Mushkegowuk Council is hoping new recommendations to “immediately” enact environmental monitoring in the Ring of Fire will see the light of day — even though construction on access roads is planned to begin in four months.

Lawrence Martin, the council’s director of lands and resources and a former Grand Chief, spoke to The Narwhal about a federal document released in January, part of a regional assessment of the consequences of industrial activity in the Ring of Fire. Mushkegowuk Council supported the creation of the document, which was co-written by 15 First Nations and a federal agency, and also included recommendations to help communities “urgently” access health care.

The Ontario government is hoping the environmentally sensitive Ring of Fire region that overlaps Indigenous ancestral homeland can be the centre of a burst of new mining activity. Ontario Premier Doug Ford has already said the province is on track to get “shovels in the ground this June.”

“Hopefully these regional assessment recommendations will actually happen,” Martin said. “I think it’s one of those situations where the train has already left the platform. … The project’s already started and these regional assessments, whatever they may be at this point, may not carry much weight.”

The portion of the assessment released was an executive summary, recommending that community-driven environmental monitoring should begin “before any development occurs.” It also highlights serious funding and capacity gaps in health care in the Far North, particularly mental health, and said this should be addressed “urgently, before any additional development can be considered.”

Ford has claimed that developing the region would create jobs and boost the economy, which he’s portrayed as a necessary counterweight to United States tariffs. According to the province, construction is set to begin on what will eventually be three new access roads to the Ring of Fire. 

The roads were proposed by two Indigenous communities, Marten Falls First Nation and Webequie First Nation, which are also members of the group behind the report. The remote communities want to secure all-season access to Ontario’s highway network to drive down their cost of living. The roads will serve a dual purpose, as they will also provide a pathway for Ring of Fire mining development. 

Martin told The Narwhal that Mushkegowuk communities want to see the all-season roads too, and he understands their potential to be environmentally disruptive, but he said the First Nations involved have assured the council they’re also concerned about the environment and are taking the issue seriously.

“We have to trust that our own people are very concerned, and they’ll do their best to protect these waters that flow down to our James Bay communities, and will protect the animals that live in those areas that migrate through there,” he said. “So, it’s a game of trust.”

Ford has already signed agreements with both First Nations to speed up the road building and provide them money to build community infrastructure, Martin noted. 

The provincial government has also passed laws meant to speed up development, and signed a deal with Ottawa handing the province more control over the environmental assessment process. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said mining critical minerals is also a federal priority to grow Canada’s clean technology and defence industries.

It’s unclear what kind of efforts are being made to get environmental monitoring in place before June. Greg Rickford, the provincial minister responsible for Ring of Fire partnerships, did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Federal Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin’s press secretary Keean Nembhard said Ottawa recognizes the need for meaningful participation with Indigenous Peoples throughout the full Impact Assessment Act process “to promote responsible and inclusive resource development.”

The report, he wrote in emailed comments, represents “strong progress toward developing final recommendations that will ultimately promote responsible resource development in the region, which has First Nations consent and active participation.”

‘Too little’ known about Ring of Fire’s environmental conditions: report

The regional assessment will examine what kind of big-picture, long-term impacts might occur if several mines, roads and other projects in the Ring of Fire are built. These cumulative effects could be related to the environment, health, culture, social or economic conditions or Indigenous Rights. 

Ford has claimed the Ring of Fire area contains a “vast” reserve of critical minerals such as chromite and nickel that are needed for solar panels, batteries and weapons among other things.

But January’s report said too little was known about past and present environmental conditions in the Ring of Fire. It said “previous and ongoing” programs were “sparse, short-term and underfunded” and based on Western science, not Indigenous Knowledge, and that scientific data must be paired with expertise from Elders and others.

Access to health care and social services are also “profoundly inadequate,” the working group found. It wrote that “travel to obtain health care is a major barrier to well-being,” and First Nations need Elder-guided ceremonies and cultural practices to heal.

“We’re all suffering from the same symptoms of colonization and the same symptoms of being an isolated community with all of those conditions within,” Martin said.

The group itself has faced difficulty being able to move forward on its study, it noted, due to emergency conditions faced by several First Nations in northern Ontario including evacuations due to wildfire and a lack of clean drinking water.

The document warned “the bulk of the work lies ahead.” It said while discussions over the last year involved all First Nations at “key times,” not all of them were able to contribute equally because some were facing serious conditions.

The regional assessment working group’s terms of reference were finalized last year following criticism that the previous approach had tokenized Indigenous participation. Their study is supposed to continue until mid-2027. 

An “important next step,” the group added, was coming together “in unity” to map out community values, like a “shared understanding of First Nations’ relationship with the land and what must be preserved and protected.” That will help target possible impacts on Treaty Rights, it said.

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Ramon Kataquapit says too often he’s experienced Indigenous youth being excluded from rooms full of powerful people who are deciding their futures.

That’s why this past year, Kataquapit founded the Okiniwak Indigenous youth movement and led rallies and workshops across Ontario challenging Bill 5, officially called the Protect Ontario By Unleashing Our Economy Act. The provincial law creates “special economic zones” where the government can exempt companies from having to follow certain rules.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford has touted the law as an economic salve for U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff war and threats to Canada’s sovereignty. He has emphasized the Ring of Fire, a vast area of mineral deposits on Treaty 9 territory in northern Ontario, as ripe for exploitation under these new powers.

But Kataquapit, a member of Attawapiskat First Nation who also serves on the Nishnawbe Aski Nation’s Oshkaatisak Council and the Chiefs of Ontario’s Youth Council, says the law threatens his way of life, the spirit of the land and “our very futures” that rely on the James Bay Lowlands for physical, mental and spiritual health.

The Ring of Fire overlaps a large, ecologically sensitive area of peatlands, or muskeg. This wetland system is a giant carbon sink, storing an estimated 35 billion tonnes of carbon, as well as a filtration system cleaning the water flowing through it and a critical habitat for migratory birds and wildlife like caribou. For the Omushkego Cree, their lives depend on the life-giving properties of water, which supports their food, medicines and shelter.

Kataquapit is hoping a court will let him and Michel Koostachin, the founder of Friends of the Attawapiskat River, an Indigenous group dedicated to protecting the waters and people downstream of the Ring of Fire, bring their distinct perspectives to an ongoing case brought by nine First Nations challenging the law.

Yesterday, they submitted materials seeking leave to intervene in the court challenge filed in July in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, which asks for Bill 5 to be found unconstitutional.

The litigation also targets certain parts of the federal Building Canada Act, a law that allows Ottawa to declare projects in the “national interest” where they can be pre-approved for certain legal requirements. Prime Minister Mark Carney has also framed the national legislation as a response to a “crisis” provoked by Trump’s threats to the Canadian economy.

The nine First Nations behind the court challenge want an injunction to stop the two governments from using the powers of those laws, which they argued in a court filing “represent a clear and present danger” to their self-determination rights to ways of life on their territories, and violate the Crown’s obligation to act honourably.

Bill 5, Bill C-5 and the court case brought forward by a group of First Nations

While both Bill 5 and the Building Canada Act, which was part of Bill C-5, allow for First Nations consultation in designating a national interest project or a special economic zone, this is a “smoke and mirrors trick,” the First Nations said, “deflecting attention from all the other ways the laws necessarily diminish the ability of First Nations to engage on the regimes’ broader consequences.”

That’s because Indigenous communities would normally be consulted and accommodated on a much wider range of approvals or assessments required for projects that aren’t being given special designation under the laws, they said.

The offices of federal Justice Minister Sean Fraser and Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey did not return requests for comment about the litigation or the proposed intervenors.

If their application for intervenor status is accepted, Kataquapit and Koostachin would be considered “friends of the court,” meaning they would bring their land-based knowledge and lived experience as grassroots community leaders to the proceedings, their legal counsel, Kerrie Blaise, said.

Blaise, the founder of the nonprofit Legal Advocates for Nature’s Defence, or LAND, told The Narwhal she’s doing the work pro bono and had to find donors and partners to help fundraise.

“Even just from a logistical standpoint, it’s very difficult to get to court. To get a lawyer, to afford a lawyer to do this type of work is very difficult,” she said. “It is very unprecedented, this is very unique to have these individuals in a setting like this.”

Koostachin, who provides wellness services on mental health, addictions and grief in northern Ontario communities, said the court case raises key questions around whether the principles behind reconciliation and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are being applied properly.

He said Indigenous communities have distrusted the government for decades since the creation of the “racist” Indian Act in 1876 and the 1905 signing of Treaty 9 with Anishinaabe and Omushkego Cree, which has been questioned over its legitimacy.

“They call it the Ring of Fire, but to us, it’s the Breathing Lands. For them, they see profit. For us, we see the air of Canada, the air of Ontario, the air of ourselves, because we come from that land, we’re the artwork of that land, and for us, that’s our lives,” Kataquapit said in an interview.

“For them, it’s just something that they can use to combat Donald Trump and his tariffs, and this war that he has with Canada. But Canada has to take something from somewhere to respond. What are they going to take? That’s why they’re going to take from us.”

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Despite pushback from First Nations and environmental advocates, the Ford government is moving ahead with the first segment of a road network to Ontario’s mineral-rich Ring of Fire.

The $61.8-million upgrade to Geraldton’s Main Street project will connect Highway 11 to Highway 584 in Greenstone and is billed as the “gateway” to the Ring of Fire, about 500 kilometres north of Thunder Bay.

The road is the first Ring of Fire project to be approved under Premier Doug Ford’s controversial Bill 5, which aims to fast-track projects by creating “special economic zones” exempt from environmental rules and planning laws. The province says it is a critical step toward unlocking the region’s nickel, copper, platinum and chromite deposits, boosting local economies, supporting First Nations, creating jobs and building a secure supply chain for Ontario manufacturing.

The Geraldton upgrade would eventually link to three other proposed all-season roads to the Ring of Fire, which have been undergoing environmental assessments for several years.

Critics of the highway project say the government is ignoring the risks of moving ahead before completing those assessments and First Nations consultations and warn fast-tracking could actually delay the development it aims to speed up.

“The Ford government is attempting to bulldoze the rights of small remote First Nations with major infrastructure deficits in order to make way for foreign corporations to extract nickel,” said Dayna Nadine Scott, professor and York University research chair in environmental law and green economy justice. “They are risking confrontation on the land.”

Early this year, nine First Nations launched a constitutional challenge against Ontario’s Bill 5 and the federal government’s companion Bill C-5 aimed at speeding up developments deemed essential by both levels of government. The nations allege both bills violate Treaty Rights and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by bypassing environmental assessments and permitting.

Kate Kempton, the lawyer leading the lawsuit, said approving a project meant to facilitate “heavy development” in the James Bay Lowlands — where the Ring of Fire is located — without knowing the ecological consequences is “not only reckless, it is dangerous.”

“It might be very little heavy development that tips the peatlands into collapse. Ford is playing with First Nations’ futures and all our lives,” she said.

The road will cross the Attawapiskat River and surrounding peatlands, which remain an unfragmented carbon sink and wildlife habitat, Scott said.

