Going To Church For De Beers

The arctic tundra lands in which De Beers hopes to build eventually its first Canadian mine, fully underground and under a lake, are extremely sparsely inhabited. Environmentalists call the De Beers Snap Lake Diamond Project "a Greenfield development", a proposed new mine in a previously undisturbed area. The area finds itself within the migratory range of the caribou herds. The water needed for the mining comes from a watershed (river system) previously undisturbed by industrial activities. Moreover, the project is to be located in an area of unextinguished Aboriginal title. There are at least six aboriginal groups who consider themselves "impacted parties" - peoples whose lifestyles, whose future, whose livelihoods, may somehow be affected by the De Beers mine. These communities are all Dene People, consisting of many tribes and bands, having their own languages, making a living from hunting and fishing.

The aboriginal groups (sometimes also called Inuit, literally meaning "People" in Eskimo language) likely to be affected by the Snap Lake mine include the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, NWT Metis Nation, North Slave Metis Alliance, Dogrib Treaty 11 Council, the Lutsel K'e Dene First Nation. Four of these aboriginal groups, their chiefs (or "elders"), their representatives are presently negotiating with De Beers so-called Impact Benefit Agreements (IBA's) to secure benefits for their peoples and to mitigate the impact on their society. They want jobs, education, training, supply contracts, etc., but at the same time they also want to minimize any impact on their hunting and fishing grounds. On top of that, there is the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) which, on behalf of all citizens in the NWT (divided roughly by 50% aboriginals and 50% others) tries to promote the economic sell-sufficiency of the entire region through the sustainable development of natural resources, to preserve and protect the natural environment for future generations and to promote the social fabric and northern cultural heritage.

The GNWT is also negotiating with De Beers to conclude a Socio-Economic Agreement, which would include monitoring systems, employment targets, business targets, education and training issues, health and wellness issues, and, of course, the supply of Snap Lake diamonds to the local cutting industry.

And then again, on top of all of these, there is also the Federal Government in Ottawa which has a Minister for Indian Affairs and Northern Development who has the authority to issue some of the eight crucial permits or licenses in the regulatory process. Basically, the important licenses are all issued on a Federal level. However, the Minister will not issue any license before getting specific recommendations from a statutory regional body, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board (MVEIRB).

All of the foregoing is really the introduction to this 'memo'. Let's now go back to the beginning of this article and start again. The MVEIRB convened this week public hearings where representatives of each and every organization mentioned above can say what it thinks of De Beers, what it wants from De Beers, where it feels De Beers hasn't done enough, etc. It can question De Beers- and it must be ready to reply. De Beers may, of course, also pose questions. In a democratic environment, all citizens (called "the public") have a right to ask questions and make comments. In a highly politicized environment you also have (surprise, surprise) a number of NGO's (public interest lobbies) with their own agenda, demanding the right to speak. Some of the NGO's, such as the Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC), are extremely influential and knowledgeable.

Each and every one of the organizations mentioned so far are attending the hearings with a battery of experts, consultants, lawyers (yes - plenty of lawyers), economists, environmentalist - all adding up to a few hundred people.
Intriguingly, the hearings are being held in Yellowknife's Northern United Church. It was there that I, for the first time ever, realized that it had become time to pray for De Beers. Indeed, the De Beers team, headed by John McConnell and Robin Johnstone, need any help they can get. [We didn't see De Beers Canada President Richard Molyneux at these important hearings.]

De Beers is in its second year of the consultative Environmental Assessment process, and tens of thousands of pages of documents, studies, reports, have been prepared at a cost of millions of dollars. [Unconfirmed reports say that De Beers must have spent some $12 million on the regulatory process so far.] I had the pleasure of being one of the many consultants attending these hearings - and it suddenly hit me how much still remains to be done to finalize the process.

The community "stakeholders" don't seem happy. This may sound strange. After all, De Beers is bringing a project that will employ some 500-600 people at least up to the year 2027, it will bring labor income benefits in the tens of millions of dollars a year, royalties (to Federal Government), income tax (to local government), and a wide range of other economic benefits.

De Beers says it has already made significant (and costly) concessions. Some stakeholders question this. De Beers has announced it will limit the activity in the mining area and instead of having both an open pit and underground mining operation, it has now agreed to have only an underground mine - which, it says, is not the most economic advantageous mining option available to Snap Lake. They seem to be most forthcoming. And still, "the atmosphere" in the air is not positive - and it seems that De Beers is still "light-years" away from completing the regulatory process. The MVEIRB will most likely recommend to the Minister to issue a Development License, but will also request to make such approval conditional on the prior conclusion of a host of different agreements. In a way, agreements which are now still of "voluntary" nature, will then become semi-mandatory. A situation which will probably excite a number of De Beers lawyers - who, I am afraid, may not fully grasp that they are not dealing with "legal issues", but rather "people issues."

