Yukon NDP’s mining panel draws large audience

January 23, 2025

WHITEHORSE, YT — Over 100 people attended the Yukon NDP’s Let’s Talk Mining! panel on Thursday, Jan. 23, capping the mining industry’s Roundup week in Vancouver, B.C., with a homegrown discussion about the crisis facing mining in the Yukon.

“You know Yukoners want real change when over one hundred of them spend their lunch hour learning how we can make mining work for Yukoners,” Yukon NDP Leader Kate White said.

Panellists Dawna Hope, Chief of the Na-Cho Nyäk Dun (NND), and Lewis Rifkind, retired mining observer at the Yukon Conservation Society, joined White to talk about the need for new and tougher industry regulations, laws, and expectations in the wake of last summer’s disastrous cyanide spill at Victoria Gold’s Eagle mine near Mayo, YT.

Chief Hope, whose First Nation hosted Eagle mine on its Traditional Territory, emphasized the need to protect Yukon rivers and streams from cyanide and other mining contaminants.

“We all need clean water. Without it, we’re dust,” Hope said.

Rifkind explained that tougher regulations would set clear guidelines for the industry.

“There might be the perception that it would be tougher and more strenuous for mining, … but industry likes certainty,” he said.

The examples of the Eagle, Minto and Wolverine mines meanwhile show that the status quo is also failing the mining industry.

“We just have to look at the last three mines that have failed to see exhibits A, B, and C,” Rifkind elaborated.

White obligated the Yukon Government to modernize the territory’s outmoded mining legislation as a condition of the NDP’s support for the Liberals’ minority government per the parties’ 2021 Confidence and Supply Agreement.

“We need to change our laws so Yukoners get full value for the non-renewable minerals Big Mining takes out of the territory, Yukon First Nations’ rights are respected, and Yukon businesses are paid out before shareholders when mining companies go bankrupt,” White said.

“Yukon taxpayers are tired of paying for Big Mining’s mistakes. There can be a strong future for Yukon mining, but it can’t be business as usual.”

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