According to Kempton, the area’s role as a carbon sink means the stakes extend far beyond northern Ontario. “If they get destroyed, our fight against climate change is lost and this would be a major extinction event,” she said.

Ford wants Ring of Fire deemed a ‘nation-building project’

Ford has put the Ring of Fire on his list of “nation-building projects” sent to Prime Minister Mark Carney for prioritization.

Carney announced his first five “major projects” on Sept. 11, and the Ring of Fire didn’t make the list. However, Ford later told reporters the mining development will be included in the “next tranche” of projects.

The Ring of Fire, located in the James Bay Lowlands, holds a 5,000-square-kilometre deposit of key minerals needed for electric vehicles and renewable energy technologies. 

It also contains one of the world’s largest peatlands, which store an estimated 35 billion tonnes of carbon.

Ford and Carney have pitched the development as a strategic counter to U.S. trade threats, arguing it will create jobs and strengthen economic sovereignty.

Many First Nations say no development in the James Bay Lowlands should proceed until the regional assessment, co-led by Canada and several First Nations, is complete and all impacts are understood, Kempton said.

However, the project does have some First Nations support. Webequie First Nation Chief Cornelius Wabasse welcomes the project, which he says will present his community with future opportunities and, over time, benefit its prosperity.

“It’s something to look forward to that’ll bring opportunities for our community as well, not right away, but it will be something we can tap into as development progresses in the north and northwest of Ontario.”

Green Party of Ontario Leader Mike Schreiner said moving forward without free, prior and informed consent from all impacted First Nations violates treaty obligations and undermines the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

“Expanding infrastructure through this landscape without rigorous, independent environmental assessment risks permanent ecological damage, contributes to the climate crisis and threatens the way of life for many Indigenous Peoples.”

Schreiner said Greens are not opposed to development in the region but insist it must be done in partnership with Indigenous communities and with strong environmental protections. “Anything less is not nation-building.”

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A new report on a proposed road to Ontario’s remote Ring of Fire says it could improve quality of life for many people, but also affect cultural traditions and impact the environment and animals — including “permanent loss of habitat” for caribou, a species at risk.

The draft environmental assessment and impact statement for an all-season gravel road to Marten Falls First Nation was published on April 22. The access road is being proposed by the nation and a preferred route has been approved by its band council.

“It is not just a path to progress; it is a testament to our resilience, our vision for the future and our commitment to the well-being of our people,” Chief Bruce Achneepineskum wrote in an introductory message.

Construction on the 184-kilometre road to the remote Anishinaabe community northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont., is expected to cost $1.3 billion, according to the report. Previous estimates have put the cost of two roads to the region at roughly $2 billion cumulatively, suggesting prices are going up. More than 6,000 direct and indirect jobs could be created, though the report found most workers would likely be from outside the region due to lack of local capacity.

This report is part of both federal and provincial environmental and impact assessments for the Marten Falls road. Consulting firm AECOM Canada prepared it, drawing from extensive field surveys, data collection and Indigenous Knowledge gathering. A project team, which included two senior community member advisors, led the effort under the “guidance, direction and input” of the chief, council and the rest of the community.

The draft report includes hundreds of recommendations on how to protect the vast peatlands in the region and the significant carbon they store, as well as fish and land animals. “Through the proper use of mitigation measures, the potential effects from the construction and long-term use of the community access road are expected to be effectively managed, minimized or mitigated,” it states.

The report comes at a moment when both Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney have spoken about a need to speed up natural resource projects and associated infrastructure, and “streamline” these kinds of assessments. Ford has repeatedly criticized the length of time an environmental assessment takes. Analysts worry this sentiment could lead to cutting corners.

Ontario premiers have promoted the Ring of Fire mining district for well over a decade, and Ford took up the call when he was first elected in 2018. The province believes the remote, environmentally sensitive area on Treaty 9 territory contains riches in the form of highly valued minerals — although some oft-cited estimates of the value are out of date and have been debunked.

The road is seen by the Progressive Conservatives as one of three key routes — along with a supply road to Webequie First Nation and the Northern Road Link connecting the two — to open these mineral deposits by connecting them to the provincial highway network.

The report’s release also coincides with Ford’s proposed Bill 5, the “Protect Ontario by Unleashing our Economy Act,” which removes several layers of oversight for development projects, including rules around endangered species and environmental reviews, and has sparked significant backlash from First Nations organizations, including Ring of Fire nations other than Marten Falls and Webequie.

Ford has framed Bill 5 as being key to fighting U.S. tariffs. At the same time, the province still needs to fulfill its legal duty to consult with Indigenous Peoples.

“If tariffs is pushing this government to take shortcuts, to try and override our communities, our homelands, that’s not the way to go,” Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug’s Chief Donny Morris said this month about Bill 5. “We gotta work together whether you like it or not.”

The office of Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford, who is also the minister responsible for Ring of Fire economic and community partnerships, did not respond to requests for comment for this story, nor did representatives of Marten Falls First Nation.

According to a mineral claim tracker from the Wildlife Conservation Society, nearly half of all claims staked in Ontario are on Treaty 9 territory — many centred around the Ring of Fire. Under a new bill, the Ford government is proposing one Ring of Fire project, the Eagle’s Nest mine, move ahead without a full environmental assessment.

“I don’t think you can just take a shortcut, skip Indigenous consultation, or skip the assessments, to work out some of these challenges and questions about how to minimize damage,” Connie O’Connor, a freshwater ecologist and conservation biologist and director of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Ontario Northern Boreal Program, told The Narwhal.

Across Ontario, environmental oversight and the mechanisms that protect the land and animals are shifting. The Marten Falls report offers a glimpse at what that could mean in practice.

Marten Falls road could bring opportunity and challenges for First Nation

Martin Falls’ ancestral territory, where the Albany and Ogoki rivers meet, has “historically been a place of abundant fish, wildlife and berries that have sustained us since time immemorial,” the First Nation wrote in the assessment.

Its people are called Wegwahjihna Ininiwag, or “End of the Falls People,” according to comments from Elizabeth Achneepineskum, a land-use planner with the First Nation.

The name Marten Falls likely came from a manager of a Hudson’s Bay Company trading post named Humphrey Marten, the report noted. The band became the Marten Falls First Nation in 1905 after the signing of Treaty 9.

The treaty was drawn up without Indigenous consultation, and was not translated from English, so many Indigenous signatories could not read it. According to a lawsuit over the treaty, the government of the day made promises verbally that are not reflected in the treaty’s text.

“Our ancestors lived seasonally, following the natural cycles of hunting, fishing and gathering. Colonization; however, brought drastic changes,” the report read.

“Our children were taken to residential schools, where many suffered abuse, leaving a legacy of intergenerational trauma.” Marten Falls was the home of Chanie Wenjack, an Anishinaabe boy who died of starvation and exposure after escaping a residential school, and whose story was highlighted in the multimedia project The Secret Path.

Currently, the community is only accessible by air or a winter road that’s open for a few weeks, depending on conditions. Marten Falls also faces overcrowding, limited health care and child health services and is in need of updated water treatment facilities. There are no high schools or fire and ambulance services on reserve, the assessment stated.

“Our community is remote, surrounded in silence and the beauty of nature and water. It allows for space and time to meditate in thoughts and spirit,” the First Nation wrote.

“Where we are in contact with nature, with its rhythms, smells and sounds, we can practice our traditional ancestral ways. However, our remote location also poses significant hardship, as it limits access to essential goods and services while limiting economic growth and opportunity.”

Year-round road access could help community members find jobs, access education, health care and mental health services, lower the cost of supplies like food and fuel and make travel safer, the assessment found. Ontario signed a “community development agreement” with both Marten Falls and Webequie First Nations in 2024 that commits the province to supporting “shovel-ready” projects — everything from recreation centres to commercial buildings — meant to help First Nations participate in mining road projects.

But a road could also pose challenges. The construction phase could affect different species and upset the ecological balance, according to the report. Long-term road use could also disrupt traditional activities like food harvesting or lead to “shifting social dynamics” as new waves of people and goods change the character of the region.

“The community access road will not solve all the community’s challenges, but it does represent a step in a positive direction,” the First Nation wrote.

The winter road built every year to access Marten Falls has become less and less dependable due to climate change — as is true across much of the Canadian north. The window in which it’s usable has gone from six weeks historically to as low as two weeks in 2024.

The assessment detailed how Marten Falls First Nation has been consulting since 2019 with many other Indigenous communities, including Aroland First Nation to the south, where the proposed all-season road would begin, and Eabametoong First Nation to the west.

It said Aroland First Nation supports the preferred route. But Attawapiskat First Nation near James Bay wants the provincial environmental assessments for each Ring of Fire road to be put on hold until another assessment, this one by the federal government, is complete.

That regional assessment of the overarching impacts of development in the region is the first of its kind to be planned in partnership with First Nation governments under the federal Impact Assessment Act. It’s unclear if Carney’s pledge to change Trudeau-era federal environmental rules “in order for projects to move forward” could affect it.

Environmental impacts of road include ‘unavoidable’ permanent loss of caribou habitat

Northern Ontario’s vast peatlands, a type of wetland filled with decomposing plant material called peat, make up 63 per cent of the area studied for the Marten Falls road, the assessment noted.

Peatlands are carbon sinks, meaning they take in more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release. The road development may disrupt the rate at which carbon is being stored or released.

The assessment recommended things like limiting what vegetation can be cleared, removing sand and gravel pits after reconstruction and keeping environmental monitors on site.

The preferred route for the road runs through a small portion of two remote provincial parks with no campgrounds, Ogoki River Provincial Park and Albany River Provincial Park. As a result, the project is subject to provincial rules about building new roads and water crossings inside provincial parks, as well as resource stewardship on Crown lands and provincial transport facilities.

However, two of these rules were amended last year as part of the province’s shifting approach to environmental assessments, and a third was limited in scope in 2023.

Also in the region of the proposed road, field studies have shown spawning areas for six key fish species and habitat for 37 fish species.

The assessment found construction operations could impact fish habitat through everything from blasting to clearing trees, use of machinery, sediment or dust buildup, changes in groundwater or fuel spills. Road access may also lead to more fishing. Suggested measures to mitigate the harm include avoiding herbicides, restricting activities during spawning, relocating fish, minimizing vehicles and limiting blasting.

The area studied for the road also overlaps four provincial and three federal ranges for caribou, a species at risk. The report said more than half of the study area is “valuable caribou habitat” and that moose populations have been declining. Construction threats to caribou and moose could include clearing trees, altering terrain, equipment use, dust, emissions and “lights, smells, noise and human activity.” Recommendations include avoiding ideal caribou and moose habitat and scheduling construction outside of critical periods like calving. It also suggests avoiding lakes and rivers and keeping habitat connected.

But no matter what, some loss would be “unavoidable,” and would continue after the road is finished. It could allow predators easier access and increase vehicle collisions and hunting.

“Roads and other barriers may reduce caribou movement and disconnect habitats, especially for caribou not used to roads. This can negatively impact their survival,” reads a summary of the report’s section on ungulates.

