Picture wilderness: towering mountains, windblown peatlands, vast forests, rushing rivers, and frozen lakes. Only 3% of Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems are truly ‘wild’ like they were 500 years ago. Portions of northern Canada are included in that number, with expansive intact environments containing habitat for iconic species like barren-ground caribou, polar bears, and Arctic wolves. Nearly three quarters of Canada’s population lives south of the 49th parallel, or the straight line that roughly connects the cities of Vancouver, BC and St. John’s, NL. Between a few urban centres across the territories and northern ranges of the provinces, the rest is mostly quiet. Largely inaccessible due to a lack of reliable road access, the North remains relatively undisturbed in the Anthropocene. Wilderness.
However, a new pressure has emerged that has the potential to splinter these sensitive and significant northern ecosystems due to the treasures lying below the boreal forests, tundra, and ice. This pressure comes from a surge in mineral exploration in the North, opening the door for industrial megaprojects in the future. A scarred history and symbolic fulcrum in today’s modern mineral rush, this largely inhabited region will be pivotal in determining whether Canada jumps headfirst into the mining boom or decides to back away, slowly.
The term ‘critical minerals’ originated during World War I when the United States created their first list of materials (including nickel, tin, and platinum) that were becoming scarce in home soil but would be “critical” to manage weaponry supplies and sustain further conflict, if needed. Fast forward over 100 years and the concept has become a buzzword in almost all discussions about the modern energy transition, supply chains, and ‘clean’ economic growth. The federal government has recently committed to accelerate critical minerals development through streamlined environmental reviews and billions in public investment. Provincial mining powerhouses like British Columbia and Ontario have jumped on board as well, earmarking public funds and releasing their own critical minerals strategies and legislation (look no further than Ontario’s Building More Mines Act). The renewed thirst for minerals is rationalized through decarbonization of the energy and transportation sectors, where demand for minerals like lithium and nickel is expected to grow by 500%+ by 2030. In other words, “critical” nowadays has a much different meaning than it did during the war. But does that mean that a mad scramble for these materials is totally inevitable?
Indeed, our country is at a crossroads. The first option is to hasten the status quo – continue to extract from the landscape with more, bigger, mining developments. The North is one of the most attractive regions to do this, filled with rich deposits and a large handful of successful mines currently producing critical minerals.
The North also contains some hard lessons of mining past. Massive developments like the Yukon’s Faro Zinc Mine (once the largest open pit mine of its kind in the world) and the Northwest Territories’ Giant Mine (remediation ongoing until 2038) were left abandoned by their owners with the cleanup offloaded onto taxpayers. The risks to communities and the environment from over 10,000 abandoned mine sites in Canada, already upwards of $20 billion in liabilities, raise a red flag to proceed cautiously… and without haste.
So, our other path would be to seriously rethink how transportation grids are designed and how goods and waste containing ‘critical’ minerals are consumed or repurposed. Simply replacing all gas-guzzling SUVs with electric versions and continuing to dump end-of-life solar panels into landfills is unlikely to result in a brighter future. So, rather than asking “how can we obtain these minerals faster?” should we instead be focusing on “how much do we truly need?”
While transitioning away from fossil fuels is crucial for combating the climate crisis, the rush for critical minerals must adhere to rigorous regulatory standards that take into account the needs of local communities and vulnerabilities of these last-remaining untouched ecosystems. In the meantime, as pressure mounts to explore and develop the North, we should be giving a voice to the wilderness too.
Photo by Vlad Chețan via Pexels
