Editorial: BC’s NW power line a go as Feds chip in $130M

Easily the biggest development in the Canadian mining scene during the past week was news of federal money being shoveled into the task of electrifying British Columbia’s remote northwest.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper used his state visit to Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16 to announce the federal government is committing up to $130 million to help build B.C.’s proposed northwest transmission line (NTL), a $404-million project long-lobbied-for by mineral explorers and mine developers active in the province’s northwest.

The 287-kilovolt, 335-km line would extend from Terrace to Cranberry Junction and then northwards following Highway 37 through Meziadin Junction to Bob Quinn Lake. A northwards extension along Highway 37 could later be made to Dease Lake.

In response to Harper’s announcement, the provincial government promptly chimed in with a firm commitment to build the NTL, funding perhaps $250 million of the cost which, on paper at least, would leave private industry to pay the remaining $24 million.

The twin announcements were widely praised by pro-development groups up and down B.C., and it’s easy to see why: the NTL would bring a big step closer to reality the development of at least ten significant mines now on the drawing board, and also spur development of hydrocarbon resources and hydroelectric dams.

B.C.’s miners say the NTL has the potential to attract $15 billion in investment and create 10,500 new jobs, generating $300 million in annual revenues to governments.

Also standing to benefit are the small communities along the NTL route — many of them First Nations — that could finally shut down their stinky and noisy diesel generators, and quietly and cleanly plug into the provincial grid.

The American angle is that the new line would be a major segment of a longer one that could, for the first time, connect Alaska’s power grid to Canada’s and the lower 48. That game-changing connection would allow Alaskans to build dams and sell power to customers in western Canada and the U.S.

For Canadian taxpayers, the new federal-provincial financing for the NTL is quite different from the one first struck two years ago but soon abandoned as commodities crashed. Then, the push for the power line was primarily coming from two partners developing the Galore Creek copper-gold project, the now-humbled NovaGold Resources and Teck, who had agreed to cough up around $158 million for the line, while the provincial government would have picked up the rest of the tab.

With Galore Creek put on ice in late 2007, the B.C. government kept the NTL dream alive in autumn 2008 with $10 million in new funding for environmental assessments and First Nations consultations. That small investment was enough of an economic signal to allow mine developers in the NTL region to continue to raise private capital for their projects and keep the lights on.

Fast forward today, it’s notable that Harper’s announcement didn’t even mention the new power line’s critical mining angle. What’s mining now: the industry that dare not speak its name?

Instead, in a striking example of the weasel world of politics, he played up the “cleaner, greener energy” aspects of the project and, indeed, the funding for it comes from the $1-billion, federal Green Infrastructure Fund.

This kind of greenwashing doesn’t fool the environmental lobby for a moment, and there will likely be strong opposition to the NTL among leftists in B.C.’s southern cities, where green is the new red, and earnest, breathless accounts of a few trees being blown over in a city park can lead the evening TV news.

Less clear is how the First Nations in the NTL-affected area will react. In the past, and in a testament to excellent on-the-ground work by NovaGold personnel, groups such as the Tahltan have been quite supportive of developments such as Galore Creek.

Said Tahltan Central Council chair Annita McPhee of the latest NTL announcement: “We are not opposed to development, but it needs to take place in a manner that respects our Nation.”

The Nisga’a Nation in the southern NTL area was more non-committal, saying it has “not yet determined whether this is a project it can support.”

Construction for the NTL could begin next spring, say the feds, but we expect that regulatory delays for such a large project will inevitably blow apart that tight timeline and push back that date.