The assessment also looked at 15 bird species at risk, including the bald eagle, peregrine falcon and short-eared owl, as well as bats, amphibians, reptiles, pollinating insects and furbearers like the wolverine.

There’s a long list of potential effects. But while construction will be disruptive, the assessment said, “overall, wildlife and bird populations and distribution are projected to remain stable and healthy upon the completion of the community access road.”

The final environmental assessment and impact statement for the Marten Falls road is expected this winter. Until then, Marten Falls First Nation plans to keep consulting and engaging with community members and others.

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Residents and cottagers on the shores of Lake Winnipeg are asking the government to address environmental and infrastructure concerns from peat harvesting in the area before approving a new proposed mine.

SunGro Horticulture, the largest peat producer in North America, operates 25 peat mines across the continent, including several in Manitoba’s Washow Bay region on the west shores of Lake Winnipeg. The company is now seeking environmental approval to mine another 8.5 square kilometres of Interlake wetlands over the next 40 years. 

Joan Buss, a permanent resident of the Little Deer cottage community across the highway from an existing mine, says peat mining has already caused extensive damage to the community’s highway, released peat and other sediment into Lake Winnipeg and sparked a wildfire that destroyed six cottages. 

“I’m not anti-development; I’m not anti-economy,” Buss says in an interview. 

“But don’t make me suffer for the road, don’t make me suffer for lost property value, don’t make all Manitobans suffer by polluting the lake. If all these problems got addressed and the peat mines were able to keep operating, I’d be okay with that.”

Buss and other residents have campaigned the government to introduce stricter environmental licence conditions on SunGro and other peat producers to mitigate the damage, but feel their concerns have not been addressed. They worry more mining will only exacerbate the impacts.

SunGro is proposing to expand its Julius Lake mine and create a new mine in the Sugar Creek bog, a little more than 10 kilometres from the lake. The Sugar Creek mine would employ 20 people “once harvesting scales up,” according to company documents. SunGro did not respond to a request for comment on the proposal and residents’ concerns by publication time. 

Concerned residents are urging Manitoba’s environmental approvals branch to decide against the new mine — at least until existing concerns are addressed. Public comments on the proposal close on Monday. A petition to stop the expansion of peat mining on Lake Winnipeg and introduce a moratorium on new licences has more than 650 signatures. Residents are asking Manitobans concerned about the mine to contact their provincial representatives, sign the petition or submit comments opposing its development.

Manitoba’s peatlands store massive amounts of carbon

Peat is a carbon-rich accumulation of moss and other organic material, formed as plants decompose in sodden bogs. Peatlands cover about one-third of Manitoba, and more than 1.13 million square kilometres across Canada. 

According to the United Nations Environment Programme, peatlands are among nature’s most productive carbon sinks, meaning they store more carbon than they release. Globally, peatlands represent just three per cent of land cover but store twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests combined. 

Because of its ability to store water, peat is used as a soil additive in gardening and agriculture. Canada is the world’s largest peat producer, exporting approximately 1.3 million tonnes of peat annually. Manitoba is a major player in the country’s peat industry. Peat production directly employs about 300 Manitobans and contributes approximately $113 million towards the provincial GDP, according to a statement provided by an unnamed provincial spokesperson.

To harvest the moss, producers must clear cut forests and drain wetlands before dried peat can be vacuumed off the surface. 

As peat is extracted from wetlands the plant matter starts to decompose, releasing stored carbon. In 2021, Environment Canada pegged national carbon emissions from peat production at about 2.1 million tonnes — equivalent to consuming almost five million barrels of oil. 

“We have more peat bogs than most countries in the world and we have a responsibility to take care of them,” Eric Reder, director of the Manitoba chapter of the Wilderness Committee, says. 

“It’s wishful thinking from extractive industry that they can extract this much carbon, put it out into the climate and everything will be fine in the future.”

Impacts ‘crept up on’ residents, they say

When Ken Buechler bought his Pebblestone Beach cottage at a provincial auction in the early 2010s, he was sold on a pristine, forested cottage area with access to a sandy beach on the shores of Lake Winnipeg.  

“What they didn’t tell us is there were all these outstanding peat leases,” Buechler says in an interview. 

Manitoba has mined its peatlands for more than 80 years, but mining in the swampy Interlake region boomed in anticipation of a provincial moratorium on peat harvesting licences in 2011. The moratorium was in place from 2011 to 2015, though licence applications under consideration when the ban came into effect were ultimately approved.

As the first wave of new peat mines were proposed for the Washow Bay peninsula — a predominantly recreational area on the western side of Lake Winnipeg, home to some 250 cottages and multiple provincial parks, including Beaver Creek and Hecla-Grindstone — some residents and cottagers pushed back. 

“The group here has basically appealed and opposed every one of these things unsuccessfully,” Buechler says. 

A few kilometres up the road in Little Deer, Buss says the peat companies didn’t seem like bad neighbours at first.

“People from the area worked there and didn’t describe anything horrible,” she says. “A bit like the frog in boiling water … the reality sort of crept up on us.”

Increased truck traffic made the road almost impassable, Buss says.

“It’s in really, really rough shape,” she says. “It takes a ridiculous amount of time for me to pick my way through the mud and the ruts and the other hazards to get anywhere — and I don’t have a choice. I don’t have another road.”

Then peat started washing up on the beaches.

“We started noticing these big peat drifts on our beach. They used to come and go sometimes, depending on the wind. This year we don’t even see it moving much, it seems to be permanently there,” says Brock Huebner, a Pebblestone Beach cottager. 

Residents have noted peat accumulation at several beaches, creeks and waterways in the area, including in Beaver Creek Provincial Park. When they asked Manitoba’s environmental regulators to investigate the peat accumulation on the shoreline and provide data about the impact of peat harvests on water quality, Huebner says they were told to file freedom of information requests.

The most severe impacts came in summer 2020, when a fire at a SunGro peat mine spread into Beaver Creek Provincial Park, destroying six cottages and stranding nearby residents behind an RCMP blockade for two days.

“Nobody could get any information on how they were doing, fighting the fire. We had no Hydro, we had no phones. We’re not even sure if the government knew we existed,” Buss says.

Residents say they still don’t know what mitigation measures the company has taken to prevent future wildfires. 

First Nation acts to limit peat harvesting

It’s not just the road damage and muddy beaches that nearby residents are worried about. 

Fisher River Cree Nation, which is in close proximity to the peat mines, has stressed the harvesting activities were approved without the nation’s consent and have destroyed habitat for local wildlife — especially for moose. The harvesting also limits the nation’s access to traditional medicines and has contributed to pollution in Lake Winnipeg, according to a Fisher River press release. The First Nation asked the federal government to review the proposed Sugar Creek mining project under the Impact Assessment Act, but in January, Environment and Climate Change Minister Steven Guilbeault determined the mine did not meet the criteria for federal environmental assessment. 

Months later, the Environment Ministry granted Fisher River $5.1 million in federal funding to conserve their traditional lands by preventing peat mining. In July, Fisher River announced it had purchased peat harvesting licences from SunGro, covering an area of more than 200 square kilometres. 

“By purchasing the licence, [Fisher River] has effectively removed all areas that were licenced to Sungro for peat harvesting on the west side of Fisher Bay,” the release says. “[Fisher River] will not harvest the peat moss there.”

Manitoba is not considering a moratorium on new licences

According to a provincial statement, Manitoba is not currently considering any moratoriums on peat mining. The province’s peatland stewardship legislation — introduced in 2015 — instead allows the government to designate “provincially significant peatlands” as protected areas. In 2023, the province designated the first two protected peatlands, Moswa Meadows and Fish Lake Fen, which comprise 280 square kilometres and store more than eight million tonnes of carbon. 

Peat producers are also required to develop climate change adaptation measures and an emissions reduction strategy, and to provide annual emissions reporting, the provincial spokesperson said. 

“Examples of [greenhouse gas] emissions mitigation measures used by peat harvesting companies include minimizing land clearing, progressively restoring harvested areas, high standards of vehicle maintenance and limiting vehicle idling,” the statement added. 

But residents of Washow Bay say their experiences show that current mitigation measures just aren’t working.

In addition to a moratorium on new peat licences near Lake Winnipeg, residents want the province to analyze the cumulative effects of peat mining in the area and tighten the conditions on existing licences. Above all, they want better communication from the province about the impacts of peat mining on their air, land and water. 

“If they allow this new mine, we’re going to see more pollution on the beach, we’re going to see the local wildlife stressed even more and we’re going to see really bad outcomes on the highway,” Huebner says. “I’d like to see it halted.”

Julia-Simone Rutgers is a reporter covering environmental issues in Manitoba. Her position is part of a partnership between The Narwhal and the Winnipeg Free Press.

Updated on Nov. 17, 2024, 11:47 a.m. PT: This story was updated to correct that peatlands cover 1.13 million square kilometres in Canada, and not 113,000 square kilometres as previously stated.

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From the air, what stands out is the water. Rivers and streams too numerous to count, winding through a vast expanse of peatlands and forests, reaching towards the glimmering waters of James Bay.

This landscape hundreds of kilometres northeast of Timmins, Ont., is among the most pristine, biodiverse regions left on the planet. The chilly saltwater of Weenebeg and Washaybeyoh, or James Bay and Hudson Bay, is home to belugas, narwhals and walruses. Eelgrass meadows sway in the shallows. Dozens of bird species migrate through tidal marshes and coastal wildflower meadows. The world’s southernmost population of polar bears hunts seals on winter sea ice. Further inland, herds of caribou migrate through one of the largest complexes of carbon-rich peatlands in the world and sturgeon swim in some of the last undammed rivers in Ontario. Wetlands and bogs dot the landscape in every direction. 

The Omushkego people have understood the importance of these lands and waters since time immemorial. The soggy muskeg of the lowlands, for example, stores an enormous amount of carbon, helping regulate the global climate — Omushkego call them the Breathing Lands, the lungs of the world. The shoreline of the bays is called the Birthing Place. Gigantic flocks of birds migrate from across North America to breed here and only here. 

Now, the federal government is starting to catch on to the region’s ecological importance. The Breathing Lands and huge sections of the bays are at the centre of a recent push to establish a massive Indigenous-led conservation project at the northern edge of what’s now called Ontario.

“It is up to us to fight to keep it green, to keep it pristine, to keep it breathing,” Amos Wesley, a deputy chief of Mushkegowuk Council, told a crowd at a celebration earlier this year. 

The project is led by the Mushkegowuk Council, acting on behalf of the seven Swampy Cree First Nations it serves in far northern Ontario, and two others who have signed onto conservation efforts. Exactly what “Indigenous-led” will mean for governance and decision-making in practice isn’t quite settled yet. Portions of the work are also moving forward under the federal Project Finance for Permanence program, announced in 2022, which set aside $800 million for four key Indigenous-led conservation projects. 

In February, Mushkegowuk Council and Parks Canada jointly announced the feasibility study for the first part of the plan, a marine conservation area, had been formally accepted. Representatives from Omushkego communities gathered to celebrate the milestone for three days in Kashechewan, a community nestled on the banks of the Albany River near Weenebeg. They hope to have initial agreements for a land-based conservation project signed this summer. The council is also set to negotiate funding and final details with Parks Canada on the marine conservation area this spring.

