Quebec’s miners are pressing Ottawa and the province to coordinate environmental reviews and shorten approval timelines to help restore the industry’s competitiveness, Quebec Mining Association President and CEO Emmanuelle Toussaint says.
About two-thirds of the 45 advanced mining projects examined in a recent association study target critical minerals, Toussaint told The Northern Miner last week in Montreal. She wants governments to measure permitting times from the earliest steps, including the work before an application is deemed complete, while maintaining environmental standards.
“It’s quite demanding to go through two separate processes, quite often covering the same thing,” Toussaint said. “We’re talking about water, fish, the habitat for the wildlife.”
Turning that project pipeline into operating mines also requires governments to plan roads, railways and ports alongside mining developments, she says. Better coordination would help ensure projects and the transport links they depend on are ready together, preventing infrastructure from becoming the next bottleneck.
Watch the full interview below:
Source: www.northernminer.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.
