Proposed Timmins nickel destined to be only mine ever permitted under Trudeau-era impact assessment rules
Canada Nickel’s Crawford project will likely be the one and only mine project ever permitted under the rules of the former Trudeau government’s impact assessment regime.
That tidbit of trivia was provided by the Toronto mine developer in a news release this week reporting that it’s “one step closer” toward securing a final federal permitting decision on its proposed open-pit mine project, north of Timmins.
The federal Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (IAAC) has published the draft Impact Assessment Report for Crawford, representing the “penultimate stage” of the assessment process, the company said in a May 12 news release.
Canada Nickel said it’s only Canadian mining project to have reached this stage in the process.
A 30-day consultation period will follow with the government expected to finalize the permit conditions and issue the permit sometime thereafter.
“Crawford has now cleared every major milestone in the federal Impact Assessment process, and we remain firmly on track for a final permitting decision by early this summer,” said company CEO Mark Selby in a statement.
Crawford is a proposed open-pit nickel and cobalt mine, 40 kilometres northeast of Timmins. Expected to be a massive project, creating 1,000 direct jobs, the mine has a 41-year mine life.
Canada Nickel has not yet made a construction decision.
In 2019, the Trudeau government overhauled the federal environmental assessment process for major projects, through Bill 69, and introduced a more onerous and broader criteria in the review process that took into account sustainability factors, Indigenous rights, and contribution to climate change targets, among others.
Canada Nickel filed an initial project description for Crawford in August 2022 and officially entered federal impact assessment process in March 2023.
The IAAC confirmed that Crawford will be the “first non-substituted mine project” to reach a decision under the Trudeau-era Impact Assessment Act.
A non-substituted mining project is a major mining project that undergoes a full, independent federal impact assessment. The trigger to initiate a federal review is a proposed mining operation that’s described as moving 5,000 or more tonnes of material a day, which Crawford will.
The Crawford project has gone through separate federal and provincial assessment process.
What’s changed today is that there are formal cooperation agreements between Ottawa and individual provinces to assess mine, energy and other large projects under one joint process.
The Ontario government said it’s expediting approvals for Crawford under its One Project, One Process review framework.
IAAC said the Eskay Creek Revitalization Project, a proposed open-pit gold and silver mine in the Golden Triangle region of northwestern British Columbia, received a final federal decision last February, but that was jointly assessed under a cooperation agreement with the province.
“To have advanced Crawford from first drill holes to this milestone in just over six years, as the first mining project to do so under these more rigorous standards, reflects the quality of our team and the depth of work we have put into this project,” added Selby in the release.
Further working in Canada Nickel’s favour is that Crawford has been designated a nation-building critical minerals project and referred to the federal Major Projects Office for fast-tracking through the regulatory process.
The company is putting together its financing package to develop the more than $2-billion mine, which involves negotiations with Export Development Canada and other strategic lenders and private equity funders.
A decision to build Crawford is expected sometime in 2027.