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Page 2, News, Tuesday, July 30, 1991 By Rob Cotton The News Canadian Pacific Rail has contracted with Trimac Ltd to transport ore con- centrates from Minnova Mines, Win- ston Lake to the trans-shipment site in Schreiber. Trimac will be introducing a new container system to transport the con- centrate. Bill McLarty, branch manager for Trimac in Schreiber said the loading at the mine will be enclosed in building equipped with dust collectors and a full ventilation system. The trailers, each carrying two con- tainers will be driven into the building for loading. "When they come to the site a 60 ton fork lift will pick the container up, move it over the rail car and then lower it," Mclarty explained. There is an air release mechanism on the bottom of the container and the rnaterial is dumped directly into the rail car. "There will be no more dumping {ore concentrates] on the ground," he said. Trimac will begin the new method of transporting the ore concentrates as soon as the loading building at the mine is completed, sometime in September, McLarty said. "If everything goes as planned we are going to have a prototype of the containers built and in service. We will then load them and try them out," he said. New contai ner system for oF McLarty said that Trimac is trying to hire drivers locally. "We've got three that are local drivers. Two of them worked for Trans- Provincial and another driver is coming from Rossport with his own truck." The concentrates will continue to be transferred from the pad to the rail cars by front end loader until the container system is put in place. "We spent a long day Monday from about five in the moming to 10 at night getting the pad all washed up and clean," McLarty said. They will be dumping only one load at time and cleaning up right after loading, he said. A public meeting will be held at the Schreiber Recreation Centre, Monday August 26, at 7 p.m. Representatives from Minnova Mines, C.PRail and Tri- mac will be there to discuss the contain- er system. Over the years Schreiber residents have expressed concems about environ- mental, health and safety problems aris- ing from trans-shipment site. 'The mineral transfer site is within 2 km of every residence in the communi- ty including schools, homes and gar- dens. Many residents feel that 'guidelines' and acceptable limits' have no meaning because very little is known about the potential harm of these airbome metal concentrates. The new container system concentrates will eliminate proposed by the need to pile the concentrates on the pad in TrimacLtd. for trans-shipment of ore Schreiber. The wind will not be able to blow them about as it did last winter. e trans-shipment The concentration of metals in Schreiber's air has not yet fallen com- pletely within Ontario Guidelines. According to the Ontario Ministry of the Environment 's 1990-91 air quality study in Schreiber: * levels of airbome dust usually met Ministry regulations, * the occasional high readings of suspended dust particles were caused by wind blown ore concentrates, * airborne metals in dust, while meeting Ontario regulations, were sometimes well above normal, * metals in moss and tree foliage increased at many sampling sites from 1989 to 1990 and, * metals in snow increased substan- tially at most sites from 1990 to 1991. The MOE report concluded that there was some slippage in the dust control program implemented by CP Rail in 1989. The report recommended that CP Rail follow its control program more closely. In particular, spreading concen- trate dust from vehicle tires onto the highway and entrance area should be avoided. CP Rail submitted a proposal to MOE in April, 1991 to tighten its con- trol program. The MOE report outlined key points in this program. * the removal of metal- ntaminated gravel in the transfer site and replace- ment with clean fill, * the cleaning of mud flaps and rear Continued on page 11 For the last four columns, I've been talking about the process of negotiating a self-government agreement between the Nishnawbe-Aski Nation (NAN), Ontario and the federal government. I outlined the agreements signed so far, starting as far back as 1986, as well as the principles and objectives of the three parties. I've received a lot of feedback about this series. Some comments have been positive - with people telling me they appreciated seeing the positions of the parties, albeit rather complex, laid out in black and white. But others have commented that they still don't under- stand what self-government will really look like, after reading the previous four columns. They can't imagine what the actual system will look like-nor can they find an adequate parallel with some existing government system, for comparison. I recently completed an interview with Dr. Bob Rosehart, the President of Lakehead University and Ontario's chief negotiator with NAN and Ottawa. Among other things, I put that question to him; is the self-government system being developed with NAN like munic- ipal regional governments, such as Metro Toronto, where Metro as a regional government could be com- pared to "the region" of NAN and the local boroughs within Metro (Scarbor- ough, Etobicoke, North York, etc.) | so 4 9 ye ee eA tr ne AG local First -government to be unique son is accurate, NAN asa regional gov- ernment would have powers such as environmental protection, natural resource management, policing, justice and welfare and the 46 First Nation "municipalities" would be responsible for more local administrative issues, such as housing, sewer and water, streets, animal control and localized zoning issues. Rosehart declined to accept my com- parison outright. "I think the issue for most of the are three kilometres apart that doesn't make any sense in an area like the NAN area. So I think it will be a unique structure where one of the key issues will be the relative power sharing of the various levels (local bands, tribal coun- cils, NAN) of the governance model." The process of defining this new Sys- tem for allocating and sharing powérs, according to Rosehart, is "still at a con- ceptual stage." He said "these negotia- tions are unlike classical negotiations. NORTHERN They're basi- First Nations cally consen- themsleves \ INSIGHTS. sus negotia- is having by Larry Sanders tions where more control you have over their own destiny." He used the example of a local band wanting to do something to control dogs within the First Nation. "Under the current sys- tem, the band passes a resolution and it has to go to Ottawa for approval. One band passed a resolution to try to limit the number of dogs per household and it was rejected. That's something we in an organized municipality take for granted that just can't be taken for granted in a NAN community." "T suspect in the end that this NAN self-governance structure will be very unique," he said, "so in that sense I'm sort of loath to compare it to anything. I think it will be unique because of the geographic separation of the communi- ties. There's lots of things you can do in a traditional municipal regional gov- gi oe three parties at the table and the chair is provided by the Indian commissioner of Ontario (Harry LaForme). We will throw something on the table and we will all contribute and then the Indian Commission of Ontario will write up what they think we may have come to consensus on and then that provides the basis for a subsequent meeting. So we're conceptualizing." : Rosehart is also Zoing out of his way to consult with a broad range of non- native interest groups - about 35 in all, such as municipalities, industry groups, environmental organizations and unions. He said "a lot of them have identified themsleves to us. We're also going to be running newspaper adver- tisements in case we happened to have missed any groups." From his first wed of consultations, one that took about three months, Rosehart has iden- tified the following issues, that he's taken to the negotiating table: ".a need for a clearly defined and mandated self-government infrastruc- ture; -a focus on management (and co- management) rather than on ownership; -the need to provide long-term pro- tection to wildemess parks; -the need to develop a unique approach to the NAN area because of the remote location of most of the 46 communities and, on the other hand, a method of dealing with the more urban location of a small number of NAN communities; -the need to provide "fail safe" safe- ty regulations to any resource extraction and conservation strategies regardless of how the resource is managed; -the need to clearly define access criteria to the NAN area; -the need to empower the Nish- nawbe-Aski Nation in such a way as to provide enhanced economic develop- ment opportunites for NAN communi- ties." He also told me that even though he has been given no deadline, "I would hope that we would come to some sort of comprehensive framework agree- ment within 18 months. After that, at least at the federal level there has to be a new piece of legislation and that pro- cess will take a couple of years...SOo altogether it's a process of four or five Continued on. page 12