When De Beers halted its Snap Lake mine in the Northwest Territories in December and let go 600 people, it sent some shockwaves through the region. It had been not a secret the mine had major problems, but De Beers spent so much cash on it that a lot of people didn’t think the company would actually give up.
“It was always in the back of our mind (that De Beers could walk away),” Premier Bob McLeod said in an interview.
The Snap Lake closure was a wake-up call for the NWT, where mining comprises 40 to 50 per cent from the economy. The NWT has been certainly one of Canada’s fastest-growing economies for a long time, but shuttering Snap Lake has an impact.
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“If we do not have mining, we’re back to government being the biggest part of our economy,” McLeod said. “Not what we want.”
In the short term, he’s concerned that three promising mining projects (Nechalacho, NICO and Prairie Creek) are stalled due to a lack of capital. He is also frustrated that the NWT continues to score relatively poorly in the Fraser Institute’s rankings of mining jurisdictions (it came 35th in the latest rankings). He thinks those rankings are skewed by people who haven’t worked within the territory in decades and aren’t aware from the improvements in the overall investment environment.
McLeod is certain that more large diamond mines will be discovered over the long term, even though the big finds in the NWT all date back to the 1990s.
