Baffinland promotes proposed production increase at Nunavut regulator meeting
CBC
Baffinland Iron Mines Corp. says it will stop production at its Mary River iron mine, end shipping and cut jobs to about 80 on site if its request to increase its 2022 production isn't approved by the Nunavut Impact Review Board.
About 300 Inuit are now employed at the mine, the company said.
"That's a lot of lives that will be impacted," said Baffinland's vice-president Megan Lord-Hoyle Tuesday at the review board's community roundtable in Pond Inlet.
"We want to protect those jobs."
Baffinland is preparing for mass layoffs starting at the end of August if its production increase proposal is not approved.
Lord-Hoyle said in September Baffinland would exceed its approved ore production of 4.2 megatonnes and would have to downsize its workforce, remove equipment and shut everything down if it can't increase production.
Baffinland's need to boost production — and what it would and wouldn't do if that doesn't take place— was never far away during the roundtable.
In 2018, the company was given a temporary approval to up its production from 4.2 million tonnes to six million tonnes, but that approval expired at the end of 2021.
The Nunavut Impact Review Boar (NIRB) decided to hold the community roundtable to gather feedback from community members after Northern Affairs Minister Dan Vandal rejected an earlier request from Baffinland for an emergency order to produce more ore until the end of December, suggesting the company go through the NIRB instead.
Lord-Hoyle and others from Baffinland tried to put their best face forward at the round table.
But this effort wasn't always successful as comments from the affected communities of Pond Inlet, Igloolik, Sanirajak, Arctic Bay, Clyde River, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord, often honed in on the mine's negative impacts from shipping and dust.
To argue its case, Baffinland brought in its special advisor Paul Quassa of Igloolik, a former Nunavut premier and one of the chief negotiators for the Nunavut land claims.
Quassa, wearing a shirt with a Baffinland logo, touted a "better future" instead of potential job losses due to a possible mine closure, citing the roughly 250-plus Inuit employed at Mary River.
"We have never stopped the Inuit from having employment with Baffinland," he said, adding that it would not be fair to stop the mine's production due to a "disagreement."
