Environment Commissioner Jerry DeMarco, holds a news conference in Ottawa, on April 30. DeMarco says the country is still not on track to meet its commitments under the Paris climate agreement.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
The federal natural resources department isn’t doing enough to monitor the environmental and social impacts of its efforts to promote extraction of critical minerals, according to a federal audit released Thursday.
The report, tabled in the House of Commons by Jerry DeMarco, Commissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development, warned that increased mining activities would result in adverse environmental impacts and increased greenhouse gas emissions, as well as social consequences for Indigenous peoples. Mr. DeMarco said the quality of information the government collects on those impacts should be “on par” with the geological and economic data it’s already collecting.
“Look before you leap‚” he told reporters in Ottawa, summarizing his recommendations. “Don’t solve one problem and simply create another. And also, learn from the history of contamination from previous mines in Canada.”
The 2022 federal budget committed up to $3.8-billion, over eight years to fund an initiative called the Canadian Critical Minerals Strategy. It aimed to promote increased extraction and processing of critical minerals – particularly cobalt, copper, graphite, lithium, nickel and rare earth elements – which are used in batteries, electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar panels and other “green” technologies.
While unveiling it, Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson vowed to follow “the highest” environmental, social and governance standards while also “ensuring that long-term benefits flow to Indigenous communities.”
But the Commissioner’s audit found that the department hadn’t analyzed greenhouse gas emissions that might result. Increased mining could increase emissions by damaging or destroying forests and peatlands, which sequester carbon dioxide. This, in turn, could undermine the government’s promises to achieve “net-zero” emissions. (The mining sector accounts for about 1.6 per cent of Canada’s total emissions.)
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Nor did the government “sufficiently characterize” how the strategy’s implementation would affect Indigenous peoples, the audit found, for example through the construction of roads and electricity transmission lines. Many critical minerals are found in regions populated by Indigenous communities, but the department wasn’t monitoring social impacts, such as effects on culturally significant sites, local living conditions or women’s safety. (A 2019 federal inquiry found that mining projects can increase violence and harassment against Indigenous women and girls.)
Mr. DeMarco warned that if the department didn’t fully assess such risks and impacts, its adverse impacts might well offset any benefits. He recommended that the department conduct a series of analyses, including on the greenhouse gas emissions likely to result from increased mining activity.
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The Geological Survey of Canada, which is part of Natural Resources Canada, is responsible for the Geoscience and Data Initiative, an effort to identify critical minerals opportunities. The auditors noted that it had hired personnel and begun geological research and collecting data to identify areas of high geological potential, but concluded its efforts gave little consideration to environmental or social outcomes when selecting which research activities to pursue. Absent improvements, the initiative probably wouldn’t identify sites that would afford the optimal mix of economic benefits and lowest environmental and social impacts.
In its written response to the report, Natural Resources Canada agreed with nearly all of the Commissioner’s recommendations and vowed to work with other federal departments to publicly report on the critical minerals strategy’s impacts. But it said it can’t determine in advance which projects it will fund, which limits its ability to assess those impacts. Moreover, its strategy doesn’t approve specific projects, nor conduct environmental assessments. And few critical minerals projects fall within federal jurisdiction.
According to Natural Resources Canada, the country has 56 critical minerals mines and 26 facilities for processing.
In a statement published in September, Mr. Wilkinson said that the Critical Minerals Infrastructure Fund will disburse up to $1.5-billion toward clean energy and transportation infrastructure (such as highways) necessary to expand critical mineral projects. A second vehicle, the Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration Program, will spend $192.1-million on developing processing technologies. Last year the government issued 66 grants for critical minerals projects, worth nearly $60-million.
“The Strategy has already played a role in delivering job-creating projects, including Marathon Palladium in Ontario, the Jansen Potash Mine in Saskatchewan, James Bay Lithium in Quebec, and has stimulated the development activity of many others,” he wrote.