Jeremy J Schmidt

As I’ve mentioned before, Canada is coming under increased focus as the headquarters for most of the world’s mining corporations.

This year, Canada begins its 2 year period as chair of the international Arctic Council ending 2015. Canada has named Leonna Aglukkaq to this role. Several researchers at McGill recently wrote an open letter to Aglukkaq, highlighting the need for human security over resource development amongst Arctic communities.

The concerns expressed by the researchers were confirmed (again) earlier this week by news that a diamond mine was abandoned in Nunavut by its operating company  and left without environmental reclamation.

In this context, there is a very interesting piece out in Water Canada about the rush for mining and its effects on water in the North. This piece came out very close to the publication of The Future of Mining in Canada’s North (PDF) from the Conference Board of Canada.

It will be important to keep threading all of these strings together.