Lawyer tapped to study Giant Mine legacy comes with no 'preconceived notions'

The lawyer and former British Columbia politician recently appointed to assess the historical impacts of the N.W.T.'s Giant Mine on Indigenous communities says he plans to travel to Yellowknife this month to meet with those affected firsthand. 

Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Gary Anandasangaree named Murray Rankin as the ministerial special representative in a news release last week, saying Rankin's "experience and knowledge will support future recommendations to address the harms that resulted from the Giant Mine operations."

The mine operated near Yellowknife between 1948 and 2004. The site is one of the most contaminated in Canada. Since 2021, a $4-billion remediation project to clean up the site and contain 237,000 tonnes of highly toxic arsenic trioxide dust underground has been underway.

In a statement this week, the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, which has been pushing for a federal apology and compensation for years, said it welcomes Rankin's appointment and is hopeful for a resolution.

"The mine contaminated our core harvesting area. We no longer trust it as a safe place to harvest," said Ndilǫ Chief Fred Sangris. "We will share our peoples' message with Mr. Rankin that the damage is still felt today and will be felt for generations."

Murray Rankin joined guest host Shannon Scott on CBC's The Trailbreaker on Tuesday.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Why are you the right person for this job?

Well, I hope I'm the right person. I have had a long relationship with Minister Anandasangaree. We've done some, I think, pretty important things in British Columbia together on treaty making, for example, and reconciliation efforts. And I have worked as a lawyer with First Nations and with governments and with industry for a long time. I think the minister thought I might be able to give him advice and help to resolve this longstanding issue. It's been going on for some 56 years of the mine's operation, and then 20 years since, and there's some significant issues that need to be addressed.

What are your goals for this position?

My goals are to do what the minister has asked me to do, namely to work with the communities affected. There are several First Nations, in particular the Yellowknives Dene First Nation, of course, but there's Métis people as well, Tłı̨chǫ, and others that have been involved. The objective is to provide him with some very practical recommendations to try to address this longstanding problem. It's been around, as you know, for so long and promises have been made over the years — not all of them appear to have been met.

So the idea is to come up with recommendations as to what extent the government of Canada bears responsibility. What are the specific impacts on the Indigenous peoples that were affected by the mine over the years, and to try to both heal the land and heal the people who were affected by this mine.

One of the agreements that hasn't come to fruition yet around this is an apology and compensation. In 2021, the federal government signed an agreement to look into issuing that apology. What's your understanding of why that hasn't happened yet?

I'm trying to get to the bottom of that. You're absolutely right. There was talk as well in 2021 of a negotiating table, they called it. And that was something that a former minister, Carolyn Bennett, committed to. That doesn't appear to have got off the ground. The N.W.T. MP, Michael McLeod, had brought in a petition. It got, I think, like thousands of names, you know, 32,000 people signed it calling for that compensation and apology. So the government of Canada has been doing whatever they've been doing and there's of course lots of work going on on the physical remediation, the environmental impacts of the contaminated site, but the impacts on the First Nations that were affected — it's my job to try to find out what can be done about that.

I want to read a statement from Yellowknives Dene Chief Ernest Betsina about your appointment. He says "for decades we have advocated for an apology and compensation for the harms that our people have suffered as a result of Canada's authorization and administration of Giant Mine. We are hoping for a resolution for our claim before more of our elders pass away." Chief Betsina obviously wants a timely resolution. What is your timeline?

My timeline is, and I've been in correspondence with the Yellowknives Dene just yesterday, and I'm hoping to come up to Yellowknife in a week or so. I've got arrangements that are currently being made to meet him and his people and to discuss all of that. 

I have the benefit of not really having spoken in the past, so I can hit the ground running with, if you will, a clean slate. My job is to report not to the public service, but to the minister himself and that I think gives me the opportunity to hear from them firsthand without any preconceived notions of what has happened or should happen.

On that note, given the longstanding calls for justice over Giant Mine, how do you plan to address any skepticism about this process?

Well, I hope I can, through the various conversations I have with a wide range of people, get to the bottom of it. There's obviously different perspectives on what has been done and what should be done. So my job is simply to listen to all sides of the issue and to try to come up with my best advice, my independent advice to the minister.

Ultimately it's the government of Canada that will have to decide what to do with my report. I will do that within the next few months. This has been, I think everyone agrees, taking far too long to get going and it's my job to show action as quickly as I can. That's why I've been immersed in trying to learn about this from reading. And now I have to get in, talk to the people who are directly affected, and that's what I intend to do, beginning a week or so from now.

How long will you be in Yellowknife?

The initial trip, I expect to be there for a few days and then I'm going to, of course, be coming back because as you can imagine, there have been mountains of research and reports over the years and I've got to get to the bottom of that. It's a significant learning curve for me.