Consensus is vital to co-ordinate work on such an enormous scale, but getting everyone to the table is a challenge. Mushkegowuk communities have few reasons to trust Canadian governments, and many reasons to be skeptical about partnering with them. 

“It seems to be a lot easier to get consensus from the community members. They all agree that we need to protect the land and resources,” Lawrence Martin, the head of Mushkegowuk Council’s lands and resources department, told reporters in Kashechewan.

“But it’s the chief and councils that are afraid to make that commitment to sign any document still. I think it just requires more time … for them to understand it.”

Though some might feel it’s moving too quickly, Martin said, it’s really a window of opportunity years in the making — one that he worries may close if the council waits too long.

The council declared its commitment to protecting the Breathing Lands and the Birthing Place in 1974, and has resolutions on record as early as the 1980s, calling for the creation of an Omushkego Tribal Conservation Authority to conserve lands and waters. Now, they may finally have the opportunity to realize those ambitions, and transform them into legal, permanent protections. 

“Finally, after 50 years … it’s here,” Martin said. 

Grappling with a fraught history in a race against time

Treaty 9, which covers a gigantic swath of the most northern portions of Ontario, was based on dishonesty from the beginning. When it was negotiated in the early 1900s, Crown representatives said Indigenous leaders would retain the right to use their territories as they always had, but inserted a clause in English stating the opposite. The Treaty document wasn’t translated into Cree or any other Indigenous language. Now, 10 First Nations are suing the Canadian and Ontario governments over what they allege is a century of broken promises. 

The impacts of colonization persist today in the form of long-term boil-water advisories, housing crises, youth suicides, poverty and high food costs. Trauma from residential schools reverberates across generations, while Canada’s child welfare system continues to separate families and communities. Many young people still have to leave northern communities to access education. And the creation of the national Parks Canada system dispossessed Indigenous people of their homelands, a colonial legacy that left deep scars.

Community trust isn’t the only hurdle: the proposed conservation area lies within land the Ontario government claims jurisdiction over, and so far, the province hasn’t publicly supported Indigenous-led conservation in general. It has, however, granted mineral claims in the far northern reaches of the province — mining companies will now have to be part of the conversation too. 

Navigating all of that takes time, and this project might not have a ton of it. The idea has federal support and dollars right now, right this second — which could easily be erased if the governing Liberals lose the next election, scheduled for June 2026, an outcome polls suggest is not only possible but likely. 

A spokesperson for federal Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, the current frontrunner in the polls, didn’t respond when asked whether the party would support Indigenous-led conservation work if elected.

To plan for large-scale conservation, ‘we had to pay attention to what the people were seeing’

Omushkego leaders have been talking about the need for large-scale conservation in their homelands for decades. In the 1960s and ’80s, plans to dam the mouth of Weenebeg sparked massive backlash — research found it could knock out all marine life in the bay and the project failed, despite support from then-prime minister Brian Mulroney. Mining has also been a longtime environmental concern. The De Beers Victor Mine near Attawapiskat First Nation, which operated from 2008 to 2019, is an example of why. A group from Attawapiskat blockaded the diamond mine in 2013 amid concerns over whether the economic benefits of the project were actually helping the community. The company pleaded guilty in 2019 to failing to report data on mercury levels in local waterways. 

The current push for conservation here began around 2019 as word spread of the Grand Council of the Crees’ plans to create a protected area on the Quebec side of James Bay. The same year, the federal Liberals signalled openness to such projects, announcing commitments to conserve 25 per cent of the land and oceans in Canada by 2025, then 30 per cent by 2030. 

Right now, Martin is at the helm of the project. He’s someone with a long record of running various things, and of convincing people to get on board. Martin grew up in Moose River Crossing, a small northern Cree community, moving south to North Bay, Ont., for high school. He’s a musician who’s toured the world under the name Wapistan. He worked for a police service, and at a radio station. He ran a health centre. He’s been mayor of two Ontario cities: Sioux Lookout and Cochrane. He’s also been Mushkegowuk Council grand chief twice. 

The Omushkego plan Martin and his team have been working on, detailed in hundreds of pages of a feasibility study and a draft plan, is for an Indigenous-led conservation project about five times the size of Nova Scotia. The first piece, and the one that’s furthest along, is a marine conservation area. It includes a 20-kilometre coastal buffer — an area called Aski-Gitchi Bayou, or the place where the land expands out into the waters — along with the western portion of Weeneebeg (James Bay) and a decent chunk of southern Washaybeyoh (Hudson Bay). The total area being studied is 91,000 square kilometres, with 1,290 kilometres of coastline — longer than that of Hawaii, and roughly the distance from Toronto to Winnipeg. 

The project strategy weaves western science with a wealth of Traditional Knowledge. The feasibility study for the Mushkegowuk marine conservation, for example, includes 124  interviews with 94 Omushkego land users. “We’ve only begun to scratch the surface on these interviews,” the report reads. “They are an irreplaceable source of knowledge and information.” 

What they heard from community members, Martin said, was fear of the changes people are already seeing as global temperatures rise. New species of birds and fish moving farther north, caribou migrating differently. This past winter was particularly, unsettlingly warm, with a combination of an El Niño weather pattern and climate change leading to a lack of snow and melting ice roads. 

“We had to pay attention to what the people were seeing, what they were saying,” Martin told reporters in February. 

Protecting the bays isn’t enough on its own: they are fed by rivers and streams, which carry any potential pollutants from the peatlands they flow through. It’s all interconnected. And so a second piece protects the land, about 130,000 square kilometres of wetlands and 75,000 square kilometres of boreal forests in the boggy Hudson and James Bay Lowlands, which hold approximately 35 billion tonnes of carbon.

The council calls the overall project Omushkego Wahkohtowin. Omushkego refers to the people who have stewarded the land for generations. Wahkohtowin is a Cree word for relationships, the ways humans are interconnected with each other and the natural world.

“The Omushkego Wahkohtowin is a step that we can take to confront the challenges that our communities and our lands face, leading to a harmonious balance between economic development and protecting our natural environment,” Mushkegowuk Council Grand Chief Leo Friday wrote in the intro to the project’s draft conservation plan.

The plan says Omushkego Wahkohtowin may be implemented as a combination of different conservation tools. Provincial and national parks are an option, along with wildlife sanctuaries, wilderness areas and other possibilities to be determined by the nations involved. Most importantly, though, the council is trying to assure communities that Indigenous Rights and title will remain for the 15,000 Omushkego people living in the region — a concern at the forefront of many community members’ minds, even as they simultaneously worry about how mining and development could impact the landscape.

“I use the land, my dad uses the land, my uncles use the land,” Mushkegowuk Council Deputy Chief Natasha Martin told the group assembled in Kashechewan. “I want you to understand how passionate I am for the land and how important this project really is.” 

The process is already markedly different from historical conservation projects in what’s now known as northern Ontario. When the provincial government created Polar Bear Provincial Park in the 1980s on the shore where Weenebeg and Washaybeyoh meet, it did little to no consultation with First Nations. Another project from the 1920s, the Chapleau Game Preserve, stripped Michipicoten and Brunswick House First Nations of their rights to hunt and harvest on 700,000 hectares of their traditional territories. 

Indigenous people have been fighting for their rights to be recognized for over a century. In recent years, there’s finally global recognition that Indigenous stewardship is crucial to protecting nature and lowering carbon emissions. A growing list of precedent-setting Indigenous-led conservation projects reflect the importance of both rights and caretaking, and some have also merged sustainability with economic development. One is the Great Bear Rainforest in British Columbia, established in 2007 using same federal framework Mushkegowuk Council is now working to leverage. The original agreement for the Great Bear Rainforest included $120 million in funding from a mix of governments and private foundations — it has since generated nearly $300 million more in new investments, money used in part to “acquire, expand and create 123 local businesses,” according to the federal government. 

An October 2023 explanatory document prepared by the Mushkegowuk Council said it will likely need to spend $660 million over the course of a decade. Of that, it expects $100 million to come from Parks Canada for the marine conservation project, $200 million from the federal Project Finance for Permanence program, and $50 million from philanthropy —the Wildlands League and Oceans North have also lent support. The remaining $310 million has yet to be secured. Eventually it will need revenue sources: one option is some form of tourism, done in accordance with Omushkego principles. 

The vision, Martin says, is an economy with conservation at its centre. He says success will require an interconnected web of systems that ensures communities have the expertise, support and infrastructure they need to steward the land in accordance with their traditions, and are compensated fairly for it.

Indigenous Guardians — Omushkego people out on the land — would patrol and manage the land, and conduct research and monitoring. Martin wants to see Guardians in each Mushkegowuk community: a robust program including staff housing, other infrastructure, plus local post-secondary training in science and Traditional Knowledge. With food security being a continual problem, the plan also ties in traditional harvesting programs and plans for agriculture and greenhouses. 

Mushkegowuk Council is also working on initiatives emphasizing the inherent connections between conservation and Omushkego culture. Land-based healing and detox programs are part of it. So is an existing council project, an artist collective called Oshichikesiwuk Nanipek, or those who create along the waters of the coast. Martin, a Juno Award winner who shredded onstage at the Kashechewan gathering in February, is part of the group.

“Being an artist, a lot of my inspiration is the land. I’m always paying attention, I’m always looking at it and the changes, learning how to read the land,” Christina Bekintis, a painter in the collective who also goes by Fire Wolf, said. 

“It’s good to bring artists together with conservation and climate change … they’re really going to notice the changes to the land.”

Can mining and conservation go hand in hand in northern Ontario?

Indigenous-led conservation is happening whether governments affirm it or not. That recognition, though, can go a long way in ensuring First Nations’ rights are respected and upheld under colonial laws as well as Indigenous ones. Often, it can mean agreements that define how industries like mining and logging are allowed to operate in the area.

To date, though, the Ontario government and industry have been pursuing a different vision for the economy here. One anchored by mining, specifically for critical minerals — highly sought-after materials needed to make fossil fuel-free technology like electric vehicles. Worldwide, companies and governments are scrambling to secure access to critical minerals and one place they’re looking at is an area of the Hudson Bay Lowlands called the Ring of Fire, where nickel deposits lie beneath the sensitive peatlands. 

An October 2023 memo from Natural Resources Canada, obtained by The Narwhal through access to information legislation, internally flagged this potential clash of values. The department noted the “possible overlap of the Ring of Fire Eagle’s Nest project within the [Omushkego Wahkohtowin] area.” The Eagle’s Nest project is owned by Ring of Fire Metals, whose parent company is Wyloo Metals, a venture backed by Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest. 

The final boundaries of the Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area aren’t set, so it’s unclear whether existing Ring of Fire mining claims will actually be a part of it. Martin says mining and conservation can co-exist — Omushkego Wahkohtowin would just define which land can be used for each. 

“Mining companies we spoke to also agree with that. They need certainty,” Martin told reporters in February. “They need to know where conservation is and whatnot. So I think we can be headed in that direction, in the same lane.”