The aboriginal peoples have literally gone through an amazingly dramatic (and probably also traumatic) development. Some of these people have, within one generation, moved from illiterate hunters and fishermen straight into western corporate boardrooms. Within one generation we are seeing now successful ministers, administrators, parliamentarians, politicians on regional state and federal levels of people who started their lives as children in an illiterate environment. This should make anyone pause and stand in awe. Some of the concerns raised in the hearings, for example, is not how much a worker will be paid - but how do you prevent someone who never before has "earned money" from spending it on alcohol. These are real concerns.

A local scholar remarked, "because of the swamping of native life by foreign or southern ways, the majority of the northern Indian, Inuit, and Metis people feel lost and helpless to some degree. For native men in particular the change from proud independent hunter to "apprentice white man" has been deep and bitter." This is not the place to write about the chronic social problems facing this society. "As aboriginals once calculated the conditions of ice, wind, and wildlife in order to make decisions for the survival of their people, they must now choose among other conditions. Money calculations, education, and organization can be used, just as nature was used, to plan the best life possible for children and the cultures they carry."

It seems to me - and I apologize if I see this wrong - that the public hearings and the regulatory process to get the Snap Lake development approvals are only marginally a matter of De Beers. The process provides opportunities to local people to assert their independence, to position themselves politically in their communities, to assert their rights. The hearings were used by some groups to ask the government for more money so they could hire more experts to analyze better the "impact" of Snap Lake development.

Ostensibly, we heard a full week presentations on air, waste, abandonment and reclamation, hydrogeology, surface water and fish, wildlife, wildlife habitat and vegetation as well as socio-economic issues. There were many esoteric questions, such as the oxygen level available to fish in the Snap Lake after 19 years of mining, where experts had an opportunity to display their knowledge. The discussions were intense and concerns were genuine.

Would the behavior, the movements, and the safety of the caribou, grizzly bear and wolverine return to the present state after the mine is closed some 30 years down the road? These are all real concerns - and intelligent experts differ on what may or may not happen.

Why, one must ask, does one get the feeling that De Beers is still quite a long way from concluding the regulatory process? Snap Lake is a much smaller project then Ekati and Diavik and its impact (because it is an underground mine) on the environment will be considerably less - so why is the process more complicated? You hear different views in Yellowknife. Diavik is often mentioned as a positive experience: the senior decision makers and their families lived in Yellowknife during the regulatory process, they were involved in the community, they were visible and approachable in restaurants and bars - and they created a lot of goodwill.

De Beers has some very good people here in Yellowknife. (Especially Robin Johnstone is an excellent communicator.) However, they are perceived by the local people as lacking decision-making power. Decisions are made elsewhere in Canada, England or South Africa. Commitments made by local representatives seem to be "reconsidered" later, after having been made. That doesn't inspire trust. It also makes it more difficult for the local people (from Richard Molyneux down to John McConnell) to make firm commitments - and that was a recurring theme throughout the hearings. There are many promises, said the organizations, but many of those have not been embodied as firm commitments.

In the near future a presentation explaining Supplier of Choice to aboriginal groups or parliamentarians is being planned by senior London directors. To all of these groups Supplier of Choice is as relevant as the nuclear programs of North Korea. All of us from the south, including this writer himself, ought to devote as much as possible time trying to understand the local people - and we should listen, listen and listen. We would learn that to some Dene (Inuits) the land is truly more important than money, jobs or De Beers. Spirituality is associated with land and environment in ways western may never fully comprehend. The invisible, the intangible is important.

The aboriginals are not "impressed" by large conglomerates. Time has a different meaning and whether diamonds are mined now or twenty years from now, doesn't make all that much of a difference. In the early 1980's, the Aboriginal leadership postponed oil and gas development (a multi-billion dollar affair) by about ten years, just to first solve aboriginal land claim issues. Many of the young Turks from those days are still in government today.

It is necessary for the aboriginal groups and stakeholders to view De Beers Snap Lake's as good and trusted neighbors, as friends, who will share life in the NWT for at least a generation to come. The parties are still many miles away from such relationships. If London's senior management can bridge the cultural divide and genuinely listen to the concerns of the local stakeholders - and be responsive to their needs -- this may undoubtedly expedite the regulatory process and actually reduce the total costs. It will also ease the burden on local staff. Although the hearings ostensibly are about "issues", the really subject is "communication". Failure to appreciate that might bring us back to the Yellowknife United Church still many times.