Petition blocks uranium plans in Quebec
HOW A HIGH SCHOOL BOY LED THE CHARGE TO STOP A QUEBEC MINE PROJECT
I DON’T THINK THEY KNEW HOW CONCERNED WE WERE.
Hunting grouse on a snowy road that cuts through the forest north of his home in the Cree community of Mistissini, Justice Debassige reflects on why as a 17-year-old high school student in 2012 he started a petition against a uranium exploration project 215 kilometres away.
“I read research on how it damages the land and the water, so that was what drew me in,” he said, while searching for birds down the road toward the now-shuttered site owned by Boucherville, Que.-based Strateco Resources Inc. “It’s something to really think about when we’re out here.”
Debassige said he couldn’t have imagined at the time that his petition would be the catalyst for a complete moratorium against exploration of the radioactive mineral across Quebec, result in a $200-million lawsuit by Strateco Resources against the government and pit the federal nuclear safety agency against a provincial environmental commission.
But it did, and The Matoush Project — named after the Cree family that traditionally use the land for hunting, fishing and trapping — in northern Quebec’s Otish Mountains has lost its glow.
The project was part of former Quebec premier Jean Charest’s Plan Nord, which had a strong focus on natural resources. Since Strateco Resources’ exploration began in 2006, more than $120 million has been invested in the project.
Opposition to uranium mining in the province has ebbed and flowed over the years, though the government did grant the company some 30 permits to start work at the site, including permission to build an airstrip.
Strateco estimates the mine would have brought $800 million to Quebec in taxes and royalties during its 10-year life, and produce the same amount of uranium as the entire U.S. industry.
“That’s a lot of money left on the table,” said Strateco’s chief executive Guy Hébert.
Although the project didn’t have the blessing of Cree authorities in Mistissini, it wasn’t being initially rejected either since the community of about 5,000 people didn’t want to shut the door on hundreds of potential jobs constructing, producing and then closing the mine.
“The relationship between Mistissini and Strateco was friendlier when it started,” said Hébert, who began 2012 feeling optimistic about the exploration work.
But that was before Debassige and two other classmates collected about 200 signatures from students and staff in opposition to the project, which caught the attention of Shawn Iserhoff, Mistissini’s youth chief at the time. He raised the concerns with the Mistissini Band Council and in the spring of 2012, Strateco arranged two days of hearings in the community.
“I don’t think they knew how concerned we were and how opposed to it we were,” Iserhoff said.
Hébert said although he had put other mines into production — two gold mines and one base metal mine — the safety measures put in place for uranium mines were above and beyond anything he’d done before.
“There is a lot of concern and with reason,” he said. “It’s probably the safest (kind of ) mine in the world because of the regulation.”
Unconvinced the mine wouldn’t cause contamination, the band council called for a moratorium on any uranium exploration in the Cree territory where families in Mistissini still travel hundreds of kilometres to hunt, fish and trap.
“The traditional Cree way of life is based on the land,” said Thomas Coon, former president of the Cree Trapper’s Association, in an office that has a map showing how the entire vast territory is covered by family trap lines that are passed down through generations.
“As much as possible we try to avoid any dangerous, damaging project. With uranium, it’s damage that can never be repaired.”
The Cree also argue that under the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement of 1975, they have the right to minimize negative environmental and social impacts of development in the territory even if it is designated as Crown land.
Hébert said that rejecting the Matoush project on these grounds would give the Cree de facto veto over any project in the territory and that other aboriginal communities could demand similar power.
Following the rocky hearings in Mistissini during the spring of 2012, Strateco pressed ahead, hoping to resolve the Cree’s concerns and that October received a licence for underground ex- ploration from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.
It was the closest Hébert ever came to seeing the mine up and running.
In March 2013, the newly elected Parti Québécois government imposed a moratorium on uranium exploration citing a “lack of sufficient social acceptability” from the Cree toward the planned mine.
The government said it would not allow work to continue until it received an environmental review from the public hearings committee known as BAPE — the Bur- eau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement.
Hébert said he was deeply shocked by what he considered to be a politically motivated decision, especially since the government only notified Strateco less than two hours before the public announcement.
“Maybe at the end Matoush would not have been economical or profitable,” he said. “We spent $140 million without knowing at the end whether it was a project or not.”