Mushkegowuk Council brought that messaging to a major mining industry conference in Toronto in April, with one staff member posing for photos in a shirt that read: “Conservation and critical minerals strategy working hand in hand.” Afterward, community members questioned the sentiment — Grand Chief Friday said the point was to tell mining companies that conservation has to be part of their plans.

“This is already happening in some Mushkegowuk communities. [Taykwa Tagamou Nation], the Chapleau Cree and Missinabee Cree are already involved in critical mineral extraction, and at the same time are backing conservation,” Friday wrote in a statement soon after the conference.

“Allowing critical mineral extraction on First Nations land is up to each individual First Nation and its members. The Mushkegowuk Council is not making that decision for them.”

The elephant in the room in all of this is Ontario. It’s not clear how Omushkego Wahkohtowin moves forward without the province’s involvement, given that Ontario claims jurisdiction over the land much of the proposal would cover. Premier Doug Ford’s government hasn’t exactly been enthusiastic about the idea of Indigenous-led conservation. In 2022, an internal provincial government document noted Ontario was concerned the federal government’s plans for Indigenous-led conservation were encroaching on provincial jurisdiction. 

A handpicked provincial panel has also recommended Ontario pursue the concept, noting international consensus that lands managed by Indigenous Peoples contain about 80 per cent of the planet’s diminishing biodiversity. The provincial government mostly didn’t heed the advice. Ontario did agree to transfer land for the future Ojibway National Urban Park in Windsor, Ont., which will be co-managed by Parks Canada and at least one local First Nation. But it has also allowed a flood of mining claims inside Grassy Narrows First Nation’s Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area in northwestern Ontario, despite the nation’s move to forbid industrial activity there.

In Kashechewan in February, however, Martin told reporters he thought the province might be warming to the idea — particularly Ontario Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford. “He actually volunteered to be our champion,” Martin said. 

When The Narwhal asked Rickford about Martin’s comments a couple of weeks later, the minister said he’s open to it.

“We’ve taken a preliminary look at what they’re proposing,” the minister said. 

“We’d like to try to understand a little bit more about it, but we want to ensure that all First Nations communities’ interests are aligned … the Government of Ontario has a keen interest in legacy infrastructure, prosperous communities, which very much includes First Nations communities.”

Wyloo spokesperson Leanne Franco declined to comment since the boundaries of the area to be conserved aren’t final. Juno Corp., another mining company with mineral holdings in the Ring of Fire, didn’t answer a request for comment. 

Conservation plans move forward, facing an undercurrent of worries

The project is moving forward in the face of a whole undercurrent of worries — concerns about whether the federal government can be trusted, whether youth and elders are being properly consulted, whether colonial laws can be used to heal colonial damage and even if this whole thing might be too big to pull off.

For the better part of a week in February, representatives from all nine of the communities involved — Attawapiskat, Chapleau Cree, Fort Albany, Kashechewan Cree, Missanabie Cree, Moose Cree, Weenusk and Fort Severn First Nations, along with Taykwa Tagamou Nation — gathered with guests in Kashechewan. Inside the community’s high school, a bustling kitchen served moose stew topped with bannock, burgers, goose and carafe after carafe of coffee and Labrador tea. Inside the gymnasium, people from the communities filled rows of plastic chairs while officials took turns at the microphone to herald the milestone of the day, the approval of the marine conservation project’s feasibility study. 

More than once, the joy of how far the project had come was tempered by questions about what happens next.

“I urge all young people to be careful of what you agree to,” Madeline Scott, a councillor at Fort Albany First Nation, said. 

“I urge the leaders, be careful what you are going to agree to.” 

On the celebration’s final night, Martin stood on the side of the room, mind racing, already trying to figure out how to take what he’d heard and fold it into the next phase of Omushkego Wahkohtowin. How to make the plan better, how to get more people who were skeptical or scared on board. The coming months, he was set to tour the communities participating in the project to update them on their progress, to hear more feedback and incorporate it into whatever happens next.

“Let’s work together,” he had urged them a few moments earlier, in his closing remarks for the night. “Protect our lands, protect our waters.”

Updated April 26, 2024 at 9:54 a.m. ET: This article was updated to correct the spelling of Christina Bekintis.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

There’s an intergovernmental showdown underway in Canada over who gets a say in major projects with environmental impacts, and Ontario is entering the arena in a big way.

The fight revolves around the federal Impact Assessment Act, a law that gives the federal government the power to review the environmental and other effects of big projects — like mines, highways or pipelines — and even axe them if it decides they’re not in the public interest.

So far, Alberta has been the loudest objector to the regime. Calling it a case of federal overreach, the Prairie province took the issue all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, which released an opinion last month finding the act “largely unconstitutional” but leaving it in place as governments negotiate a path forward. Days later, Ontario announced two legal challenges, both of which ask a federal judge to strike down the Impact Assessment Act once and for all, leaving more projects in the hands of the provinces.

“We need the federal government to respect these processes and not stand in the way of critical projects,” Ontario Attorney General Doug Downey told reporters on Oct. 24. 

The challenges relate to two high-profile Ontario government projects. The first is Highway 413, which would carve a 60 kilometre path through the outer suburbs and Greenbelt north of Toronto. The second is a plan to redevelop Ontario Place, a defunct theme park on Toronto’s waterfront that has become a flashpoint for environmental concern. 

Downey said the legal steps are meant to ensure the province can move forward with “certainty” on other key projects, too — like the push to build access roads to the Ring of Fire, an ecologically sensitive and remote region in the Far North of Ontario with deposits of key minerals. 

Critics, however, say it’s unclear whether Ontario’s lawsuits will deliver that certainty anytime soon. 

That’s because the Supreme Court’s ruling wasn’t a slam dunk for provinces seeking to overturn the Impact Assessment Act. While the court did find the current law is mostly unconstitutional and infringes on provincial jurisdiction, it also affirmed the federal government has the right to do impact assessments focused on issues within the federal domain — like fish habitat, migratory birds, federally protected species, Indigenous Rights and bodies of water that people travel on.

The federal government, meanwhile, has made it clear it doesn’t intend to stop doing environmental reviews. Instead, it plans to tweak the law to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling. As that work continues in the background, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault has said Ottawa will continue to assess projects already being reviewed — like Highway 413 and a few road projects proposed for the Ring of Fire — while making sure the process is focused on clear issues of federal responsibility. 

Lawyers and legal scholars are still unpacking the court’s decision and trying to figure out what it means. Whenever the federal government releases its updated impact assessment law, that will add another layer of complexity. Joseph Castrilli, a lawyer with the Canadian Environmental Law Association, said adding more lawsuits into the mix now might be premature, and likely guarantees governments will continue to spar over the issue for years to come.

“A case like this has the high potential to end up in front of the Supreme Court again,” Castrilli said of Ontario’s court applications. “I think this exercise is going to go on for quite a while now.”

Kate Kempton, a lawyer with the B.C.-based firm Woodward and Company, who represents several First Nations with concerns about resource extraction in the Ring of Fire, put it more bluntly. “Many Supreme Court decisions are messy and I think they’re very helpful to keep lawyers employed,” she told The Narwhal. 

Downey acknowledged last week that the lawsuits and any resolution to the current upheaval could take some time. But he also said the federal government’s response to the Supreme Court had created more confusion and Ontario “can’t wait” any longer. 

Guilbeault, meanwhile, has called Ontario’s rhetoric on the issue “ridiculous.”

Here’s what the court challenges could mean for Highway 413, Ontario Place and the Ring of Fire. Spoiler alert: a lot is up in the air. 

Fate of Highway 413 fuzzy, especially in the wake of the Greenbelt scandal

Highway 413 is one of the Ford government’s flagship projects, a pillar of the campaign that led to the Progressive Conservatives’ re-election in 2022. With its planned route running through conservation land, Ontario’s Greenbelt and the habitats of species at risk north of Toronto, the project has also come under fire from critics concerned about its environmental impact.

That criticism led to the planned highway becoming mired in bureaucratic gridlock: responding to a request from environmental groups in May 2021, the federal government announced it would subject Highway 413 to the impact assessment process. At the time, the federal government said it saw “clear areas of federal concern” — especially about impacts to three federally protected species at risk, the western chorus frog, red-headed woodpecker and rapids clubtail dragonfly. 

The project has failed to move substantially forward since. More than two years later, Ontario has not filed the initial report needed to properly start the impact assessment process. Correspondence between the two governments, obtained by The Narwhal last year through access to information legislation, shows the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada has raised red flags about federally protected species at risk along the route of the highway, and about whether Ontario has properly consulted First Nations about the project.

In recent weeks, the project has come back into the spotlight as environmentalists — galvanized after Premier Doug Ford backed down from his decision to allow housing development in sections of the Greenbelt — have turned their focus to other provincial projects affecting the protected area. 

Right now, the only thing that’s certain is Highway 413’s fate remains very much uncertain.

In its notice of application filed last week, the Ontario government argued the federal review process “has resulted in significant delays to a project that is of the highest priority to the province.”

“For over two years, Ontario has been engaged in back-and-forth discussions with the [Impact Assessment Agency of Canada] which had numerous follow-up questions and requests for information or revisions that are not connected to the reasons why the minister designated the project,” the court filing said.

“Ontario has faced significant uncertainty and delays in progressing preliminary design and its own environmental assessment of the project, in part, because the agency has been unwilling to approve the fieldwork required to complete this work.”

Environmental lawyer Castrilli said the Ontario government might have a tough time arguing Highway 413 is an example of why the Impact Assessment Act should be struck down, since it involves issues the federal government is at least partially responsible for. As well as its effect on federally protected species at risk, the highway would cross dozens of waterways, including several rivers, which could trigger federal responsibility for fish habitat. 

“The [act] needs to be revamped to basically keep the feds in their lane, but that doesn’t mean that projects that affect federal jurisdiction suddenly get a get-out-of-jail card,” Castrilli said.

In a news conference on Oct. 26, Guilbeault was dismissive of Ontario’s complaints about Highway 413. 

“We’ve been waiting for two years for the Ontario government to provide the necessary documents so that the evaluation of the project can start,” he said. “We’re not the ones holding off.”

Federal decision to review Ontario Place on hold while impact assessment act is rewritten

Until 2012, when it was shuttered by the previous Liberal government, Ontario Place in Toronto was a provincially operated theme park. Residents still use the aging waterfront venue for outdoor recreation including walking, bird-watching and paddling, and the redevelopment of the site has become another signature project for the Ford government — and another lightning rod for criticism.

Ontario is pushing to build a 65,000-square-metre indoor waterpark and spa with a parking garage, a plan that’s sparked concern about potential environmental impacts and loss of public green space. The building, to be run by Austrian spa company Therme, would be the equivalent of six or seven storeys high and take up most of the park’s west island, though Therme has said the design includes more public park space than currently exists there. Other concerns revolve around the Ontario government’s environmental assessment of the redevelopment, which excluded the spa building: construction of the spa and parking garage involves clearing trees and filling in areas of the park’s shoreline on Lake Ontario. The site is also home to several species at risk.

