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BEHCHOKO/RAE-EDZO
After failing to book a venue in Behchoko for public hearings which were scheduled to take place this month for Fortune Minerals Ltd.'s NICO gold-cobalt-bismuth-copper project, the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board has rescheduled the hearings to a new date, much earlier than expected.

An aerial view of Fortune Minerals Ltd.'s NICO gold-cobalt-bismuth-copper project, located about 50 km north of Whati. The Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board has rescheduled public hearings for the project, now taking place Aug. 27 to 31, in Whati, Yellowknife, and Behchoko. - photo courtesy Fortune Minerals Ltd.

The review board reported the clerical mishap earlier this month and tentatively postponed the hearings until October. They were originally scheduled to begin at the end of July in Whati, Behchoko and Yellowknife.

Following pressure from the company, which stated in a letter to the review board that an almost three-month delay would have "a material adverse effect on the project development schedule," possibly delaying project construction by up to a year, the October postponement date has been changed to new tentative public hearing dates from Aug. 27 to 31.

"It's unfortunate the board made the initial error in the first place but what do you do?" said Rick Schryer, director of regulatory and environmental affairs for Fortune, who said the company is fine with the new dates. "We're ready to proceed."

By reducing the length of the delay for the public hearings, the review board might have saved some face, amid persisting concerns about the timelines of the permitting process.

"If there were really specific issues on the table that people felt needed to be addressed, that would have been one thing, but to postpone hearings for three months because they forgot to book the room, how could that not make you look bad?" Schryer said. "I think it does save a little bit of face for them in terms of being able to reschedule within a reasonable time-frame, close enough to the original dates."

Vern Christensen, executive director of the review board, said the board is "quite concerned about the timing of the proceedings." That is why it made adjustments to its agenda, which includes upcoming technical meetings for Avalon Minerals Ltd.'s Nechalacho rare earths project in August and public hearings for the Giant Mine remediation project in September.

Fortune had suggested alternative plans to keep the original dates, including the chartering of buses to transport people from Behchoko to Yellowknife, which would not have worked, Christensen said.

"The board wanted to bring the hearings as close to the people affected as possible, and busing people in just wouldn't have been the most satisfactory way to hold a hearing and to be able to hear all of the peoples' views on the proposed project," he said.

In addition to having alternative plans in place, the incident highlights the benefits of having timelines put into the new Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act, said Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

"One of the concerns we've had -- and I think all investors have -- is certainty in process, especially when it comes to timelines," Hoefer said.

The Tlicho government had also petitioned to have the hearings held in mid-October, in order to have a traditional knowledge study complete for the proposed mining and milling project, which is located on Tlicho territory.

To accommodate the Tlicho, the review board plans to keep the public record of the review open until the study is available to be submitted in October.

After the public record is closed, the review board will prepare its final report, which is expected to be complete before the end of the year.

A pre-hearing conference for next month's public hearings has also been scheduled to take place, at the review board office on July 30.

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