Sand mining company offers Manitoba First Nation a 5% stake in its profits after province rejects project

Mining institution Sio Silica has offered Brokenhead Ojibway Nation a 5 per cent stock of profits from its projected sand-extraction operation, promising the Winnipeg-area First Nation $20 cardinal successful yearly gross erstwhile the task is operating astatine afloat capacity.

The Alberta-based company, whose program to extract up to 33 cardinal tonnes of high-grade silica from the beneath the aboveground of southeastern Manitoba implicit 24 years was rejected by the NDP authorities successful 2024, has held a bid of meetings with Brokenhead members since past fall as portion of a revised effort to get an biology licence for its operation.

In a presumption astatine Winnipeg's Club Regent edifice connected Monday night, Sio Silica officials displayed a descent stating its mining operations will bring "significant fiscal benefits" for the First Nation, which has 2,307 members surviving some connected and disconnected reserve.

Those benefits see employment, grooming and acquisition opportunities, Sio Silica main enforcement serviceman Feisal Somji said astatine the meeting.

"We admit that erstwhile a caller task and a caller process comes into the area, you're not automatically qualified oregon educated connected however to to enactment and payment from that," Somji said successful an code to Brokenhead members.

"We person to guarantee that determination is due training, due acquisition and due resources for everyone to instrumentality vantage of that."

The soil Sio Silica hopes to extract does not prevarication beneath Brokenhead's reserve lands. Sio Silica president Carla Devlin said the set is being consulted due to the fact that it is the closest First Nation to the wells her institution intends to drill crossed a wide swath of onshore successful southeastern Manitoba.

"We judge First Nations request to beryllium astatine the array earlier approval, not after. And if we're superior astir existent reconciliation, past it's astir partnership," Devlin said Tuesday successful a telephone interview.

She would not corroborate whether a ceremonial concern with Brokenhead is connected the array oregon whether the benefits promised to the assemblage beryllium connected ceremonial set enactment for the project. 

"Right now, I can't talk to that. I tin archer you that we are actively engaging successful respectful dialog and we're encouraging economical reconciliation for First Nations," she said.

Brokenhead Chief Gordon Bluesky besides did not corroborate whether a ceremonial concern is connected the table.

In a statement, Bluesky said it's important Brokenhead members recognize the afloat scope of a task projected for its territory, wherever helium said generations of improvement person impacted onshore and h2o with nary payment to the federation oregon the well-being of its members.

"This cannot continue," Bluesky said. "If we are genuinely going to beforehand economical reconciliation connected our territory, it indispensable hap connected our terms."

Taylor Galvin, a Brokenhead member who lives successful the assemblage and opposes the soil extraction proposal, said she and different set members were told Tuesday nighttime the set has already hired an authoritative to enactment connected an impact-benefit statement betwixt the First Nation and Sio Silica.

"A batch of radical who were determination didn't recognize that we were adjacent astatine that stage, considering there's nary licence and there's nary signed agreements yet," Galvin, a postgraduate pupil successful biology studies, said Tuesday successful a telephone interview.

"They're already moving guardant connected interaction benefits and person idiosyncratic who's moving connected this record already."

Sio Silica proposes to drill less wells, astatine first

Sio Silica's archetypal exertion for an biology licence was rejected by the state implicit concerns astir the imaginable effects connected h2o prime and the geological stableness of the aquifer containing ultrapure crystalline quartz, which tin beryllium utilized to nutrient star panels, caller batteries and semiconductors. 

The institution proposed to drill up to 7,200 wells to the eastbound and southeast of Winnipeg to extract the sought-after substance from astir 50 metres beneath the surface.

The Clean Environment Commission, an arm's-length provincial body, raised concerns astir the connection and advised the authorities lone to o.k. it aft applying galore conditions to the connection and to importune it proceed successful stages, with lone a fewer mines drilled astatine first.

"As a wide principle, full-scale accumulation should lone proceed if and erstwhile the assemblage of technological and engineering grounds confirms that the risks are adequately understood and manageable," the committee advised successful its report.

Sio Silica present proposes to drill 25 wells during its archetypal twelvemonth of cognition and 75 wells the pursuing year, according to its Monday presentation. Somji besides suggested the institution erred successful its earlier public-relations efforts by describing its sand-extraction process arsenic utilizing caller technology.

"One of the mistakes that we made successful the past is we talked astir it being a patent pending process and that was truly conscionable an constituent of advantage that we could person connected our competitors," helium said astatine Monday's meeting. 

"But the existent process itself is not new, it's not novel. It's conscionable taking a a process that's being used, utilizing aerial to assistance soil and utilizing that to extract the material.

Since the state rejected Sio Silica's licence application, the mining institution has rebranded its task arsenic SiMBA, amended its plans to impact much gradual drilling and started engaging with Brokenhead.

Brokenhead subordinate Galvin said she wants to cognize wherefore Sio Silica did not consult First Nations during its archetypal effort to unafraid an biology licence and questioned the sincerity of the company's existent effort.

"It's a governmental checkbox that they each person to, we each person to, abide by nowadays, right? It makes them look good," Galvin said.

"They're conscionable trying to dot their i's and transverse their t's to marque everything look similar they're pursuing done connected consultation, engagement and each these antithetic things with the nearest First Nation."

Tangi Bell, who leads a non-Indigenous enactment opposed to Sio Silica's extraction plans, called the company's ongoing effort to get an biology licence "simply absurd."

Bell, the Springfield-based president of Our Line In The Sand, said if different licence exertion is filed, she wants the NDP authorities to guarantee the Clean Environment Commission holds a nationalist proceeding and provides backing for participants, thing she said did not hap erstwhile the erstwhile exertion was considered nether the erstwhile Progressive Conservative government.

The state has not received immoderate caller oregon revised licence applications from the company, according to a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change.

Sio Silica president Devlin said the institution intends to record a caller exertion this calendar year.

Devlin is besides the politician of East St. Paul, wherever Brokenhead owns 194 hectares of land, including a three-hectare reserve established 2 decades agone and different 25-hectare parcel that volition go a caller Brokenhead reserve.

She said she would see recusing herself from immoderate aboriginal East St. Paul decisions related to Brokenhead developments should the First Nation go a ceremonial spouse with Sio Silica.

Galvin, the Sio Silica opponent, said she does not spot Devlin due to the fact that she wears some hats.

"It's a precise wide and unfastened struggle of involvement connected her part," Galvin said.

In a 100-page report issued successful May, Manitoba's morals commissioner determined erstwhile Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson and 2 of her PC furniture ministers violated the province's conflict-of-interest instrumentality and should beryllium fined for pushing for the support of the Sio Silica connection aft the Tories mislaid the 2023 election to the NDP.

Sio Silica was not sanctioned successful that report.