The federal government isn’t currently doing an impact assessment for Ontario Place. But it is currently weighing whether it should — the grassroots group Ontario Place For All wrote to Guilbeault in September to ask him to get involved, arguing that the Ontario government’s plans would trigger several areas of federal concern, including fish habitat and climate change.

“While it is clear that the relative size of this project may not be as significant as a large mine or a major highway, this project and what it says about Canada’s commitment to climate responsibilities is significant,” Ontario Place For All said.

Usually, Guilbeault would have 90 days, or until Dec. 27, 2023,  to decide whether to grant or deny the request. But now, the whole thing is on hold. The federal government has announced it will pause Guilbeault’s ability to start new impact assessments while it rewrites the law. There’s no telling what could happen with Ontario Place and when — or how the lawsuits and updated rules might come into it. Guilbeault hasn’t said when the new rules might be finished, only that the federal government is working as quickly as it can.

That lack of clarity is the Ontario government’s stated reason for filing a lawsuit about Ontario Place in particular. 

“Ontario and anyone performing work related to the project face uncertainty as to the potential legal impacts of taking steps to advance its construction,” the province’s court filing said.

“Ontario should not be deterred from taking action to build a parking garage on provincial land by an act that the Supreme Court of Canada has found to be unconstitutional.”

Last month, Guilbeault denied that the federal government had held up Ontario Place. 

“We’re not involved in Ontario Place,” he told reporters. “Like, it’s a fabrication.”

Kempton said it seems like the Ontario government is attempting a court challenge with Ontario Place as a political manoeuvre, given that the federal government hasn’t even decided to review it yet. The case is probably premature since no one knows what Ottawa’s rewritten rules will look like, she added, but it could help clarify how the courts are going to interpret the Supreme Court judgment.

“This is a bit of a weird situation, but I don’t know that these applications are going to really get anybody anywhere,” she said. 

Outcome of court cases could have implications for the Ring of Fire

The Ontario government hasn’t filed any court challenges related to the Ring of Fire — a remote region 540 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay, Ont., which the province is pushing to turn into a mining hub. But the outcome of any court case challenging the Impact Assessment Act could have huge implications for the future of the Far North region, which is blanketed with carbon-rich and ecologically sensitive peatlands. 

Webequie and Marten Falls First Nations are leading the charge on three road projects that could connect the Ring of Fire, which is currently only accessible by air or ice road, to the provincial highway network to the south. The roads would connect their communities to better services and economic opportunities, the two nations have said.

Permanent roads could also enable mining. Other nations like Neskantaga First Nation, one of those represented by Kempton, have not consented and say the Ontario government isn’t meaningfully consulting them about processes that will shape their futures for generations. 

Right now, there are already three federal impact assessments underway for the proposals: the Webequie Supply Road, led by Webequie First Nation, the Marten Falls First Nation-led Marten Falls Community Access Road and the Northern Link Road, which is jointly led by both communities. (All three are undergoing provincial reviews as well.) 

All three federal reviews could be impacted, depending on the outcome of Ontario’s lawsuits.

“That could go a variety of different ways that I can’t even contemplate right now,” Kempton said.

Another layer of complexity comes from a regional assessment that’s currently underway in the full Ring of Fire area. Regional assessments are a fairly new federal process included in the Impact Assessment Act. They allow Ottawa to embark on a review that’s broader than any specific project — instead, it can consider the cumulative impacts of many projects, or collect data to inform decisions down the line.

A lot rests on the regional assessment in the Ring of Fire. Technically speaking, Ontario could forge ahead with its plans to facilitate road construction while the review plays out. But the province wants federal funding to advance the work, and National Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has said he won’t decide whether to provide that funding until various environmental reviews, including the regional assessment, are complete.

The Supreme Court didn’t mention regional assessments in its decision, and the federal government has said it plans to continue all regional assessments since they don’t appear to be affected by the ruling. But it’s not clear whether this type of assessment could be affected later if the courts do strike down the act entirely. 

The federal government has said it’s unlikely the law would ever be fully struck down, since the Supreme Court affirmed that Ottawa has the right to do impact assessments in some form.

“It’s important to recognize that the Supreme Court explicitly upheld the right of the government of Canada to implement impact assessment legislation and to collaborate with provinces on environmental protection,” Kaitlin Power, a spokesperson for Guilbeault, wrote in an email.

“We look forward to ensuring a collaborative process where good rules are in place to ensure good projects move forward.”  

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Wetlands across the globe have long served as natural repositories for humanity’s toxic legacy, absorbing and retaining hundreds to thousands of years’ worth of pollution. 

These swampy vaults have quietly been trapping air and water pollution for thousands of years, protecting the world from some of the worst effects of lead, mercury, copper, nickel and other poisonous materials. 

Now, however, a combination of human disruptions and ever increasing wildfires threaten to open these vaults, unleashing their long dormant toxic contents upon the world. 

Peat has a tremendous ability to capture retain toxic metals

The soil in many wetlands is composed of dead and decaying vegetation known as peat. Peat accumulates because perpetually sopping wetland conditions prevent the complete decomposition of dead vegetation. As these deposits accumulate, they form peatlands.

For centuries, peat has been drained, dried and extracted for heating fuel where wood is scarce. Though humans have long burned bricks of peat in their homes, climate change and wetland draining are drying entire wetlands, transforming them into perfect fuel for huge smoky wildfires.

Centuries of fallout from industrial processes such as smelting has deposited toxic metals in wetlands hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away from their point of origin. Human and industrial wastewater has, in places, added to this burden. 

Wetlands have absorbed and stored these contaminants, holding them back from vulnerable aquatic ecosystems and saving humans from ingesting them. 

Peat has a tremendous ability to capture and retain toxic metals by binding the metals to the peat itself through a process called adsorption. Once bound, the toxic metals are immobilized and pose little threat to the surrounding environment unless the peatland is disturbed, like from a wildfire.

Climate change and human activity degrade wetlands, with frightening results

Human activities such as road building and resource extraction have seriously disrupted wetland ecosystems, leaving drained wetlands vulnerable to fire, as Canadians saw in the catastrophic Fort McMurray, Alta., wildfire of 2016.

As climate change and human actions further degrade wetlands, the resulting wildfires threaten to return humanity’s toxic legacy. This cycle carries frightening implications for the health of people and the environment.

In 2015, Indonesia recorded about 35,000 excess deaths after a major peatland fire. Meanwhile, Canada and the United States are far from immune from exposure to peat fire smoke. In early June 2023, cities as far away as Washington, D.C., and New York were blanketed in thick smoke from peat fires in northern Canada, which is home to many of the world’s peatlands.

At the same time, climate change is accelerating the drying of peatlands everywhere, turning their huge stores of carbon into a carbon burden. Furthermore, as concentrated pollutants build up in wetlands, the accumulation of toxic metals is killing plants that act as their natural lid, allowing moisture to escape and speeding the conversion of more wetlands to tinderboxes. 

Once ignited, peatland fires are difficult to contain as they can smoulder for weeks, months or even years. They produce copious amounts of smoke and ash, filling the air with microscopic particles.

Even without metal pollution, these airborne particles can cause severe illness and death. Making a bad situation worse, toxic metals once safely stored in wetlands bind to these airborne particles and spread everywhere.

Nature-based solutions can offer hope for degraded wetlands

As with many global environmental issues, it is easy to feel helpless to control such a huge and complex problem. Fortunately, nature-based solutions can have a substantial positive impact on keeping this toxic legacy from being released. 

We can restore drying or dried-out wetlands back to their original state as functional ecosystems through, at the most basic level, preventing them from draining down canals and other human infrastructure. Indeed, even without further intervention, re-wetting wetlands can reduce their risk of wildfire ignition. However, restoration must be managed carefully, to avoid flushing toxic metals from wetlands into neighbouring streams, rivers and lakes.

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In the wilderness north of Great Slave Lake, in Canada’s Northwest Territories, mining companies are eyeing a potential treasure trove of critical minerals as demand for lithium, nickel, graphite and copper has risen sharply to meet the needs of the burgeoning electric vehicle and solar power industries.

The cost of mining in this and many other roadless parts of northern Canada used to be prohibitive. That changed last December, when the Canadian government announced its highly anticipated critical minerals strategy, which offers mining companies generous tax breaks, $3 billion in additional funding incentives, and a promise to fast-track the federal environmental impact review process.

While the strategy is being touted as a way of helping the world transition to a post-carbon economy, some environmentalists fear that it will result in drained wetlands, diverted streams and the disturbance of carbon-rich peatlands. Over the past three decades, the mining industry has walked away from these and many other environmental liabilities, leaving Canadian taxpayers with cleanup bills amounting to more than $10 billion.

Will benefits of mining outweigh costs to biodiversity and Indigenous people who live there?

“In this transition to renewables, two clear storylines have emerged,” says Teresa Kramarz, a professor and co-director of the Environmental Governance Lab at the University of Toronto and co-chair of the United Nations Development Programme’s Advisory Group on Energy Governance. The first, she says, is the political urgency to rapidly decarbonize, while the second is the enormous business opportunity presented by mining for critical minerals needed for a clean energy revolution.

The blending of these storylines concerns Kramarz, as well as many other scientists and environmentalists, because the overall benefits of mining might not outweigh its costs to biodiversity and to Indigenous people who live in mineral-rich regions.

Nor is there any guarantee that reserves of minerals like lithium are large and accessible enough for Canada to compete with reserves in South America and China, which are much larger and are subject to less environmental oversight.

“The critical minerals strategy is one important step and welcomed, given the need for Canada to strengthen supply chains to support the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources,” says Justina Ray, senior scientist and president of the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada. “But the strategy doesn’t fully appreciate the global [ecological] significance of mining regions such as the Hudson Bay Lowlands, the second largest peatlands in the world.” While peatlands account for only three per cent of the Earth’s land, they store approximately 30 per cent of the planet’s soil carbon. A quarter of the world’s peatlands are found in Canada. What’s needed, says Ray, “is a regional assessment led by federal, provincial and Indigenous leaders to determine whether the trade-offs are worth the cost to biodiversity.”

Most of the critical minerals reserves are located in remote regions of the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and northern Quebec, and in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of northern Manitoba, Ontario and western Quebec.

The mine that Fortune Minerals is exploring in the 3,700-square-mile mineral region north of Great Slave Lake lies within the migratory path of the Bathurst caribou herd, whose numbers have crashed from a high of nearly 470,000 in the 1980s to 6,240 today, due to a number of factors including mining disturbance, overhunting and climate change.

History of mining in northern Canada contains harsh lessons

In the so-called Ring of Fire region, in the 124,000-square-mile Hudson Bay and James Bay Lowlands, mining activity could accelerate the thawing of permafrost that stores nearly 35 gigatons of carbon and degrade the habitat of caribou and the nesting grounds of millions of birds. The Lowlands, according to Jeff Wells, vice-president of boreal conservation for the National Audubon Society, are “astonishingly important.” No other place on the planet has as many red knots, semipalmated sandpipers, dunlins and other nesting shorebird species. The Lowlands also are possibly the most important refuge for woodland caribou, which are now functionally extinct in the United States and disappearing quickly across Canada.

