Compensation for displaced miners

An announcement by Dan Newman, Ontario Minister of Northern Development and Mines, has broken previous written commitments made by the Ontario government to the exploration and mining sector. The government promised that new parks originating from the Ontario Living Legacy program would not be in areas known to have high mineral potential; nor would they be allowed to interfere with pre-existing mining claims.

In the wake of Newman’s announcement, William Mercer, incoming president of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), is calling on the province to compensate individuals and companies whose pre-existing mining claims have had parks and protected areas superimposed on them after the Ontario Living Legacy program was initiated in March 1999.

“It is obvious that the Ontario government never really listened to the mineral exploration sector in the consultation process on land use in the north, known as Lands for Life, which began in 1997 and evolved into Ontario’s Living Legacy,” says Mercer. “How else can you explain that over half the 378 new parks created in Ontario in 1999 contained pre-existing mining claims? This is the opposite of the Manitoba process, in which adequate maps were made available and environmental and mine exploration interests meaningfully engaged. New parks have been created in Manitoba without covering any existing mining claims while gaining the necessary representative environmental protection.”

The PDAC has tracked 8,222 unpatented mining claims in Ontario Living Legacy sites since 1999, of which nearly 40% belong to individual prospectors. The remainder is held largely by junior exploration companies. The Ontario government pledged in writing that it would be “business as usual” for these “parked” claim-holders and, where the new parks covered areas of known high mineral potential, claims could be re-staked or expanded as investor interest and results dictated. This promise was made in March 1999 and has now been broken.

As predicted by the PDAC in 1999, it has been anything but business as usual. David Comba, director of issues management with the PDAC, says “the cancellation rate for claims affected by the new parks and conservation reserves has been 2-3 times the normal Ontario lapse rates for the past 21 years.”

Meanwhile, the government of British Columbia passed legislation in May 1998 to compensate claim-holders whose pre-existing claims were effectively “parked” by the province in trying protect 12% of its land. The Yukon government announced in January 2002 that it will be passing similar legislation. “The Ontario government’s reneging on promises is nothing new,” states Comba. “Our members have repeatedly experienced its policy of ‘creeping confiscation,’ which is very negative for investment in northern Ontario and is diametrically opposed to the responsible solutions developed in other jurisdictions.”

Mercer sums up the situation: “The interference with pre-existing mining claims and the intentional placement of new parks on areas of known, significant mineral potential is abhorrent to us and is damaging to the economy of northern Ontario. The prospectors and junior companies are the ones most vulnerable to these onerous new policies. We and our members in northern Ontario feel betrayed by the Ontario government.”

The PDAC believes it is incumbent on the Ontario government to provide compensation to those who, in good faith, have invested hard work, time and dollars in mineral exploration and development on these mining claims that have now been “parked.”

— The preceding is a statement by the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada.