‘Smear campaign’: Union issues statement 

on Day 6 of B.C. port strike

By Darrian Matassa-Fung  Global News

Posted July 6, 2023 

“Instead of negotiating to end the strike at the west coast ports, the BC Maritime Employers Association has launched a smear campaign targeting their own workers,” International Longshore and Warehouse Union president Rob Ashton said.

“This is straight out of the strikebreaking playbook, instead of sitting down and negotiating with workers, they’re funding a dirty-tricks media campaign, using anonymous sources to selectively leak misleading information to reporters.

“They figure if they can ruin their own employees’ reputations, it’ll pave the way for back-to-work legislation, without having to dip into their massive post-pandemic profits to give their workers a little more. I urge reporters, the public, and the federal government not to play their game.”

Ashton said public comments issued by the BCMEA since the strike began have been exaggerated.

“The reality is, our people do hard work under difficult, often dangerous conditions, and they kept Canada’s economy moving through the worst of the pandemic,” Ashton said.

“That’s a long way from the picture the employer wants to paint. It can be a good living, but it takes years of sacrifice to get there, and it’s still hard work.

Ashton pointed out that union workers experience:

• Many years of waiting on-call to get one-off shifts at very short notice. (At this time) income is sporadic, and the unpredictability of shifts makes it hard to supplement it with other jobs. Turnover is high in this period, and many workers can’t stick it out.
• Even once they have more secure employment, many waterfront workers don’t receive a shift for days or even weeks at a time. Most are dispatched on a day-to-day basis, and can’t count on regular hours or shifts.
• Earning pay rates at the high end of the scale means working night shifts, six or seven days a week.
• Rates of injury are high, with several deaths recorded in recent years.

Global News has reached out to BCMEA for reaction.

Early Thursday morning, the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters told Global News it is calling for Ottawa to intervene in B.C.’s port strike and make legal changes that would discourage future that would discourage future labour disruptions.

“We want the federal government to do whatever is in their power to end this quickly,” said Andrew Wynn-Williams, Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters B.C. vice president.

“We think the bigger question is long term. I think the federal government needs to plan further ahead and to have ways to bring these things to resolutions before it hits the stage of a strike.

“This negotiation could have happened months ago. For us, there needs to be a much more proactive position taken by the federal government.”

2:19‘Stuck behind picket lines’: B.C. port strike having economic impact

The BC Maritime Employers Association said in a statement on Wednesday that billions of dollars worth of cargo remain in limbo, disrupting critical supply chains and damaging relationships with international trading partners.

It said on the fifth day of the port strike that if the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada agreed to binding arbitration, “port operations could resume quickly, critical goods could begin to flow again and there would be immediate stability and restoration to Canada’s supply chain operations.”

The association said it first proposed mediated arbitration almost three weeks ago, a process it said would be shaped by both sides and only produce a binding outcome if necessary.

Talks stalled Monday and business groups are increasingly demanding federal legislation to end the disruption, while CP Rail, now known as CPCK Ltd., says it has issued temporary embargoes on rail traffic to the Port of Vancouver.

Both sides in the dispute said Tuesday that maintenance issues were a sticking point in the talks.

The union said its jurisdiction over maintenance is being eroded by the use of contractors, and the key issue is the refusal of employers to agree to “one sentence” of a maintenance document.

The employers association meanwhile said the union was trying to “aggressively expand” its control of maintenance duties far beyond an agreement that the association says has been “legally well established for decades.”

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan discussed the strike with his B.C. counterpart, Labour Minister Harry Bains, on Wednesday, but O’Regan has so far resisted calls to legislate the strikers back to work.

A key sticking point for the union is the classification of maintenance work and the use of outside contractors, which longshore workers say encroaches on their jurisdiction.

