A remote lake in the B.C. ranch country has become the focus of a national dispute over government authority to regulate industry on Crown land.
Assembly of First Nations (AFN) leaders from across Canada have backed National Chief Shawn Atleo's call for the federal cabinet to reject the Prosperity gold and copper mine proposal near Williams Lake after more than a decade of study.
B.C. issued an environmental assessment permit for the mine in January, after reviewing volumes of surveys on the effect of using Fish Lake as storage for acidic waste rock and replacing the lost rainbow trout habitat with a new reservoir.
A federal assessment panel came to similar conclusions, but Atleo noted its observation that the mine plan would destroy a site of "spiritual power and healing for the Tsilhqot'in."
The Tsilhqot'in National Government and associated bands have been prominent in court battle against federal and provincial authority on land that was never subject to treaties. It has rejected treaty negotiations as well as all mining in its traditional territory.
The federal panel doesn't make a recommendation on whether the environmental impact is justified by the $800 million investment and 500 direct jobs for a region hit hard by the pine beetle infestation. The B.C. cabinet decided it is, and the federal government faces the same choice after a summer-long consultation with aboriginal groups.
The AFN resolution passed in Winnipeg describes the Prosperity mine project as a test case. The chiefs' assembly voted to "advise the federal government that First Nations across Canada are watching its decision to see whether there remains any value or integrity in environmental assessments for major projects, or whether First Nations must turn to litigation and other means to assert our rights and protect our cultures."
Detailed habitat studies and fishing surveys going back to the late 1990s show that Fish Lake has an abundance of naturally occurring rainbow trout. Creel surveys showed the lake was fished successfully hundreds of times each year.
From Tom Fletcher, Kitimat Sentinel
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snert
1 year ago
Somewhere in the middle lies the truth
and I don't think it is with the chiefs.
http://www.ceaa-acee.gc.ca/050/documents_staticpost/44811/1707.pdf
FWIW there are lots of productive man made lakes all over NA and the world for that matter.
Fiat lux
1 year ago
One has to wonder what the
One has to wonder what the difference it would have been if the mind propagandist benders had called the mine "Kill Fish Lake Mine", instead the stupid lie of "Prosperity"?
We have the Polley Mountain copper mine up the road, near Likely. The overloaded trucks, going even during breakup, are destroying the road, hardly any repairs, and when the copper prices fell, and the mine closed for years,causeing great hardships to the laid off employees.
What will happen to this Kill Fish Lake mine if prices fall, and/or the company just walks away ? Who will pick up the pieces?
Do we need another long row of Diesel trucks spewing forth pollution for 800 km, carrying BC's real wealth to the ports?
An economic plan that lasts only 20 years, is not "prosperity" and the sale of resources is the sale of capital, not an income. Except in the warped minds of some miseducated economists and "conservative" politicians bucking for directorships.
Ed Deak.
snert
1 year ago
You're absolutely right, Ed...
but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't make a bit of difference mostly because in cases like this there is usually more than one 'right'.
snert
1 year ago
The truth lies not with the chiefs.
http://www.vancouversun.com/opinion/future+Prosperity+mine/3326952/story.html
Fiat lux
1 year ago
A letter written by the CEO
A letter written by the CEO of a company can hardly be called objective.
Around here people are gushing: "They intend to invest $800. million. Wow! Look at the benefits !"
There are definitely always "rights" and "benefits" from all actions, but also the liabilities, which, sometimes can last forever, destroying people and the ecology.
The $800. million has to be paid back, with the endless amounts of profits, from the public's pockets and lost resources.
The sale of capital is not a benefit in any business accounting, except by so called "economists"
Because "investments" are also "liabilities" that the public has to pay back. That simple, but never thought of or mentioned.
I was sentenced to death by the nazis, innocently, for "high treason" at the age of 18, saved by the end of the war. Then, to the gulags by the communists, but they didn't catch me, and have been fighting against all forms of dictatorships ever since, for over 60 years.
But.....I don't know of any political system in history that may have brought more benefits to the "average public", in shorter time, than the nazis. Germany was the envy of depression ridden Europe, buzzing with construction, and other activities, within a few months after Hitler took power. In my 3 postwar years in Austria, all I could hear was how good they had it under Hitler.
Had there been elections held with Hitler running, he would have had a majority in Germany and Austria without any problem.
Does this, or the "benefits created" by any religious or ideological system in history, excuse and endorse the crimes, mass murder and enslavement they also committed and caused ?
Not in my book !
There are many healthy and beneficial ways to "create jobs", but not under the present, criminal, overcapitalized, phony free trade, economic system, killing democracy, enslaving humanity and destroying the ecology.
A million well paying jobs could be "created" in BC, with very low investments, but first we would have to get the hell out of the criminal NAFTA and WTO et al.
I started my first manufacturing business in Vancouver in 1957 with a $500. bankloan and was employing 6 or 8 tradesmen within a few weeks. There were businesses, paying decent wages , starting up by the hundreds in the 50s and 60s, but they've been strangled by the so called "neoclassical market economic theory" in the 70s and killed by fraudulent "free trade" filling our lives with junk and garbage and killing the world with pollution.
All reported as "Growth of the GDP" and "productivity" from selling the ground from under our feet.
Ed Deak. Big Lake.
snert
1 year ago
Objectivity, Ed?
And of course you could write one that is.....not! For that matter the 'non biased' chiefs seem to ignore objectivity as well.
And further rather than actually refute anything in the article you just pooh pooh it. What your life story has to do with any of this is beyond me.
Fiat lux
1 year ago
The life story was to point
The life story was to point out that I'm not praising the nazis, or any dictatorship, but that they, and all other dictatorial crooks in history, as now the multinational corporate mafia and their political pimps, have also been hailed as "wealth creators", although this stupid propaganda buzz wasn't invented for long after Goebbels.
Ed Deak.