The WAB Kinew NDP Cabinet has dismissed four attempts to appeal Manitoba’s decision to allow a Chinese property company to continue mineral minerals next to a lake in the boreal forest of East Manitoba.
On July 16, the Kinew cabinet issued an order in the Council that allows the Minister of Environment and Climate Change Mike Moyes to dismiss the appeals of an August decision of 2024 to grant Tantalum Mining Corp. de Canada a new environmental license. Also known as Tanco, the company controlled by the Chinese operates a cesium, tantalium and lithium mine in Lake Bernic, a small body of water located between the provincial parks of Whiteshell and Nopiming.
The mine has operated inside and outside 1929. The new environmental license replaces an originally granted by the province in 1983.
Sinomine Resource Group, which bought the Tanco mine in 2019, requested the new license to continue mineral and processing it in Bernic Lake, as well as to produce new forms of cesium on the site, once home to two thirds of the world’s cesium deposits.
The license application did not include a proposal to drain Bernic Lake to create an open bond mine, something about which the company reflected in a 2023 Globe and mail history. There is a world cesium scarcity, a volatile element used in fluid drilling for oil and gas wells, medical images and maintenance time in atomic watches, among other uses.
During the license process, the province presented 49 presentations on the application, which mostly implies concerns about road safety and water quality downstream in the Bird River basin, according to the Environment of Manitoba and climate change.
The Kinew cabinet order on the Council establishes that these concerns were addressed during the license process. Four subsequent appeals involved the same concerns, which led Moyes to propose to dismiss them without celebrating public hearings, according to the order.
“The problems raised by the recurring were similar to those raised during the period of public review and were addressed during the environmental evaluation process through license conditions,” the order on the Council said.
The Kinew government did not put Moyes available to comment. In a statement, the minister repeated the guarantee of the cabinet that the concerns raised by the recurring have already been addressed.
Non -transparent or responsible dismissal: lawyer
Eric Reder, an environmental defender who works as an activist for the Desert Committee, said that this was not a transparent, responsible or responsible way for Manitoba to consider appeals under the Environment Law, although he did not take any problem with the approval of the Tanco license itself.
Reder said the Tanco mine has a history of performing its operations in a reasonable and adequate way, without creating an excess of waste outside its Lake Bernic site.
His problem is with the way Manitoba denies environmental appeals in general. He said that the province does not name the recurring or makes their concerns public, does not respond to their concerns in a substantive way and creates a hostile political environment for appeals first.
“The only appeal to appeal a license of the Environment Law is for the same minister whose department issued the license,” said Reder.
He suggested that the province create an independent agency to consider environmental appeals or the hand of the Clean Environment Commission of the arm.
A Syomine spokesman did not respond to a request for comments before the publication. A spokesman for the Association of Owners of Bird River Cottage, several of whose members made presentations in opposition to the new environmental license of the mine, was not available to comment.
In recent years, Kinew and his predecessor Heather Stefanson have promoted Critical Mineral deposits of Manitoba as a strategic asset for the province. However, the province has been left behind most others when it comes to large mining, energy and forestry projects.