4:15Talks stalled in B.C. port strike

— with files from Canadian Press

 

PRINCE RUPERT

Local ILWU workers enjoy widespread support as strike continues

Union remains deadlocked with employers over maintenance and subcontracting

THOM BARKER

THE NORTHERN VIEW
Jul. 5, 2023

As the International Longshore and Warehouse Union strike against the B.C. Maritime Employers Assocation (BCMEA) continues this week, Local 505 (Prince Rupert) said they were getting a lot of support from the community.

Sandy Dhara, a shop steward and spokesperson for the strikers, noted ferry workers, the nurses union, the B.C. Labour Council and Local 514 (ILWU ship and dock foremen) had all been very supportive.

Local businesses and individuals also stepped up to help out. Subway, for example, was giving the strikers discounts and others dropped of food and water to the corner of Park Avenue and Scott Road where the ILWU members were occupying the picket line in four-hour shifts.

“We’ve had a lot of generous donations from various community members,” Dhara said.

He said the local concerns are in line with the broader demands of the union.

“We just want a fair contract that basically protects us from automation and so we don’t get subcontracted jobs coming into our port,” he explained. “And we want a wage increase that kind of keeps up with inflation.”

The workers have been without a contract since March. Months of negotiations produced nothing and when they became eligible to strike on July 1, 7,000 workers walked off the job.

Today (July 5), the two sides remained deadlocked over maintenance issues and subcontracting.

Each day the strike goes on pleas for the federal government to step in and end the strike grow louder as goods languish at the 30 affected ports on the B.C. coast.

British Columbia

What you need to know about the B.C. port strike

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Here is a look at some key questions on the B.C. port workers strike and how it could affect your bottom line

CBC News · Posted: Jul 06, 2023 

The economic toll of the B.C. port workers strike will amount to at least $250 million per week, said Werner Antweiler, chair in international trade policy at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

As a strike by B.C. port workers continues, businesses large and small are raising concerns about how it will affect Canada's economy. 

Industry organizations say the job action by 7,400 waterfront employees will back up shipments, deplete inventories and boost prices on goods in shorter supply.

Here is a look at some key questions on the B.C. port workers strike and how it could affect your bottom line.

Have a question about the port strike? Email bcasks@cbc.ca

Why are port workers striking? 

Dock workers walked off the job Saturday before negotiations over wages, contracting out and automation hit an impasse.

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) Canada said its jurisdiction over maintenance is being eroded by the use of contractors. The employers' refusal to agree to "one sentence'' of a maintenance document marks a key sticking point, it said.

The B.C. Maritime Employers Association (BCMEA) said Tuesday the union is trying to "aggressively expand'' its control of maintenance duties far beyond an agreement that the association argued has been "legally well established for decades.''

The International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada said its jurisdiction over maintenance is being eroded by the use of contractors. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Which ports are affected? 

The strike affects about 7,400 terminal cargo loaders and 49 of the province's waterfront employers at more than 30 B.C. ports including Canada's busiest, Vancouver.

According to the BCMEA website, member terminals handled 16 per cent of Canada's total traded goods in 2020, contributing $2.7 billion in national GDP.

The Vancouver Fraser Port Authority says the Port of Vancouver is home to 29 major terminals and handles the most diversified range of cargo in North America. It's about the same size as the next five largest Canadian ports combined and acts as a gateway to more than 170 trading economies around the world.

The B.C. government says Prince Rupert on the province's northwest coast is home to Canada's third-largest seaport, handling more than 30 million tonnes of cargo annually.

Industry organizations say the B.C. port workers strike that began Saturday will back up shipments, deplete inventories and boost prices on goods in shorter supply. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

What industries are affected? 

Fraser Johnson, professor of operations management at Western University's Ivey Business School, describes the Port of Vancouver as a "gateway to the East."

"The big products would be household and consumer products, things like electronics, fashion, appliances, construction materials, cars coming in from Japan and Korea, car parts to be able to service cars at dealerships, equipment and machinery for businesses," Johnson said.

