Transitioning away from fossil fuel usage calls for greater collaboration between government and industry to meet the huge demands on critical minerals mining for producing low-carbon technologies.
In Canada, the mining-friendly government of Quebec is leading the way and industry is answering its call, said members of a panel at The Northern Miner’s International Metals Symposium in London, U.K. on Sunday.
Quebec was the first province to release a critical minerals strategy, in 2020, and miners and exploration companies can access hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance from various government agencies. They include the Diversification of Exploration Investment Partnership (Sidex), the Société Québécoise d’exploration minière (Soquem) and Investissement Quebec (IQ).
Quebec’s copper crown
The government’s support was recently extended to Osisko Metals (TSXV: OM), which is working to revive the past-producing Gaspé copper mine on the Gaspé peninsula in eastern Quebec. The $1.8-billion initial capex project is the largest undeveloped copper-molybdenum deposit in eastern North America, Osisko says.
“Aside from the financial component that Quebec can offer, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests (told us) that Gaspé copper was chosen as a pilot project for a new program to maximize economic benefits for the region throughout the development process of the mine,” Kimberly Darlington, Osisko’s communications director, told the panel. “We check all the boxes in that we’re looking for a critical mineral, and we’re in an area that’s depressed economically (since the mine closed). We look forward to getting started with the ministry early in the new year.”
Government’s helping hand
Osisko is also seeking to net a 20% funding deal with IQ, a partnership that would help offset the project’s large initial capital costs.
Its Copper Mountain deposit hosts 824 million indicated tonnes grading 0.34% copper-equivalent, and 670 million inferred tonnes at 0.38% copper-equivalent, according to a November resource update. Contained copper totals 2.2 million tonnes, with 274 million lb. molybdenum and 46 million oz. silver.,
If the company acquires its permits by 2028, the project could start in 2029.
Training the next generation
But despite the potential of Gaspé Copper and the mining heritage of the area, the nearby town of Murdochville has since the 1970’s lost most of its population. It’s now home to less than 600 people. Reviving the mine would require some combination of bringing in trained labourers and training local people, Darlington said.
And while Canada suffers from a nation-wide shortage of trained mining labour, Quebec has a plan to fill those gaps on different levels of education.
The province’s Institut National des Mines “helps structure curriculum for colleges and universities to help identify the workforce and give them proper training and ideally connect them with the companies,” explained panellist Jonathan Lafontaine, strategic adviser for the mining sector with Quebec’s Ministry of Natural Resources and Forests.
“The other component is getting people interested in mining,” he said, referring to Quebec’s critical minerals strategy and its public outreach activities.
“We have a small team that goes out to the primary-level schools and teaches kids about the basics of rocks, minerals and metals and why they’re important.”
Nurturing mining tech
The province’s assistance for mining also extends to innovative developments in technical centres, Lafontaine said.
“We have the mining innovation zone in Rouyn-Noranda, the battery sector park in Bécancour, (and) we have the high tech innovation zone in southern Quebec,” he said.
Lafontaine added the province tries to build an environment that can nurture mine process innovations such as those made by Dundee Sustainable Technologies, based in Thetford Mines, 100 km south of Quebec City.
Green solutions
While cyanide usage has long been an industry standard for separating gold from ore, it can harm living creatures and mining’s public image. But Dundee’s “challenging of the orthodoxy” around cyanide initially drew Brent Johnson to the company.
Now vice-president environment with Dundee, Johnson said the company is working on commercializing an alternative technology to cyanide using sodium hypochlorite, or household bleach.
“It provides a very viable and commercially comparable alternative to traditional cyanidation extraction techniques,” Johnson said. “It produces very similar, if not better, recoveries, and it can target ores that have either not been amenable before to traditional cyanidation or even waste or other sources of gold and copper as well.”
Dundee also has a solution for arsenic waste, which is commonly released when gold is smelted, and can pollute mine sites for years after they close, such as at the former Giant Mine near Yellowknife, N.W.T.
“We’ve developed a vitrification process to turn (arsenic) into glass,” Johnson said. “It’s almost like obsidian. This product meets and exceeds all the U.S. leachate criteria, so it moves from a hazardous waste category to a non-hazardous waste category. This also opens up to the industry…other waste sources that contain residual volumes of gold and copper and make it more accessible.”
Such technologies might also help shorten long permitting periods, a constant headache for mining companies and an issue the federal government admits impacts Canada’s competitiveness in mining.
“Technology that has very little negative environmental impact (will) fast track (permitting),” Johnson said. “If there’s no cyanide your downstream risks are lower. We’ve got real examples of this in Ghana where we’re working on an arsenic project there, where their equivalent of the (Environmental Protection Agency) has been impressed with our process and has committed to doing things quicker.”
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