Permitting: Permit review process

There's been a lot of pressure in the US to move to a more Canadian style system. But actually, if you look at the Canadian style system that's been going through a whole heap of change as well and not all of it good. Interestingly, though, over the last 15 years, things have got more and more onerous, increasingly onerous. You've had First Nations, you've had a lack of coordination to the environmental departments and gradually, the timelines of getting a new permit after stretch and stretch I was speaking to one producer who said it took him 10-years to get a mine licence for a simple build operation in Northern Ontario. Going back into the Uranium field, it's taken up to 30 years to get a new Uranium mine permitted in Canada. So certainly not very easy. It is worth noting that in Canada, there have been a whole series of changes recently trying to make it more streamlined process. One of the beautiful things about Canada and Australia is that you've got departments that understand the mining sector. And I'll come on to this later, when you have a group of people that don't really understand the mining sector, that in the legislation that can create these problems, where you get these overlapping responsibilities or overlap and sign offs.

But before we get into the Canadian example, I think it's just really worth just taking a moment to remember that you can gorge incident by root and toe, and the impact on the way that the world is looking at Native Title these days. So, in the fourth round of the UN guidelines on extractive industries, and one of the key changes whether the voice of the indigenous people would have a say, or the indigenous people would have a say, in the development of mining projects. And in the summer of last year, June, July last year, Rio Tinto blew up the 46,000-year-old tribal monuments of Juukan Gorge. And so far, all of the major heads of the people who had some degree of responsibility for the head of corporate relations has gone, the head of the iron ore division has gone, the CEO has gone and just recently, a month ago or so the chairman has gone of Rio Tinto. So these are things that the mining company wants to get right because they're going to lose their jobs otherwise, and that's hugely damaging to their pocket and to their reputation. People are always motivated for personal reasons. It's really bad for shareholders, because business can get slowed down, you can have a withdrawn, and it just impedes your entire business model, which is trying to show people that you're doing a responsible job of delivering vital minerals to the world as we need them in our ever increasingly commodified life.

So that whole Rio Tinto thing was an absolute disaster, it was 10-years in the making. They got their mine permits early and then there were some discoveries made later. The local indigenous communities were not properly engaged. They weren't properly listened to. It was a classic disaster from start to finish. And in some ways, it's a function of lack of joined up thinking in the company. The terrible irony is that Rio Tinto for so many years, as for so much time were the leaders in community relationships. Actually, there was the Pilbara that were the first people to acknowledge Native Title, there was the iron ore division in the Pilbara. It was Rio Tinto that laid so many markers are making progress about understanding and engagement level communities actually working with them to streamline the permitting. But of course, nothing stays the same. And then 2015, there was a shake-up in how Rio Tinto would run and it all was centralised again. And this is the main complaint of the local the Aboriginal communities and people sitting in London's James's square in London don't have a clue as to what's actually going on 1000s of miles away across the other side of the world.

Going back to the Canadian example, addressing the First Nations in Canada and understanding how the permitting processes has got increasingly delayed and stretched out in Canada. From 2005 onwards really, right up to 2018, the government realised that you had all of these competing departments who didn't understand what the other departments doing, they didn't understand who was able to give authority. And so they've actually done a federal environmental assessment. And that's resulted in across Canada that's been recently implemented an Impact Assessment Act. And the main aims of this Impact Assessment Act was it was trying to show that if you've got a mining project, then that mining project would have a single review approach aimed at integrating provincial and federal environmental assessments. This is really what the mining sector needs, it needs a place where you go, and it's a joined-up conversation. So yes, you might want to protect a plant or a bird or community but there has to be a balanced analysis. We may stop the mine here, and it may preserve this kind of culture. But is that culture dying anyway? And would the mine actually enable it to be preserved in a different way that it's gotten more sustainable? It's a joined-up way of thinking. The Impact Assessment Act involves a statutorily enacted indigenous review and consultation through the public process. They have got a coordination of reviews, by applicable Government of Canada departments and a more comprehensive approach to the assessment of cumulative impacts, including social, regional and strategic impact assessments and changes to how cumulative impacts are considered for individual projects.

Okay, so in some ways, it's a more rigorous approach, but actually, by being pulled together, the intention is to streamline the environmental review process to add transparency and add the voice of indigenous communities with respect to consultation and accommodating their views. It's also aimed to increase public confidence in assessment and the public confidence in the conclusions of the process and the outcomes of the review. And even though it's more rigorous, it should speed up the permitting situation in Canada. I've mentioned that the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous peoples in the latest draft of guidelines, Canada is really essentially trying to move more towards to meet those UN guidelines. It's not the same across Canada, you've got different states, different provinces with slightly different mechanisms. One of the particularly bad areas for slow permitting was British Columbia. And as part of this review, they decided to split the chief inspector of mines role, his responsibilities or her responsibilities and so there's actually now a mines permitting officer, which is the aim to have quicker but better regulation.

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