Sask. presses Ottawa to share $268M cost of Gunnar mine remediation

SAKSATOON Saskatchewan taxpayers could be left holding a quarter-billion-dollar bill if provincial officials can’t convince the federal government to honour a 12-year-old pledge to pay half the cost of cleaning up an abandoned uranium mine near the Northwest Territories border.

The provincial government has now sunk $102 million into the $268 million project, the cost of which has ballooned to 10 times the original estimate. Ottawa, meanwhile, won’t commit any more than the $12.3 million it pledged when the project began 12 years ago.

“We continue to urge the federal government to contribute more money to this cost shared project. Discussions are continuing,” Saskatchewan government spokesman James Parker said this week in an email.

Natural Resources Canada, meanwhile, contends the massive cost overrun is a provincial responsibility because the Gunnar mine site is owned by the Saskatchewan government. Both the federal and provincial government turned down interview requests.

Gunnar Mining Ltd. built the mine on a peninsula jutting into Lake Athabasca, about 800 kilometres north of Saskatoon, and operated it from 1955 to 1963. The mine, its open pit flooded with water, was abandoned and the company dissolved the following year.

More than four decades later, the provincial and federal governments agreed to split the estimated $24.6 million cost of cleaning up the site, a project that included tearing down buildings filled with asbestos and covering radioactive tailings and waste rock piles with earth.

A memorandum of agreement signed in 2006 stated both parties must discuss the financing of any additional or unforeseen costs. Parker said cost overruns were expected, and the province will continue to urge Natural Resources Canada to honour the original deal.

“In the late 1950s when these mines were developed, the federal government exerted significant influence on uranium development in Canada and all production was required to be sold through the federal Crown corporation Eldorado Mining and Refining Ltd.,” he said.

Despite saying it places the “highest priority” on environmental protection, the federal ministry has committed only to paying the remaining $11.1 million once final approvals for the remediation work are issued by provincial and federal regulators.

“The Saskatchewan government is the owner of the Gunnar site and is responsible for developing remediation plans, funding and management of the remediation project,” spokeswoman Jocelyn Argibay said in an email.

The province’s argument that Ottawa should be partly responsible for the cost because it had a monopoly on exports has previously been made by provincial and federal politicians, as well as the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, which said Ottawa’s position did not seem reasonable.

NDP MP Georgina Jolibois, whose Desnethé—Missinippi— Churchill River constituency encompasses the abandoned mine, said Wednesday it is the responsibility of both the federal and provincial governments to clean up the site, as both profited from its existence.

Asked whether the provincial government will be able to extract more cash from Ottawa and avoid leaving Saskatchewan taxpayers footing the bill, Jolibois replied: “With enough pressure, there’s always a possibility.”

Remediation work at the mine is expected to wrap up in 2021 or 2022, at which point the project will enter a longer-term monitoring phase.