Six northern First Nations have filed a court case challenging a major section of Ontario’s mining law, an attempt to strike down the existing system for how mineral claims are staked.
The case, filed at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice last week, could disrupt Premier Doug Ford’s push for a mining boom, especially in the far northern Ring of Fire. The application was filed Aug. 9 by Apitipi Anicinapek Nation, Aroland First Nation, Attawapiskat First Nation, Fort Albany First Nation, Ginoogaming First Nation and Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug. It alleges the current system, which allows miners to stake claims without consulting First Nations, violates their Treaty and Charter rights.
“The Mining Act in Ontario is racist, colonialist in very many ways, and it has to fall,” Kate Kempton, the lawyer representing the nations, told reporters at Queen’s Park Monday.
In Ontario and many other provinces and territories, the right to mine a piece of land is separate from the right to own a piece of land. Even on Indigenous territory and some private property, the province asserts that it owns the rights to explore for minerals and, eventually, take those minerals out of the ground (an assertion that is also being challenged in a separate court case). The province sells that right to companies or people who stake claims under Ontario’s Mining Act, which defines how mineral extraction can happen.
For hundreds of years, prospectors would go out onto the land and put a physical stake into the ground. But Ontario overhauled that system in 2018 when it rolled out an online portal that allows pretty much anyone to register a claim for a small fee in a matter of minutes.
It is simple, if the mining company owned the land, they would have to be responsible to clean it up. This way they can take the minerals and leave their pollution behind.