Rickford takes lead in battle to modernize Ontario's Mining Act

Rickford said he held consultation meetings with stakeholders in several provincial industries over the summer, including the Mining Working Group, formed earlier this year to reduce red tape in the mining sector.

Rickford says regulations complicate the process

As the minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines, Rickford met with the group on Tuesday, Oct. 29 at Queens’ Park for Meet the Miners Day.

“Generally speaking, every sector had a consensus that our system was too expensive and too complicated,” he said.

The ministry’s strategy, so far, has been to put what Rickford calls “SWAT teams” on mining projects to help them move through government faster and implementing plans to pass regulatory changes to Ontario’s Mining Act as part of the Ford government’s larger promise to cut red tape across the board.

In a statement from Oct. 29, Rickford said he wants to work with MWG to propose changes to the Mining Act to accelerate approvals.

“The act itself is not necessarily the problem, it’s the regulations that are born from the act,” he told the Miner and News. “We can’t take seven years to open up a mine.”

Changes to Mining Act and red tape reduction long-time project

According to the provincial government, the Mining Act’s origins date back to the 1800s. Modernizing it has become an agenda point for provincial governments in recent years.

In 2009, the Liberal government, under former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty, passed Bill 173, an Act to Amend the Mining Act, which aimed to recognize the rights of private landowners, Indigenous and treaty rights and inflict less harm on the environment.

In April 2018, the Liberal government, under former premier Kathleen Wynne, launched an upgraded system for prospectors to register mining claims called the Mining Lands Administration System. It aimed to combat red tape by giving prospectors 24/7 access to staking claims with GPS coordinates.

Rickford, however, said he doesn’t believe the Wynne government was “in the business of modernizing the Mining Act.”

Rickford’s Oct. 29 statement also mentions the opening and expansion of mines in the province. Rickford said the province and its partners are looking at the possibility of a new mine – or mines – in the Kenora area, but did not divulge more details.

“I’ll have more to say about that in the not-too-distant future,” he said.

zhmood@postmedia.com