Feuding pits northern industry, conservationists against each other

Gary Park, PNA Canadian correspondent

Squabbling among Canadian government departments over the future of Arctic resource projects has produced a plea for help from a northern regulatory agency.

The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board has approached two cabinet ministers asking them to settle jurisdictional tensions over what developments, if any, are appropriate for land near Nahanni National Park, which straddles the southern Northwest Territories-Yukon border.

On the table is a growing pile of about a dozen resource projects, from oil and gas to minerals, including a C$140 million mining operation by Vancouver-based Canadian Zinc Corp.

The core of the conflict is between the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, whose mandate includes promoting economic development, and Parks Canada, whose function is to protect the ecological integrity of Canada’s national parks.

The tensions have been heightened by a push from conservationists to expand Nahanni, which became the United Nations’ first World Heritage Site in 1978 and is known as Canada’s Grand Canyon, and frustrations within resource industries over what they view as regulatory interference.

Internal reports by Parks Canada and the Mackenzie Valley board suggest government departments are in conflict over a regulatory system neither side likes and that requires proposals to be handled on a piecemeal basis.

The board, which has a reputation of never turning down a project, has concluded the Canadian Zinc mine could pose an environmental risk to land in and around Nahanni.

The Mackenzie Land and Water Board has also raised concerns about the zinc operation.

How the dispute is resolved is of great interest to the oil and gas industry, which must deal with both boards to gain approval for exploration or pipeline construction through the region.