Politically, the critical minerals strategy is a win-win for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government. It speaks to the Conservative Party’s demand for more mining jobs and regional economic development while addressing the left-wing New Democratic Party’s demand for climate action.

If the past history of mining in northern Canada says anything about the future, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned, especially with the Ontario, Manitoba and Northwest Territories governments signalling their desire to speed up mining for critical minerals.

Just a few dozen miles from Fortune’s play in the Northwest Territories, the Colomac gold mine’s tailings ponds once overflowed with cyanide and ammonia, triggering a mining inspector to complain of burning eyes and a sore throat just minutes after arriving at the site. After low gold prices finally shut the mine in 1997, Colomac’s $1.5-million security deposit, posted to cover environmental liabilities, didn’t come close to covering the $135-million cleanup that was performed at taxpayer expense.

The final cost of the remediation at Colomac, whose initial phase included construction of a five-mile fence to keep caribou out of contaminated areas, is dwarfed by the resources that continue to be poured into two ongoing remediations.

The Faro zinc mine, which operated in the central Yukon between 1969 and 1998, was once the largest open-pit lead-zinc mine in the world. Today, it is one of the most complex abandoned-mine remediation projects in the country, if not the world. Its 77 million tons of tailings and 353 million tons of waste rock contain high levels of heavy metals, which authorities fear could potentially leach into the mountainous headwaters of many fish-bearing streams. The remediation, which began in the early 2000s, is expected to take between 10 and 15 years at an estimated cost of $500 million or more.

The remediation of the Giant gold mine, on the shores of Great Slave Lake in Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories, will cost an estimated $4.38 billion and won’t be completed until 2038. Even then, storing the gold mine’s 261,000 tons of highly toxic, virtually indestructible arsenic trioxide — in frozen underground mine chambers — is anticipated to require perpetual maintenance because groundwater that flows into the mine and rapidly thawing permafrost are undermining its stability. The mine may have to be refrigerated permanently, according to engineers working on remediation options. Since 2016, all 20,000 Yellowknife residents have been warned by the government to avoid drinking water, swimming, fishing and harvesting plants and berries in and around several lakes due to their high arsenic levels.

Since 2002, when the Auditor General of Canada issued a scathing report on 30 abandoned mines in the north, federal, territorial and provincial governments have become more diligent in reviewing mining plans and demanding security deposits to cover the cost of cleanups. But the liabilities continue.

Plans for battery plants in Ontario bolster Canada’s critical minerals strategy

This past May, for example, the Yukon government took over the Minto copper and gold mine on Selkirk First Nation territory after mining inspectors repeatedly warned of the potential for contaminated water to flow into the salmon-bearing Yukon River system. The action was taken less than a year after the owners of the Wolverine Mine, which contains reserves of gold, silver, zinc and copper in the southeast corner of the territory, reneged on paying $19 million in security costs. By then, the Yukon government had already poured millions of dollars into environmental mitigation efforts after an underground portion of the mine flooded in 2017.

Tom Hoefer, executive director of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, says that abandoned mines in the Canadian North “should be a thing of the past” thanks to legislative changes that have addressed the issue of security deposits and created oversight boards that oversee land-use planning, wildlife management, environmental assessment and review, and land and water regulations.

“The driver, of course, was that Indigenous groups also didn’t want to see repeats of environmental messes on their traditional lands,” he said, noting that the law requires that half of the review board members in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut come from an Indigenous community.

Canada’s critical minerals strategy has already attracted a lot of interest and is bound to attract more now that several battery plants, including one proposed by Volkswagen, are in the planning stages in Ontario. The Volkswagen plant will receive a package of subsidies amounting to as much as $10 billion over the next decade.

In addition to fast-tracking the regulatory review process, the federal strategy will give mining companies a generous tax credit, equal to 30 per cent of the capital costs associated with establishing a mine. Priority will be given to mines that produce lithium, cobalt, nickel, graphite, copper and other critical metals. To entice companies to invest and explore, the government has earmarked $60 million for geoscience and exploration aimed at discovering potential new deposits.

The Canadian government has funded this kind of geo-mapping before, in the hopes of encouraging oil and gas companies to develop energy and mineral reserves in the northern regions of the country. Between 2008 and 2017, more than $75 million was spent helping private companies find new sources of fossil fuels and minerals, but not a barrel of oil or a gigajoule of gas found its way to market. What northerners got instead was tens of thousands of miles of seismic lines — narrow corridors cleared of vegetation — running through formerly frozen peatland that are now releasing untold volumes of greenhouse gases as they thaw.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford pledges to mine in the Ring of Fire, even if he has to “hop on a bulldozer myself”

Provincial leaders tend to be supportive of the new mining projects. Ontario Premier Doug Ford said, “If I have to hop on a bulldozer myself, we’re going to start building roads in the Ring of Fire.” Based on the increased value of critical minerals already established to be in the ground, George Pirie, Ontario’s minister of mines, estimates the mining value of this area at a trillion dollars.

But according to Jamie Kneen, the national program co-lead of Mining Watch Canada, there is little data to back up such claims. He fears that Canada will be left with a lot of holes in the ground and many more environmental liabilities if technological developments come into play and make the critical minerals strategy obsolete.

Charles Kazaz, a Montreal-based lawyer for a firm that advises clients in the mining sector, concedes that demand could drop, but he considers the critical minerals strategy unique for addressing both economic development and climate-change targets. “Canada needs to be aggressive and act fast in order to catch up with the rest of the world,” he says.

Without the strategy, he says, Canada might miss an opportunity because of foreign investment restrictions that prevent countries like China from partnering in critical-mineral development in Canada, and by the constitutional requirement that the government and industry consult with and accommodate Indigenous communities before mines or access roads can proceed.

Indigenous communities are divided over whether to support development of resources within their territories. The recent federal decision to greenlight Nemaska Lithium’s project in northern Quebec is a case in point. The Nemaska Cree band council embraced the mine on the basis that it would provide the community with jobs and royalties. But some Cree, including Thomas Jolly, a former Nemaska chief, don’t think it is worth the risk of contaminating the Rupert River watershed. Neither does Jolly accept the argument that the Cree should agree to the mine to help the world deal with climate change.

“Who is responsible for the climate crisis?” he asked. “Is it up to us to pay and suffer for what they [southerners] have done?”

The Cree communities that live in and around the Ring of Fire, where several mines are already in operation and where at least 15 other companies have more than 26,000 mining claims, are working with conservation groups like the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada, the Wildlands League and MiningWatch Canada to make sure that no environmental shortcuts are taken, as federal Natural Resources Minister Jonathan Wilkinson has promised.

Kramarz, at the University of Toronto, remains skeptical. Like other scientists, she isn’t downplaying the need to aggressively deal with climate change. But she believes that enthusiasm for exploiting critical minerals to speed a transition to carbon neutrality ignores significant costs.

“If that’s the narrative,” she says, referring to industry exuberance, “then it would be good to not forget that there are environmental concerns that need to be thoroughly understood and mitigated.”

Updated on Oct. 10, 2023, at 1:32 p.m. PT: This story has been updated to correct the cost of cleaning up the Colomac mine in the Northwest Territories from $53 million to $135 million. The starting operational date of the Faro mine has also been revised from 1968 to 1969.

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The 3,000-hectare McClelland Lake wetland complex was considered too special to dig up.

Then an energy company found one billion barrels of oil under it. 

The wetland complex, 90 kilometres north of Fort McMurray, Alta., is a soggy and wildlife-rich area of interconnected wetlands and an important stopover for migratory birds. It’s also a major carbon sink, the result of thousands of years of buildup of peatlands.

When TrueNorth Energy Corporation, a subsidiary of Koch Industries, obtained leases in the area in 1998, it was forbidden to dig up a portion of those holdings. Koch Industries is a privately held conglomerate based in the U.S. still run by one of two controversial billionaire brothers.

A legally binding document known as a sub-regional plan had put the unique lake and surrounding wetland off limits to oilsands mining in 1996, but by 2002 the provincial cabinet had changed the plan after TrueNorth asked for a relaxation of the rules. 

Half of the wetland was suddenly fair game for open-pit mining. 

Later that same year, the Energy and Utilities Board, which oversaw the energy industry in the province and was a predecessor to the current Alberta Energy Regulator, officially approved TrueNorth’s Fort Hills oilsands project. 

“The board has weighed the benefit of recovering the bitumen underlying the [McClelland Lake wetland complex] against the direct environmental impacts and has concluded that in the broader context, it is in the public interest to approve mining within the [wetland], subject to establishing the appropriate mitigation plan,” it wrote in 2002. 

TrueNorth itself never developed that plan, which had to ensure the protection of the unmined portion of the wetland ecosystem. It sold its holdings to Fort Hills Energy — majority owned by Suncor — and the Calgary-based oilsands giant came up with a novel scheme. It would build a wall over 10 kilometres long through half of the weltand, cutting off the protected area from the mineable one.

That operational plan was approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator late last summer. 

Debate about the ability of the company to carve a wetland in half while ensuring the protection of the remaining portion and the lake have persisted for years. Concerns about groundwater contamination, restricted water flow and the impact on plants and animals that thrive in the unique ecosystem were raised as far back as 2002. 

Now a review of the operational plan commissioned by the Alberta Wilderness Association goes further, calling into question everything from the early stages of the design to the need for decades of faultless operation, to the veracity of the modelling around which many of the plans are built.

The organization wants approval of the plan overturned. 

“We’ve been calling it, internally, a water management experiment more than a mitigation plan,” Phillip Meintzer, a conservation specialist with the wilderness association, says.

Fort Hills oilsands mine edges toward wetland

The area around the western portion of the McClelland Lake wetland is now largely barren. Excavators are busy at work. In the working portion of the Fort Hills mine, giant dump trucks are already carting bitumen to be processed.

The tail end of Highway 63, clogged with semi-trucks and busloads of workers, runs through a portion of Fort Hills. Hidden from the road are the McClelland Lake wetland. 

Viewed from above, the fen is a leopard-print expanse of wetland, woods and sinkhole lakes that stretch out from the western edge of the water. It’s a stopping point for birds on the migratory route through the tailings ponds and mines of the Athabasca region, including sandhill cranes, yellow rails, black terns and short-eared owls. Whooping cranes, long endangered, have been spotted, but don’t nest in the area.

Rare plants nestle into the permeable, wet landscape, alongside the abundance of animal life. The peat, like peat throughout the world, stores an astonishing amount of carbon that has built up over thousands of years of wetland formation — an ecosystem impossible to replicate once disturbed. 

The original 1996 draft of the sub-regional plan — altered by the provincial government in 2002 — specifically barred surface mining of oilsands in the McClelland Lake wetland ecosystem, but even after the government intervened to allow TrueNorth to mine part of the ecosystem, the plan expounded on the area’s importance. 

“A number of specific sites within the [resource management area] warrant some degree of protection or mitigation from the effects of development,” it reads today. 

