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Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board members Richard Mercredi, left, Peter Bannon, Darryl Bohnet, James Wah-Shee and Rachel Crapeau preside over a De Beer's Gahcho Kue project public hearing in Yellowknife in December. The review board has seen its staff numbers cut by half and now a cut in operational funding means that travel to communities will be reduced. - NNSL file photo

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
After laying off nearly half the staff of the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board this month, directors are now looking to reductions in board and staff travel expenses.

The job cuts and austerity measures were prompted by the loss of supplementary funding from the federal government, which has seen the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement environmental management board's operational funding drop to $2.7 million from $3.3 million over the last three years.

The board gets its ase funding through provisions under the Gwich'in Comprehensive Land Claim Agreement.

"We're in the process of putting details to our business plan," said executive director Vern Christensen. "In terms of our expenditures, we're going to have less of a budget to travel to go to meetings outside of Yellowknife unless the travel is directly associated with an assessment. There's going to be a reduction in that area of spending."

Christensen declined to give a breakdown of gross expenditures, but Western Arctic MP Dennis Bevington, who has sat on the Mackenzie Valley Environmental Impact Review Board in the past, said costs for board members, who are paid per-diem plus expenses and who travel from a number of communities across the territory, "was never the larger part" of the review board's expenditures.

But the six layoffs made earlier this month at the board, which is currently working on a number of large development environmental assessments, including the Avalon Rare Metals Inc. Nechalacho project, the Giant Mine remediation project, a Mackenzie Valley Highway, and support staff to De Beers Canada's Gahcho Kue diamond mining project, are "really difficult to understand," Bevington said.

"The work has to be done and the thought that we're laying off people that are experienced workers in the Northern context doesn't bode well for the review board continuing to work in a good fashion," he said.

Two environmental assessment officers were among those laid off, in addition to corporate positions including an executive advisor position, a communications position, a community liaison officer and a secretary/receptionist.

"These staff layoffs are very serious," Bevington said. "I can't understand why the minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development, with his great desire to see the regulatory system operating effectively, would countenance this move."

Even as the government reduces budgets across many federal departments across the country in a period of spending restraint, cutting funding to the review board is "false economics," Bevington added.

"I think what it says is that their priorities are mixed up and in their ideological bent on reductions to government expenditures they're kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater here.

"If they want to see the regulatory system work properly and effectively, by making moves like this, this is not going to help. If that really is their goal, to see a proper, effective regulatory system that could deliver in good fashion, then not funding this board properly so it could do its work is really not appropriate."

Making the environmental assessment process as timely as possible without the staff and funding capacity needed will be "very difficult," Christensen said. "It's going to be difficult but we're making our best efforts to make sure that the environmental assessments stay on track and we're still aspiring to maintain the same quality and timeliness of our process."

The statements from the review board about dedicating its reduced resources to protecting the core business, which is timely and significant environmental assessments, is reassuring for industry, said Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

"That's their main business, to ensure timely and fulsome assessments. That's really all we expect, too," Hoefer said.

While the review board covers environmental assessments outside industry projects, Hoefer said the reductions to the board are not surprising from the mining perspective in light of slowing development in the NWT.

"When you look at the number of projects that are in the pipeline that could be coming at the review board, there are none," Hoefer said.

The focus should be on renewing investment in the North, Hoefer said, then making sure the resources are there to deal with the projects the territory will attract.

"I'm comfortable that the federal government will provide the resources to deal with those projects if and when they show up," he said.

In the short term, the board does not plan to cut any more of its remaining seven staff, Christensen said.

Board chair Richard Edjericon, a former Conservative Party candidate who competed for the Western Arctic seat in 2006, did not return calls from News/North for comment.

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