The Council of the Haida Nation and Hereditary Chiefs Council say they do not support building a gold mine near Yaagun G̱andlaay, the Yakoun River.
“The majority of Haida citizens and other Island residents have opposed this project since its initial proposal,” said an open letter by CHN President Gaagwiis, Jason Alsop, and co-signed by over a dozen potlatched hereditary chiefs from across Haida Gwaii.
The letter was posted Sept. 13 to the CHN Facebook page.
In it, Alsop says people first started talking publicly about mining a gold deposit near the Yakoun River in the late 1970s. The gold deposit is about a kilometre east of the Yakoun and 18 km south of Port Clements.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the Haida Nation and others strongly opposed plans to build the Cinola Gold mine at the site. The concern was heavy-metal leaching and methyl mercury from Cinola would ruin the Yakoun, and Masset Inlet.
“Throughout the 1990s, the project was mired in legal challenges, regulatory hurdles and Nation opposition, and by the 2000s, the project was dormant,” Alsop wrote.
The CHN letter followed a story in the Haida Gwaii News about a new proposal to build a mine at the gold deposit by a Canadian company called JDS. After Cinola failed, the mineral claims it was based on changed hands more than once before JDS bought them in 2021.
The CHN letter said the mineral rights are owned by a South African mining company, Harmony Gold, which has operations in South Africa and Papua New Guinea.
In fact, staff at the Harmony Gold Mining Company confirmed it has no operations in Canada.
“Harmony Gold” is what companies began calling the Haida Gwaii gold mine project after Cinola. JDS calls it Haida Gold.
The CHN letter also said that recently, some Haida hereditary leaders and Haida citizens have been targeted to support the opening of a gold mine near the Yakoun.
“Our experience shows that this is often the first tactic of a company trying to operate on Haida Gwaii and by doing so infer that they have ‘consulted’ with the Nation,” Alsop said.
The Haida Gwaii News requested an interview with the CHN president but did not receive a response by the Sept. 23 press deadline.
Jeff Stibbard, CEO of JDS Mining, says his company will take no for an answer, but so far it’s been misunderstood.
“We’re definitely not from South Africa,” he said. “We are JDS Gold. We’re six British Columbian mining, financial, and political leaders that see an opportunity that needs to be told.”
Stibbard said unlike the Cinola plan of 40 years ago, JDS would not use cyanide. Nor would it roast ore, which can send up mercury pollution. Instead, ore would be crushed, ground, floated in water and gravity-separated to get a gold concentrate. The concentrate would be shipped abroad and smelted into pure gold.
Stibbard said the waste rock would be squeezed dry and piled in dry-stack tailings.
Dry tailings have residual metal-bearing minerals that could harm the environment if exposed, he said, so the stack would be lined to prevent seepage and overgrown with plants to prevent the wind scattering it. Runoff from the stack would be treated along with the water used to concentrate the gold.
“There are some great, great advances in technology since the previous operator’s proposal 40 years ago, which was to put this stuff on the ground and let it sit there,” Stibbard said.
JDS says the mine would use between 1,500 and 2,250 cubic metres of water a day. None would come from the Yakoun, but from groundwater, stored rainwater and surface runoff.
Significantly, the mine would require 20 MW of electrical power. JDS proposes building a 25 MW power plant to power the $3.5-billion mine, and everything else on Haida Gwaii.
“We’ve looked at everything from your current diesel to LNG to biomass to long-duration energy storage using battery technology, hydrogen, wind, run-of-river, and also wave,” Stibbard said.
The mine would employ 320 to 350 people in high-tech, year-round jobs with average salaries of $100,000, Stibbard said. It would cost $2.5 billion to develop, leading to many contract opportunities.
JDS is proposing an equity partnership with the Haida Nation as business partners. The carried-interest deal would not require the nation to buy in.
“You’re talking $50-million to upwards of $100-million a year tax flow coming back to the First Nation,” he said.
Former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, who joined JDS as an advisor, said things have changed since the B.C. government legally recognized Haida title this year.
“The province will basically be on the sidelines as the Haida direct their own future and their own opportunities,” he said.
Campbell and Stibbard said they have met Haida people on and off the islands, including a few hereditary leaders.
But they have had little discussion with the CHN since a brief meeting with President Alsop two years ago. In August, JDS invited Haida hereditary leaders to meet at the Haida House of Tllaal. Few showed.
Stibbard said JDS went public with its gold-mine proposal after those talks failed to materialize.
“We’re not trying to undermine anybody,” he said, adding that the company only wants an open and honest dialogue.
“That’s what government is all about,” Stibbard said. “Politics is for all. And that includes people like us, who have some claims on the island.”