent joint assessments. Administrative equivalency of regulations and enforcement is a feature of many trade agreements, to harmonize standards and simplify compliance. Of course, care still needs to be taken to ensure that harmonization is to the best standards, and not to a lowest common denominator, but the mechanisms do exist.
Most importantly, building capacity in communities and government agencies at all levels provides more reliable and effective decision-making, and it’s ultimately more efficient as well. When land use and community development plans are in place, communities are in a much better position to respond to mining proposals in an informed way, and proponents have greater certainty about where and how they can and can’t proceed.
Faster approvals won’t mean faster development
What we are witnessing is political theatre. Expedited, automatic, or pre-approvals won’t actually speed up mine development, because deregulation doesn’t address the real causes of delay.
The refrain we keep hearing is about how it can take up to 13 to 15 years for a mining project to be approved. The fact is that many are approved much more quickly. For more than a decade, mining projects have gone through federal environmental assessments in as little as two to two-and-half years with the median just over four years (which actually seems reasonable for a complex project). Some mine proposals take a lot longer to go through the EA process – and others are actually withdrawn as not actually viable.
The real issue? The boom-bust nature of mining, the volatility of capital and commodity markets, and the difficulty of securing financing for mining projects whose financial viability may be marginal.
Most of the delays suffered by mining projects are caused by financial markets. Mining is extremely capital intensive, but commodity prices are volatile, and companies can only secure financing and proceed with development when markets are favourable.
Projects can be stalled for years or abandoned at any stage, including after they are approved, just as they often stop production or even close completely when markets are poor and operations are not profitable.
Recent research in British Columbia looked at delays in mine project development and found that while there were certainly regulatory delays, regulation was cited as a factor in only three of the 20 delayed projects in the study. Economic factors like commodity prices were the most common cause of delay. Thirteen of the 27 mines that were issued EA certificates never came into operation.
At the same time, while Indigenous peoples continue to fight for the recognition of their rights, and the courts move haltingly to force Canada and the provinces and territories to uphold their obligations under the Constitution and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, speeding up project approvals without building in fulfillment of Indigenous rights is simply a recipe for conflict, and with it, delays.
There’s another reason that mining projects take a long time to develop. They are large, complicated projects with site-specific characterizations that actually take a lot of work to design and build, even to minimal standards that would allow the project to function long enough to generate a significant payoff to investors before it collapses and leaves taxpayers to pay for part –or all– of the cleanup.
In practice, a lot of the engineering and design work is actually done during permitting and environmental assessment processes, meaning that practically, there’s not a lot of time to be saved by skipping or expediting them. And of course, actual construction takes time.
Adding these factors together points to a high cost to the environment, communities, and Indigenous peoples from all of these initiatives, with marginal to zero benefit to mineral production.
Mega-projects and extractive development will leave us worse off, not better.
Energy and mining mega-project development is too slow and unwieldy to help either the economy or the environment in the near term, and too damaging to be acceptable in the longer term without much more rigorous regulation – not less. Governments should be pulling all support from fossil fuels to support public transport, housing upgrades, and community-scale energy and manufacturing projects. They should be supporting the application of existing technology that can be quickly and broadly deployed, not clinging to a fossil fuel past or holding out for magical future technologies to save us, whether that’s carbon capture or nuclear power.
Progressive and climate-conscious economists are pointing to policy directions that would emphasize domestic needs and value-added, skill-intensive industry to make better use of the raw materials that we extract at such cost to the environment, communities, and Indigenous peoples. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has published some great proposals, including Ten Trump-proof nation-building projects, and the Climate Action Network has put forward Made-in-Canada Climate Solutions: 2025 Election Priorities, for example.
The pressure we are putting on the climate and nature could be dramatically reduced, and the benefits could flow to workers and communities, not just to mining companies and investors. Would that be a bad thing?