“The most notable of these is the upland area at Fort Hills that Alberta Parks considers to be suitable for a provincial park. This area, the adjacent McClelland Lake wetland and the Bitumount historic site provide significant opportunities for heritage appreciation as well as recreation and tourism.”

The same document lists the patterned fen as a “provincially significant” natural feature.

Suncor plans to start digging in the area around the McClelland Lake wetland in 2025, but the details of how exactly the wall and associated pipes and pumps will work haven’t been finalized. 

What is known is that Suncor will build a wall deep into the ground to both protect the unmined portion of the fen and to keep water from the protected wetland away from its mine. Pipes carrying water to and from the wetland will theoretically maintain water levels and chemistry balance. 

Seepage pumps and monitoring wells will be used to keep an eye on the impacts of the wetland. The regulator, according to its letter of authorization for the plan, expects any problems should be detected within the first one or two years of operations. 

‘Half of the peatland is going to be destroyed’: scientist who reviewed Fort Hills proposal

Lorna Harris is the program lead for the Wildlife Conservation Society’s program focused on forests, peatlands and climate change, and specializes in the kind of saturated earth that surrounds McClelland Lake. 

She’s one of two reviewers who examined Suncor’s operational plan and shared their findings with the Alberta Wilderness Association. 

“The first thing is that half of the peatland is going to be destroyed,” she says when asked about the big picture impacts. 

Harris, along with fellow reviewer Kelly Biaggi, a hydrology expert and assistant professor at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ont., highlighted seven key concerns when it came to protecting the unmined half of the wetland, ranging from potential saline contamination to lack of modelling for potential groundwater quality impacts to unrecognized impacts from digging up carbon stores and the resulting carbon pollution.

“We can’t get back the carbon stored within that ecosystem. We can’t get back the habitat, the biodiversity. It is irrecoverable within our lifetimes,” Harris says. 

“When something takes thousands of years to develop and it can be lost within a few days of construction, companies often propose that they can restore and reclaim,” she says. “But there is no evidence of anyone anywhere in the world being able to recreate a peatland of this type to the same quality anywhere.”

She says the design of the wall is still in the conceptual stage in the operational plan approved by the Alberta Energy Regulator, so it’s difficult to assess the impact it will have on the wetland and lake. Given recent news about retaining wall leaks in the oilsands, she questions whether anyone can guarantee this wall also won’t fail.

Of particular concern for Harris is saline water infiltrating wetland. If you throw off the chemistry, she says, the wetland could be fatally impacted. 

The authors also note modelling only used two to three years of observational data, with predictable eventssuch as the annual spring melt referred to as a “parameter of uncertainty.” It also doesn’t account for wet and dry cycles over decades, which are typical of the area. 

“We are concerned that many of the predicted changes to the water table and/or water levels are assumed to have negligible impacts, but without any associated justification provided for why that is assumed to be the case,” they write in the report. 

Alberta Energy Regulator says Fort Hills will have to submit performance reports

The Alberta Energy Regulator says approval of the operational plan is not the end of its regulatory oversight and that it can still change or revise the plan or modify the conditions regulating the project if deemed necessary. 

The wall design, for example, will have to be approved by the regulator prior to construction.

“The [Alberta Energy Regulator] requires Fort Hills to conduct further monitoring, modelling and engineering studies, with performance reports submitted to the [regulator] for review,” Teresa Broughton, a spokesperson for the regulator, wrote in an email to The Narwhal. 

“Subject matter experts will continue to be involved in the review of the performance of the project and operational plan and have the mandate to enforce the conditions of the authorizations,” she added.

The regulator says failure to protect the unmined wetland, as stipulated in the company’s Water Act approval, would result in “enforcement action” which could include “modifying or halting operations if required.”

Broughton said there has been significant work put into the operational plan since 2006 and that it incorporates Traditional Knowledge from local Indigenous communities as well as the advice of experts and scientists. 

The Alberta Wilderness Association asked for the approval to be overturned, and Broughton said the request will move through the regulator’s reconsideration process, which is outlined in the province’s Responsible Energy Development Act.

Suncor did not respond to a request for an interview.

Conservation group concerned Suncor’s plan is not ‘rock solid’

Meintzer with the Alberta Wilderness Association says his organization has been working to protect the wetland ecosystem for decades. He knew they had to have a close, hard look at the operation plan put out by Suncor. 

The trick was finding researchers with a specialization in peatlands and industry impacts who could provide independent opinions. 

“There are some very high-profile wetlands experts that helped in the creation of Suncor’s operational plan,” Meintzer says.

“We know that because I went to, I think, almost 25 different people over the course of six months to try and find anyone who didn’t have contractual ties or conflicts of interest with energy companies.”

He says it was important to have experts review the dense plan, stretching to almost 2,000 pages, because it felt like a case of industry thinking it can “technology our way out of this.”

But he says he was surprised by how many concerns were raised by the researchers in a short span of time. 

“It’s very explicit that the ecosystem diversity and function in that non-mined side has to be maintained,” Meintzer says of the company’s Water Act approval. “The operational plan has to essentially guarantee that, and the review we had done just raises too many questions for us to say without a reasonable doubt that yes, Suncor’s operational plan is rock solid here.”

Updated on May 1, 2023, at 4:35 p.m. MT to correct a reference to the date Suncor plans to start mining in the McClelland lake wetland complex. The most recent projection is 2025, not 2027 as was previously stated in one instance.

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Covering nearly the same area as Norway, the Hudson Bay Lowlands in northern Ontario and Manitoba is home to the southernmost continuous expanse of permafrost in North America. Compared with many marine waterways this far south, Hudson Bay stays frozen late into the summer, its ice-covered surface reflecting sunlight and keeping the surrounding area cold.

The influence of Hudson Bay on the weather is crazy, says Adam Kirkwood, a graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa. “It can be sunny and 20 C one day in August, and then half an hour later there’s a wicked wind coming in from the bay — it’s 5 C, and you’re putting on all your layers, and you’re still freezing cold. And when it’s neither of those two things,” he says, “it’s very, very buggy.”

Trapped in all that permafrost is 30 billion tonnes of carbon. It’s an unfathomable amount, says Kirkwood. With global warming, the permafrost is thawing, threatening to release a “carbon bomb” of heat-trapping methane gas to the atmosphere. But there’s something else lurking in the permafrost, too. Something that has the potential to be more immediately dangerous to the people and wildlife living in the area: mercury.

Wildfires and volcanoes belch mercury and since the Industrial Revolution so, too, do coal-burning power plants and factories. Warm air currents carry mercury in its inorganic heavy metal form to the Arctic where it settles into the soil and vegetation before being safely locked away in the deeply frozen permafrost.

In its inorganic form, mercury is less threatening to people. But as the permafrost thaws, says Kirkwood, mercury is finding its way into the soil and into the regions’ many ponds, rivers and lakes. Once there, microbes can convert inorganic mercury into the form to be concerned about: neurotoxic methylmercury.

For the Indigenous peoples of northern Ontario who have lived off the peatlands for thousands of years — hunting caribou, catching fish, and gathering native plants — the lurking threat poses a risk to their way of life.

So for the past six years, Kirkwood has been coming to this remote environment every summer, helicoptering in to drill thick cores of peat and bringing them back to his lab for analysis. On these trips, Kirkwood often has help from Sam Hunter, a self-taught independent scientist from Peawanuck, Ont., who is a member of Weenusk First Nation.

Back in the 1970s, Hunter saw how scientists studying the Hudson Bay Lowlands used Indigenous peoples as guides, but didn’t involve them in their research. Now, he says, there’s a co-management process — he accompanies researchers on their fieldwork and helps bring their findings back to local communities. Bringing together outside scientists and traditional knowledge is important, he says, because Indigenous peoples have seen firsthand how the permafrost is changing.

“Walking on permafrost is like walking on really hard ground, like gravel,” says Hunter. When there’s permafrost, he says, “there’s all kinds of flora. There’s berries, vegetation that animals feed on. We collect wild tea.”

But once the permafrost thaws, he says, “the environment turns into a swampland … You can’t even walk, you’d sink.” Along with the disappearing permafrost “go the animals. They move higher and higher into the Arctic. Muskox has disappeared and a few shorebirds we used to have — they’re moving north.”

Methylmercury seeping out of the permafrost is the latest water-quality issue First Nations communities in the region have faced. Closer to the Manitoba border, industrial mercury pollution from the 1960s still affects 90 percent of the Anishinaabe community Grassy Narrows. Many First Nations communities across Canada still lack clean drinking water. In the absence of government support for water-quality testing, Hunter has trained three community members in Peawanuck to test their water and fish.

Whether all of the mercury idling in the permafrost will become a significant threat to locals hinges on the answers to a few outstanding questions — questions Kirkwood aims to answer.

A decade ago, scientists discovered that certain microbes with a specific gene can convert inorganic mercury into toxic methylmercury. Scientists know some microbes have this ability and others don’t, but efforts to relate the abundance of microbes with mercury methylating potential to the amount of methylmercury in the environment have been unsuccessful. That’s led scientists studying mercury cycling, like Andrea Bravo at the Institute of Marine Sciences in Spain, to theorize that there’s more at play dictating the pace of methylmercury production, like the complex relationships between the entire community of microbes in the soil.

That’s where Kirkwood’s research comes in. By drilling and taking core samples of the permafrost, then measuring the amount of inorganic mercury while at the same time sequencing the DNA of everything in the soil, he hopes to better understand how methylmercury gets produced in thawing permafrost. Once he knows that, he can figure out where the threat is largest by looking at where mercury methylating microbes and inorganic mercury overlap.

“It’s a hot topic, a timely research question,” says Bravo, who isn’t involved in Kirkwood’s research. “We are suddenly having a surface of soil that was not reactive before, and it’s becoming reactive. … We don’t know how much mercury is coming from this permafrost.”

Bravo points out there are still many unknowns in efforts to gauge the mercury threat. For one, it’s still not yet possible to accurately predict methylmercury levels in freshwater waterways or the ocean based on land sources. Despite global research efforts, “we still don’t understand the process completely,” she says. “We’ve put in a lot of effort, but we aren’t there yet.”

So far, Kirkwood’s initial findings show reason for hope. Previous Arctic-scale estimates of inorganic mercury abundance have vastly overestimated how much mercury is being stored in the Hudson Bay Lowlands. Kirkwood’s cores show mercury levels 10 times lower. But that doesn’t mean all is well. In thermokarst fens, meltwater ponds created when iceberg-like permafrost chunks thaw, methylmercury levels are higher than in the surroundings.

As more permafrost thaws and these ponds connect, methylmercury production will likely increase. And if this mercury reaches the bay, biomagnification could cause it to build up to high concentrations, making its way up the food chain from algae to the tissue of fish that people catch and eat.

One of the things Hunter says he’s been told by the scientists who come up from the south is that the polar bear is the barometer for climate change. “And I don’t agree with that. I think the barometer for climate change is the palsa, the melting permafrost,” he says. “And I think that we need to understand what’s coming out of the ground now.”

This article first appeared in Hakai Magazine and is republished here with permission. Read more stories like this at hakaimagazine.com.

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