Source: AFP
Canada’s Quebec province is rich in minerals needed for everything from electric cars to cellphones, but residents living on top of the potential windfall worry their backyards will be dug up — and they won’t get a dime.
In recent months, tens of thousands of mining exploration licenses have been issued in the province amid a global rush for critical and strategic minerals such as graphite, lithium, zinc, nickel and cobalt.
But under provincial mining exploration rules, subsoil in Quebec does not belong to landowners.
In Saint-Elie-de-Caxton, a town of 2,000 about halfway between Montreal and Quebec, residents are fed up. Signs around town proclaim “Saint-Elie, incompatible with mining activity” or “Don’t Dig in my Caxton”.
Source: AFP
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“We’re at war,” says Gilbert Guerin, a spokesman for the Don’t Dig in my Caxton committee, pointing to a map outlining exploration claims that have effectively been removed from the town for future mines.
In Quebec, it only takes a few clicks on a website and about Can$75 (US$55) to stake a mining claim covering up to 100 hectares (250 acres) — an opportunity open to locals and foreigners.
“I bought here. I thought I would be sovereign in my house, but I realized that everything underground did not belong to me,” says Yvan Lafontaine, surveying his property in the neighboring village of Saint-Mathieu-du-Parc. from the top of an observation tower he had built.
When Lafontaine learned that a company had acquired the mining rights to the subsoil beneath his land, what the nature lover calls his little “paradise,” he fought back by staking 12 claims around the property.
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Source: AFP
Currently, more than 350,000 claims have been registered, covering 10 percent of Quebec. The southern regions of the province — where most of the population lives — are the most sought after.
According to an AFP analysis of government data, the number of claims issued rose significantly from September 2022 to the end of February 2024, with about 160,000 granted — a 140 percent increase on the previous 18-month period.
‘Wild West’
Source: AFP
For Julie Hamelin, a resident of Saint-Elie, Quebec’s mining exploration regulations are “outdated.”
“It’s something out of the Wild West, this way of staking claims,” he said, urging provincial authorities to protect settled lands from mining.
Guerin, a former civil servant, says he is concerned about the “irreversible consequences” a mining project would have, particularly on the region’s groundwater.
To try to discourage mining companies from settling, the people of Saint-Elie-de-Caxton spent thousands of dollars to buy more than 220 exploration claims around the village.
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Faced with growing public discontent, the Quebec government announced plans to modernize its mining laws and insisted in an email to AFP “that no exploration can take place without the consent of the owner of private land.”
But mining companies are certainly looking at Quebec’s potential for resource extraction.
“There is a lot of graphite in Quebec. It could be the most important reserve in the world,” says Hugues Jacquemin, CEO of Northern Graphite.
Source: AFP
“We absolutely need to develop this sector because it is essential for the manufacture of batteries and electric vehicles,” he told AFP during a visit to a mine in Lac-des-Iles, 260 kilometers (160 miles) north of Montreal.
Canada is seeking to develop a battery supply chain independent of China, which has until now dominated the market for these critical minerals.
The development of the electric vehicle sector is a priority for both Quebec and Canada, which prides itself on being one of the only countries in the world that has all the necessary minerals to produce batteries.
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But in Saint-Elie-de-Caxton and the surrounding areas, not all citizens agree with the official plans.
“I don’t think we should go in that direction,” says Hamelin. “The solution is to scale down using what we already have.”
Source: AFP