One of Northern Quebec’s biggest mining companies is being taken to court by indigenous people and environmentalists from South America.
Cambior Inc., which operates five mines in Abitibi, also runs a mine in the country of Guyana from which 2.9 billion litres of cyanide sludge spilled into one of the nation’s largest rivers, the Essequibo. The Guyana mine is one of the world’s largest gold mines. The spill occurred last August.
Some 15,000 people, mostly Natives, suffered direct damages, according to organizers of a legal defense fund set up to fight Cambior in court. The organizers plan to launch a class-action suit against Cambior in Quebec Superior Court this
spring.
There have been reports of dead animals, hair loss, vomitting and nausea in the affected areas. So far, less than $ 10,000 has been paid out in damages.
Cambior is being taken to court in Quebec because Guyana’s government, which owns 5 per cent of the mine, appears unwilling to hold the company responsible. A government inquiry cleared Cambior of wrong-doing and no cleanup is being done. The mine was briefly closed last fall, but has since reopened.
The cyanide processing used in Cambior’s Guyana mine is also used in its gold mines in Northern Quebec.
Asked about the chances of a similar accident in Quebec, Cambior spokesman Robert Lavalière said, “If you ask me if this thing could happen in Quebec, I don’t know. It was an accident.”
Later, he assured that the company’s Quebec mines are “safe.”
Curiously, Cambior’s partner in developing the Guyana gold mine was Golden Star Resources, formerly owned by mining developer Robert Friedland.
Friedland was also involved in another mining disaster in the U.S. in which cyanide waste accidentally spilled into a major river, poisoning it for miles downstream. The cleanup cost taxpayers $120 million.
Friedland is now involved in a multi-billion-dollar mining development at Voisey Bay, an ancestral burial ground of the Labrador Innu and Inuit peoples.
