Yukon placer miners facing shutdowns as licences expire while miners wait for renewals

The Klondike Placer Miners' Association says it's pausing all engagement and high-level discussions with the Yukon government until the government comes up with a solution to expedite licence renewals.

Miners' operating licences have been expiring while they've been waiting for renewals — and some have been waiting for years, said Will Fellers, the president of the association.

"They've applied for their licences — some a year, some over two years ago — and they've been kind of lost in the process," Fellers said.

"We've brought this to the attention of the government many times over the last few years that this was coming, and we haven't had any resolution. So we're trying to do what we can so we can get our operators to keep working with valid licences."

Earlier this year, some placer miners began speaking out about the issue. Fellers said he's now aware of about 20 placer miners whose licences have expired while they've been waiting for their renewals to make it through the queue.

According to Fellers, 59 operators risk losing their licences this season if they expire before getting reviewed and renewed.

What happens when a licence expires?

Fellers said it's illegal for lapsed licence holders to do any work on their site. That means no moving equipment, and no sluicing material.

"There's not really much they can do because they're not legally allowed to be on the land anymore," Fellers said. "We're supposed to pack up everything and vacate the property. If we are forced to pay what the cost would be to move everything off to some other site, just the freight cost alone would be hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Some might be able to swallow that cost, he said — but many would go bankrupt.

Fellers said many of the miners in queue for renewal have been operating their family-run sites for decades. He said since licences are good for 10 years, there should have been no surprises for the government or delays when it came time to renew licences. 

"We're not hearing our voices in the processes they're working on. With all the information we put out to them, we don't see a lot of the important stuff getting put into the processes they're doing, and we don't have a resolution to get the miners back to work in time for this season," he said.

CBC News reached out to John Streicker, the territory's minister of Energy, Mines, and Resources, for comment. Cabinet Communications responded saying the minister was unavailable but offered a statement which read: "The government of Yukon remains focused on improving permitting timelines and regulatory processes to better support the placer mining industry."

The statement added that the government respects the Klondike Placer Miners' Association's decision to pause high-level engagement and will remain committed to collaborating with them in the future.

Extend current and expired licences, some suggest

For years, Brooke Rudolph served as the KPMA's executive director and adviser.

During the association's annual general meeting in Dawson City, Yukon, last weekend, she announced she was resigning from the position out of frustration over this particular issue.

"As I said to the membership, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome," Rudolph told CBC News.

"If I just keep, you know, banging my head against the wall of this broken system, I'm not being a good role model for my kids. I'm not helping the industry at all. So what I'm hoping is by leaving and creating a hole in the industry that I dearly love, that there is opportunity for positive change to fill that space."

Rudolph said she wants to see the government extend the current and expired placer mining licences that are waiting to be reviewed and renewed. She said many of the licences in the queue are from placer miners who've already been through the renewal process twice.

She said extending the licences could give regulators enough time to clear the backlog.

In February, the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board confirmed to CBC it takes them up to 10 months to process a class 4 placer project application.

It's then up to a decision body — typically formed by the territorial and local First Nation governments — to approve the permit or not.

Those timelines are all well and fine, Rudolph said, but it shouldn't be miners paying the price of delays.

"The placer industry can't be shut down and put out of business because it didn't get done on time," Rudolph said.