Opinion: A clean environment and healthy people are not partisan issues
Published 6:18 pm Friday, November 28, 2025
Alternatives North is responding to a recent op-ed by Conservative MP Bob Zimmer about the Giant Mine Remediation Project (‘Giant Mine project is yet another Liberal scandal,’ Yellowknifer, Nov. 5).
While we share the concern for transparency and accountability, the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of deadly arsenic cannot be moved safely or allowed to reach nearby Great Slave Lake.
So far, the only solution we have is to freeze it underground forever.
The Giant Mine operated for more than 50 years and left behind 237,000 tonnes of arsenic trioxide, one of Canada’s most toxic legacies. The Giant Mine Remediation Project, led by the federal government and costing more than $4 billion, aims to contain the toxic compound. The containment will require on-going maintenance in perpetuity.
The scandal is how this site became so toxic.
Cleaning up Giant Mine is one of the largest and most technically difficult environmental projects in Canada. This is not a recent scandal, but a long-term disregard for the need to properly regulate mining in the north, and to protect our people and the environment.
The original estimate of about $1 billion was the best guess at the time for remediating this site. Unfortunately, as more technical assessments were done, it became clear that the federal government had massively underestimated the problems related to stabilization and management.
The project’s cost is now projected to be $4.4 billion merely to contain, not fix, the arsenic problem.
Alternatives North recognizes that cost increases must be explained clearly, but cautions that comparisons to political scandals are unhelpful. The Giant Mine clean-up deals with many decades of poor regulation, lethal materials, and limitations of technologies that must work for centuries. Climate change adds to the complexity.
Mr. Zimmer stated that the “operations team … refuses to explain why taxpayer dollars are being spent, and the federal government trying to cover it up.” In the same annual report from the Giant Mine Oversight Board (GMOB) that Mr. Zimmer quotes, GMOB states, “The Project remained on schedule and on budget in 2024.”
We agree with Mr. Zimmer that the public deserves a better accounting of how the money has been, and will be, spent.
A call for transparency and co-operation
Alternatives North strongly supports the continuation of independent oversight by the Giant Mine Oversight Board. We agree with GMOB’s calls for faster progress and clearer government responses. Oversight only works when recommendations are acted upon.
It is our collective responsibility to stand together to ensure that no matter what political party is in power in Ottawa, the following principles are met:
-Safety and protection of the people and the land
-Transparency and open reporting
-Strong and independent oversight
-Meaningful involvement by Indigenous and community groups
-Long-term funding and perpetual care
This project must not be a political football. It must be a shared commitment to doing what is right, not just for now, but for generations to come. We need to be prepared and trained for long-term local management and maintenance.
Giant Mine is a stark reminder of what happens when government prioritizes presumed economic growth over the health of people and the land. For the Giant Mine project, and other Northern mining projects, Alternatives North believes the focus must remain on building trust, not blame.
We must take the lessons of Giant Mine to heart. We must make sure planned megaprojects, under any government, are assessed and regulated through our constitutionally entrenched co-management system and not trying to circumvent it. Indeed, we need to strengthen that system to prevent more public liabilities, such as Colomac, from happening in the first place.
We need to ask why do we allow an industry to take private profits and leave taxpayers to clean up the mess?
—Karen Hamre is a volunteer with Alternatives North.
