Northern New Brunswick community divided over mine as Québec legislators demand more study

A northern New Brunswick town is divided over the potential mining of pozzolan.

Pozzolan is a material containing silica and is used in the production of cement. Pozzolanic cement has been dubbed greener for emitting less carbon dioxide.

EcoRock, a conglomerate made up of Québec companies Carboniq and Cimbec Canada, want to expand a quarry into an open-pit pozzolan mine in Heron Bay, in the Dalhousie area, on unceded Mi’kmaq territory.

Called a strategic project by the Atlantic Canadian Opportunities Agency (ACOA) in 2022, the companies behind the project received $1,223,361 as part of the Canada Coal Transition Initiative – Infrastructure Fund.

According to the federal government, the pozzolan plant’s construction will create up to 500 jobs and result in 168 permanent jobs.

Job creation in a region affected by the departure of several large industrial employers over the years has many residents supporting the mine, but not everyone is in favour.

Last September, hundreds of residents voiced their concerns about the mine in a standing-room only meeting at the Dalhousie Recreaplex.

Those opposed to the mine over its potential environmental impacts have formed a group called Non merci, Pozzolan Dalhousie.

A rally against the mine took place on Dec. 16 outside the Heron Bay municipal building. Opponents reported altercations with counter-protesters who showed up to support the mine.

David Doucet, a life-long resident of Dalhousie, feels that the town is rushing ahead to approve the mine.

“From the outset, the proposed open-pit pozzolan mine has raised serious concerns. But how many of these concerns have been addressed? Why does it seem like decisions are predetermined and that public input is a formality? The well-being of the community is being traded for corporate gain,” said Doucet.

For Shelley Petit, chair of the New Brunswick Coalition of Persons with Disabilities, there’s no question that pozzolan is a toxic substance.

“The product they wish to mine is toxic and makes fracking look good. Not only will it emit toxins in the air, the company will be dredging the area and releasing heavy metals into the environment,” said Petit.

“Homes will likely decrease in value from the mine, and worse yet, foundations and windows could be damaged from blasting,” added Petit.

Québec legislators push New Brunswick to study the impacts of the mine

Members of Québec’s National Assembly are asking New Brunswick to consider the possible impacts of the pozzolan mine, according to a CBC report on Nov. 30.

Matane-Matapédia Representative Pascal Bérubé raised concerns about how the project could affect the health and quality of life of his constituents.

A motion tabled in the National Assembly of Québec on Nov. 29 says the province’s Public Health Department will study how the project may affect Québec residents on the Chaleur Bay opposite the mine.

The proponent EcoRock states on its website that it hopes to develop a partnership with the Ugpi’ganjig First Nation, which is located near Dalhousie. The NB Media Co-op has reached out to Ugpi’ganjig, also called Eel River Bar First Nation, for comment.

Researchers weigh in on cradle-to-grave impacts of mining

Matthew Hayes is the Canada Research Chair in Global and International Studies at St. Thomas University. He grew up in Dalhousie and is a sociologist.

Hayes notes this type of project has come up before in Dalhousie since 450 people lost their jobs with the closure of the Abitibi-Bowater paper mill in 2008.

In 2019, 420 workers at the nearby Glencore Brunswick lead smelter in Belledune lost their jobs, many of them unionized, when the smelter closed.

For Hayes, the town has been caught between competing projects of industrial development on the one side, and tourism and recreational development on the other.

Hayes argues Québec’s tourism network along Route 132 offers an example of what Northern New Brunswick could become if it tried to position its natural wealth in a new way. But since the 1920s, this vision has lost out to large-scale industrial development.

“Many people remember the benefits from the heyday of pulp and paper. Others want to develop new industries that are not as environmentally destructive. Either way, our town’s industrial heyday dates from a period of organized capitalism, where the benefits of industrial development were more broadly shared than they are today,” said Hayes.

But if the town developed tourism and real estate as an alternative to a mine, he noted, there is no guarantee the benefits of those industries would be fairly distributed to all those who help to create it.

Developing the mine exposes the area to two main risks, he said.

“The first is that the innovation cycle in mining has produced a much larger, more environmentally destructive form of open-pit mining. This process is not at its end, and if the pozzolan deposit requires removal of the mountain range, the mine’s owners will push to do that, to the detriment of the town, its population, and the health of the environment in the whole region. Some of the environmental risks are not fully known yet,” said Hayes.

The second risk is related to how mining is being transformed by new technologies that eliminate jobs and increase profitability and control for the mine’s principal investors.

“The workforce in these projects, as many people in Dalhousie know, is a fly-in-fly-out workforce, many of whom have specialized skills that will not necessarily be shared with local workers. So, the potential distribution of benefits is likely much less than advertised,” said Hayes.

Any decision on the mine should also consider the long-term effects, according to Hayes.

“The life of the mine may last a generation, but the environmental fallout is likely to last much longer,” said Hayes.

“We might ask if pozzolan actually reduces the carbon content of cement sufficiently to allow us to continue to use this construction material as we have for the last 120 or so years, or will building material technologies have to adjust much more than we currently anticipate? Dalhousie may be stuck with a dying industry, just as it was in the 1980s,” added Hayes.

Meanwhile, the proposal itself is already having ripple effects, a phenomenon documented in studies of mining’s speculative phase.

The Heron Bay proposal has caused tensions in the community, according to resident David Doucet.

Daniel Tubb is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick. He studies resource extraction in the Americas, with a particular emphasis on mining.

Tubb observes that unexpected issues with large scale resource projects include social impacts during their so-called buzz phase.

“The buzz phase refers to the period of years (sometimes decades) of speculation, exploration, assessment, and preparation for major resources project, including everything that leads up to operations, whether or not a project actually becomes operational,” says Tubb.

“The crucial point is that just proposing to bring in a large-scale open pit pozzolan mine could have social impacts for the people living and working in Dalhousie, long before mining begins.”

“Add to this, is the fact that many large-scale mining projects never actually happen. Despite this, such projects can transform how communities feel about where they live, how they imagine the future, and have other impacts, including on property prices.”

The NB Media Co-op has reached out to Heron Bay Mayor Normand Pelletier by email for comment.

Tracy Glynn is on the boards of MiningWatch Canada and the NB Media Co-op.