Article from NP re: Gov't making mining easier. We're not at that stage yet, but makes costs to open less and therrefore the area more appealing.
This week, Ottawa launched its major-projects management office, making good on a $150-million pledge last year to streamline the review process for new mines. The office will give mining companies a single point of contact, instead of pitting them against each of the 14 different government departments that hold the power to stall a project, and promises to cut in half the time it takes to get needed permits and approvals.
"We're gambling everything" on that new office being "the major breakthrough in making the process more transparent, efficient and effective," said Dan Jepsen, chief executive of the Association for Mineral Exploration B.C.
That optimism may seem out of place, given the high-profile bad mining news of late. Last fall, work was suspended at the Galore Creek mine -- a massive deposit seen as the salvation of the West Coast's mining industry -- while the biggest development to hit the opposite coast, the Voisey's Bay nickel deposit, received a setback in January when the Newfoundland and Labrador government demanded a long list of changes to its environmental impact statement.
Still, even those two projects have little bad to say. Galore Creek was widely held up as an example of how effectively B.C. can process a mine application -- its troubles are a cost, rather than permitting, issue-- while a spokesman for Voisey's Bay owner Vale Inco Ltd. was downright flattering about the permitting hoops it's jumping through.
If there is a cloud blocking the sunshine, it is the uncertainty created by rights to consultation and accommodation that First Nations groups have been awarded in recent Supreme Court rulings.
