Court halts quarry project over lack of consultation with First Nations

An Ontario court has halted a limestone quarry project on the Bruce Peninsula nearly a decade in the making after finding the province failed to properly consult First Nations whose traditional territory encompasses the area.

In a decision released last week, the court says the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry failed in its constitutional duty to hold meaningful consultations with the Saugeen Ojibway Nation before approving the project.

It says the ministry did not properly notify the First Nation of the project until three years after the application was filed, and then repeatedly pulled out of the process and funding it had promised.

T& P Hayes Ltd. applied for a licence in 2008 for a limestone quarry on land it owns, which is not part of a reserve or claim by the First Nation.

The court says negotiations between the province and the First Nation began in 2011, but the ministry later offloaded the responsibility to T& P Hayes, which refused to take it on.

It says talks stalled in 2015 and the licence was granted the following year.

The licence has now been revoked until proper consultations are conducted.

Even though some issues were resolved, the process followed by the ministry “does not pass constitutional muster,” Justice David Corbett wrote on behalf of the three-judge panel.

“(The ministry’s) position — that whatever process failures there may have been along the way, by the end, (the Saugeen Ojibway Nation’s) substantive concerns had been heard and addressed — misses the central thrust of (the First Nation’s) concerns here,” he wrote.

The court also ordered the ministry and T& P Hayes to cover the First Nation’s legal costs, which amounted to $80,000.