Turning preservationism on its head Breaking the frame

Parked, they call it.

Ontario prospectors have been living with the consequences of the province’s Living Legacy policy for nearly four years now. Living Legacy, the outgrowth of the divisive and destructive Lands for Life consultation of the late 1990s, established 378 parks and conservation reserves in the province, and in the process sterilized a good number of active mineral claims.

Prospectors have sued the government, and in the one case that has so far gone to trial, the prospector was successful. They’ve written their members in the Ontario Legislature. And in some cases, they’ve just let the claims lapse and gone on to other things.

Now a proposal is circulating that turns the idea of protected areas on its head. The Porcupine Prospectors and Developers Association and the Northern Prospectors Association (the Timmins and Kirkland Lake branches, respectively, of the Ontario Prospectors Association) have begun a lobby effort for what they call the “Abitibi Mineral Reserve.”

The principle behind the idea is that land use policies would have to recognize that the Abitibi region, which the proponents of the plan have defined as a 60,000-sq.-km area extending from Lake Abitibi southwest to Batchawana Bay, is an area of provincially significant mineral potential. It would oblige the province and municipalities to give mineral exploration and development the highest priority in any land use decision.

Having been put in the frame of “sustainable development” and preservationist ideology by previous governments, Northern Ontario prospectors had the wit to see that one solution was simply to break the frame.

Local government in the North, at least, is listening. The Timmins city council passed a resolution endorsing the idea, as a formal address to the minister of northern development and mines. Timmins Mayor Jamie Lin has recognized the access-to-land issue and has expressed his hope that the industry and local government can together persuade the higher levels of government to address the difficulties that top-down land use policies, driven by the politics of preservationism, have forced on prospectors and junior exploration companies.

And a potential solution is ready for the implementation. A 60,000-sq.-km Abitibi Mineral Reserve would make up about 6% of the province’s land area. Protected Areas under the province’s Lands for Life program make up 460,000 sq. km, or 43% of the province.

The proportion, or disproportion, is instructive in itself. In contrast to the anti-development crowd, prospectors are not asking for a whole lot.

Why didn’t someone think of this before? The fact is, someone did.

There is precedent for this kind of measure, in a country with a similar legal system to Canada, and with some similar land use conflicts to the ones we have here, like a preservation lobby and Aboriginal title claims. In 1993 the Australian state of Tasmania passed the Mining (Strategic Prospectivity Zones) Act, which created several areas in the state where mineral title was secure.

About 25,000 sq. km — that’s 37% of the state’s land mass — is now covered under the act, which provides that the status of Crown land cannot be changed except with the approval of the director of mines, or, for land parcels over 500 hectares, approval of both houses of the state parliament.

We have not noticed Tasmania’s rivers silting up, or its forests burning uncontrollably, in the decade since the act was passed. There has, however, been a modest resurgence in mineral exploration.

Ontario’s mineral exploration business could use a modest resurgence of its own. An Abitibi Mineral Reserve might just do that; or maybe more.