“Our challenge is to maintain our culture and live globally. We need the means and the ways to allow skilled workers to work and communicate from our remote area and also to work locally,” said Cree Grand Chief Matthew Coon Come when opening Eeyou Communications Network, providing broadband Internet, and serving Eeyou Istchee and the James Bay region of northern Québec. “We want a role in the wider economy so that our future engineers, lawyers and professionals can provide services while continuing to live and to participate in the communities.”
The following are the Chief’s words on uranium mining:
This summer, my people, the James Bay Cree Nation, enacted a permanent moratorium on uranium exploration, mining, milling and waste emplacement in our territory on the east shore of James Bay, Eeyou Istchee. I was mandated to take all necessary steps to ensure full recognition of our stand.
As part of this mandate, I’d like to speak to recent public discussions about the proposed Matoush project in Eeyou Istchee, by operator Strateco Resources. The project would open the door to Strateco doing advanced exploration and then, if the results are deemed positive, opening up Quebec’s first uranium mine and mill there.
Despite Cree opposition, federal regulators, including the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, have authorized the Matoush project. However, before this project can proceed, provincial authorization is also required. Last week, questions were raised in the National Assembly about why the Quebec government has not yet made a decision. But many concerned groups and individuals are now joining the Crees in urging the Quebec government to conduct an independent and comprehensive assessment of the long-term environmental, social and ethical challenges presented by the uranium industry.
In response to this growing debate in Quebec, Dr. Michael Binder, president of the CNSC, recently released an “open letter,” expressing “dismay” that “recent statements and discussions over the safety of uranium mining have been based neither on fact nor science,” and declaring that “activists, medical practitioners and politicians who have demanded moratoriums may have various reasons for doing so, but their claims that the public and environment are at risk are fundamentally wrong.”
For the record and Dr. Binder’s information, the science and facts underpinning my people’s position are readily and simply stated.
• Uranium mining necessarily produces vast amounts of waste. In Eeyou Istchee, the uranium oxide of commercial interest would constitute under 1 per cent of the mineralized ore — so more than 99 tonnes of finely milled waste would be produced for every tonne of marketable product. These tailings contain over four-fifths of the radioactivity of the original ore.
• When the mining is done and the profits have been taken, these tailings will be left behind in my people’s backyard, where we have lived for thousands of years, and where we hunt, fish and trap, raise our children and bury our dead.
• It is indisputable that these uranium tailings will remain radioactive and highly toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. As for the lessons of recent history, the record of tailings management and regulatory oversight throughout Canada’s 80-year history of uranium mining is from reassuring.
• In the Sahtu Dene territory, radium and uranium mining began in the 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of tons of tailings were simply dumped in Great Bear Lake. When mining ceased in 1982, the tailings were left in the lake and all these years later, they remain in Great Bear Lake.
• In Saskatchewan, exposed uranium tailings remain at the abandoned Gunnar and Lorado mines. Water contamination and radioactive dispersion issues were identified decades ago, but governments spent years playing hot-potato. To this day, no remediation plans are in place for these sites. CNSC’s ingeniously rigorous solution has been to simply exempt both sites from regulatory requirements.
These are just a few of the facts that have led my people to oppose uranium mining. These facts have galvanized communities across Quebec to reject uranium projects and demand a province-wide moratorium.
The Cree Nation will not be intimidated or silenced by dismissive comments like those from Dr. Binder that show so little respect for his proper role or for us. We are confident that when Quebecers learn the facts about uranium mining and waste, they will join us in our moratorium stand — a stand already taken by the governments and citizens of B.C. [British Columbia] and Nova Scotia.