In April 2013, the company announced it would sue Quebec for $16 million to compensate it for the money Hébert said was lost while waiting for the government to decide whether to give the company the green light.
Months later, Quebec’s environment minister refused to grant Strateco the certificate it needed to begin the advanced exploration phase of the project.
“That decision is based on no scientific fact,” Hébert said, and the company filed a motion in December 2013 to invalidate it.
He said many of the company’s nearly 3,000 shareholders come from outside Canada and invested in Quebec because it was supposed to have a government supportive of natural resource development.
Cayman Islands-based private equity firm The Sentient Group, Toronto-based boutique investment management firm Goodman & Co., and Bank of Nova Scotia were Strateco’s three biggest shareholders in 2013, according to Bloomberg data.
“People were investing with a lot of confidence,” Hébert said. “In Quebec, you should have the right to go to the end and try to make money with your investment.”
As Strateco’s stock plummeted, anti-uranium activism grew in both the Cree and environment organizations. A group of Cree youth garnered media attention in late 2014 by walking 850 kilometres from Mistissini to Montreal and the movement also drew support from the global anti-nuclear activists.
With the tide of public sentiment turned against the project, Strateco sued the Quebec government on Dec. 11, 2014, for $190 million to recover the loss on its investment.
In July 2015, BAPE presented its 600-page report to the provincial government. Based on 250 written submissions and dozens of public meetings, it concluded that allowing uranium development now would be “premature,” because of uncertainty around the health and environmental risks of uranium mining and the waste that remains radioactive for thousands of years.
The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission slammed the report, saying uranium can be mined without the radiation causing damage such as increased rates of cancer or poisoning the wildlife in the area, and that every type of natural resource produces waste that needs to be effectively managed well into the future.
“Uranium mining in Canada is a well-regulated industry which poses no unreasonable risks to people or the environment,” the commission said in an email to the Financial Post.
“Moratoriums cannot be supported with claims that uranium mines pose a risk to the public; if managed and regulated properly, they do not. Issues of social acceptance of nuclear or uranium should not be confused with scientific facts.”
But the MiningWatch Canada advocacy group argues uranium’s current lack of social acceptability is based on the long-term risks of storing millions of tonnes of the radioactive mining waste.
“If the industry can show that they can handle the waste with a risk factor that is acceptable, maybe the social acceptability will change in the future, but at the moment it’s not there,” said Ugo Lapointe, spokesperson for MiningWatch in Quebec.
Strateco is now preparing to take the provincial government to the Quebec Superior Court on Jan. 9, 2017 for a 25-day trial and has upped the damages to $200 million.
This is the third time the company has taken legal action over the Matoush project and Hébert said he believes Strateco has a strong case that may eventually go to the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Mistissini Band Council declined to comment because its members are intervening in the lawsuit to explain their opposition to uranium and don’t want to negatively affect the case by speaking to the media.
“All I can say is that we stand by our position,” Chief Richard Shecapio said in a phone interview.
Although there are uranium-mining moratoriums in British Columbia, Nova Scotia and the U.S. state of Virginia, other jurisdictions, including Greenland, Queensland, Australia and Newfoundland and Labrador, have lifted the bans they once had in place.
Nochane Rousseau, mining industry group leader for Quebec at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said it would be difficult to even consider uranium exploration in Quebec until Strateco’s litigation is resolved.
“I would be surprised that someone would be able to raise capital right now to develop a uranium project until you know how this project will be settled,” Rousseau said.
It certainly doesn’t help that the Matoush Project is apparently over. Hébert said the camp is shut down and its employees laid off. Strateco, too, will close its doors for good once the lawsuit is resolved.
“A lot of people have been burned by Strateco and they just want to know what will come out of it,” he said.
Debassige, now 22, won a Nuclear-Free Future Award in 2015 on behalf of the Mistissini youth for his efforts against uranium development on Cree land. Today, bringing home two birds he shot for his family’s dinner, he still doesn’t think the potential economic benefits of uranium mining are worth risking what he and his community already have.
“There’s vast open space where I can possibly one day teach my children what my father taught me: how to survive out on the land,” he said. “We’re connected to the land spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally.”