Saying that the NWT was on a precipice with a bad fall in our future because of looming mine closures, the author of a report prepared for the Yellowknife Chamber of Commerce told city council last week that the territory is doomed.
Graeme Clinton, the report’s author, argued that because the territorial and municipal governments have not been preparing for the closure of mines — the first expected two years from now — the NWT will lose hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Clinton was right about one thing: governments have not been preparing for this shift, even though they have known it was coming for years. However, it is wrong to see this as negative and use it to scare decision makers and the public. Instead, we need to see this as an opportunity to move in healthier directions.
The report Eyes Wide Open was written a couple years ago and commissioned by the chamber of commerce. However, Clinton said he felt a need to bring it to council’s attention last week because of the situation’s urgency. He claims that upwards of 1,500 jobs could be lost and 1,100 residents could leave along with $100 million in consumer spending.
“I literally can’t sleep at night thinking of this stuff, but I’m here to start a conservation and hope that everybody in the room does as well,” he said during his presentation.
One city councillor appeared to agree, saying he also loses sleep thinking about the closures.
With all the doomsaying, there seemed to be little mention of the positives that could come from mine shutdowns which have been so hard on the people, the land and the animals. These closures encourage us to move all our eggs from one basket and diversify, something the GNWT has been told to do for years.
Next week is Earth Week, a time when we are called on to look at how our lifestyles impact the planet and its shaky future. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently said in a report of its own that humankind has 12 years left before dramatic carbon emissions cause global temperatures from rising above the 1.5 C limit, which would be catastrophic.
If we want to survive, we must change.
Let’s not forget that mining has always left its not-so-positive mark. There are many from the Dene Nation that have suggested that the Giant Mine site should be surrounded with barbed wire and skeleton-and-cross-bone signs reminding us of the real legacy of the gold mines. It will be decades, if ever, that we are able to clean up all the arsenic from those early mines. The Dene themselves reported illness and even death among their people from the arsenic. We ignored them. At a time when we need to be producing our own food, we have limited capacity because of contaminated soil.
Last summer, we all fled trying to avoid the flames that destroyed our forests and the habitat on which our wildlife population depends and this year is not looking much better.
All of this calls for us to move toward a new way of being. Instead of panicking about mine closures, why aren’t we giving more thought to the skills our young people will need to rehabilitate the territory and those needed to fight the impacts of climate change? Why aren’t we seeing Aurora College expand its operations into the communities offering more training in the trades at the local level so that they can repair and rebuild the old houses that seniors are struggling to survive in? Why aren’t we seeing more emphasis on social work, teaching, firefighting, nursing, treatment, upgrading, and computer training at the community campuses so that we can help them meet their own needs? Why aren’t we out there planting trees and nurturing our environment which has been destroyed by people, not the climate which is only reacting to the way we live?
Finally, let’s not forget about the many small and medium-sized businesses that could sprout from our ingenious Northerners. Let’s support them. We as Northerners are far more resilient than the authors of the report suggest. The downsizing of the mines leads to endless positive opportunities, so let’s focus on that.
Indeed, these closures could signal a change, but a change much healthier than what we have seen in the past.
Happy Earth Week.
—Nancy Vail is a longtime Yellowknifer concerned with social justice.