LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (October 14, 1991)

After 25 years of reading your paper and being actively involved in the mining exploration industry, I think M.R. Brown’s column “Mining ranks behind native issues, clams, dragonflies” (T.N.M., Sept. 16/91) demands a rebuttal.

While the mining industry faces serious challenges in this country from various special interest groups, it is completely unfair that your newspaper continues to attack aboriginal people’s values and rights under the guise of free enterprise and the right of the mining industry to have its way in resource development.

As a native Indian who does not live “on the dole,” your remarks show how little your education has enlightened you on the issue of aboriginal rights. I feel confident that native positions in Canada have at least the same rights to be heard as the French-Canadians’ aspirations do. Rarely, if ever, has your paper made a statement about Quebec separating from Canada and resultant damage it would certainly do to the mining sector. When I see native opposition to the Great Whale Hydro Project and the Oka situation, it tells me that native people can have a voice in overseeing their own destiny rather than listen to government that is leaning toward independence. Isn’t Quebec demanding self-government from the “near-bankrupt” federal treasury, as you put it? Is this the great country that you refer to? You state that native people are demanding large areas of land and huge sums of money — I see the forestry industry stripping resources from my country as fast as the law allows to reduce the value of any “land claim” that may have to be addressed.

Native self-government can work well if the area set aside for native control has adequate resources to generate a self-sufficient economic base. While you consider that the reserve system is a failure, how do you know that native people want to assimilate into “Canadian” society?

No business or political system in the free world wants to address problems that are inherited from their ancestry but the days of trading a few trinkets or blankets for a boatload of beaver pelts is gone. Your narrow-minded views may serve your own interests well but eliminating Indian reserves will do nothing but speed up the elimination of native peoples — but maybe for a group that pays no taxes and lives on the dole, why not?

Please cancel my subscription.

Harold Harvey

Langley, B.C.

To call Pine Point a “burst bubble” (“Governments, companies opt for commuter mines,” T.N.M., Sept. 2/91) is to display profound ignorance of the history of the project.

“Burst bubbles” traditionally refer to failed projects that start in an atmosphere of euphoria and end suddenly with a loss of investors’ money. Pine Point returned close to $600 million to its shareholders over its 25-year life. In addition, direct employment for up to 650 people was supplied during the mine’s heyday and hundreds of millions in taxes and revenues went to governments.

Pine Point operated for five years longer than planned at the outset and exceeded the planned contributions toward the economic base of the Great Slave Lake area. The rail system and power system as well as the much-improved highway into the Great Slave Lake area are legacies of the Pine Point era.

When the mine closed, residents were relocated under a generous program negotiated between Pine Point Mines and the government of Canada. Most of them quickly found new employment under a job-search program. The town site was cleared under an agreement reached with the government of the Northwest Territories. This approach avoided leaving a welfare community with no economic base.

The people quoted in your article and author Olav Svela speak only for the academics and bureaucrats who are pained by short-term administrative problems and social imperfections.

Governments and academics are saying no more single-industry towns, but they can be great places to raise a family and earn a good living. The local economic contributions of mining towns like Pine Point will not be matched by commuter mines.

Pine Point as a mine and a community was an outstanding success.