Commodities that go through the Port of Vancouver to Asian markets include potash, canola, wood pulp and sulfur, Jeff Nankivell, president and CEO of the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, told CBC's The Early Edition on Wednesday.

The Early Edition6:21The impact of the port workers' strike on Asian trade

The Port of Vancouver is a key gateway for Asian trade… but port workers are on strike. We hear about the impacts.

What does this mean for my bottom line? 

Bob Ballantyne, senior adviser and past president at the Freight Management Association of Canada, said consumers could eventually see higher prices in sectors ranging from clothing to cars.

"The fact that so much in the way of retail goods come from [East Asia] these days — from China and Vietnam and Korea — means that retailers, and obviously then consumers, will be impacted by this in a big way,'' Ballantyne told The Canadian Press.

"The pinch will be felt very broadly across the entire Canadian economy.''

International Longshore and Warehouse Union workers picket in Prince Rupert, B.C. on July 5, 2023. Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan said Tuesday he has urged both sides to return to the bargaining table and remain there until a deal is reached. (Carolina de Ryk/CBC )

What is the impact on the Canadian economy?

Werner Antweiler, chair in international trade policy at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business, estimates the economic toll will amount to at least $250 million per week.

"The first week or two, businesses are usually able to bridge quite fine. It gets increasingly worse after that, as some businesses will run out of inventory and cannot replenish it easily,'' Antweiler told The Canadian Press. 

Trevor Heaver, professor emeritus at UBC's Sauder School of Business, says the strike will have industry playing catch up once port workers go back on the job.

"Think of the problems that are going to be faced by the railroads," he said. "They've got backlogs of containers to move with people in a rush, they've got bulk commodities that need to be moved, so there's going to be significant congestion-type costs subsequent to this and the longer it goes on, the worse that's going to be."

Dennis Darby, who heads the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters trade group, says small and medium-sized businesses will be hurt most, since they have fewer resources.

What are the possible long-term effects of a prolonged strike? 

Nankivell said an extended strike could alter Canada's reputation in a competitive international marketplace.

He raises the prospect of buyers of products that can be sourced elsewhere "looking to diversify their supplies away from Canada" in the event of an extended strike. 

"It probably also ultimately has an impact on the price that Canadian exporters can charge for their products if there is a perception that there are risks attached to Canadian suppliers," he said.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan said Tuesday he has urged both sides to return to the bargaining table and remain there until a deal is reached. (Ethan Cairns/The Canadian Press)

Will the federal government force striking workers back to work?

Alberta's Transport minister has called on the federal government to recall Parliament to consider back-to-work legislation that would end a strike at B.C. ports.

Federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan said in a Tweet that federal mediators "continue to support" both sides in the negotiations.

"Collective bargaining is hard work but it's how the best, most resilient deals are made," he said.

Mark Thompson, a professor emeritus of industrial relations at UBC, says government intervention after just a few days of labour action would send the wrong message.

"The Trudeau government has been firm in dealing with labour disputes and saying they should be settled at the bargaining table, not in Parliament," he told CBC News.

Nankivell says it's critical for both sides to find a "durable solution" to their labour impasse. 

"Typically those tend to come through a negotiated solution between the parties rather than an imposed solution, which might be a temporary fix," he said.

With files from Michelle Ghoussoub, Jon Azpiri and The Canadian Press

CAPITALI$T FEARMONGERING

B.C. port workers' strike could cost economy $5.5 billion a week

 
As talks in the B.C. port workers' strike remain deadlocked, Labour Minister Seamus O’Regan says he ‘firmly believes’ both sides can reach an agreement at the table. Every week of the strike could cost the Canadian economy an estimated $5.5 billion a week, according to the Canadian Chamber of Commerce.

WELL WHICH IS IT? 

Strike could cost $250 million per week, experts say, with consumers taking a hit too

Christopher Reynolds
The Canadian Press
Staff
Updated July 5, 2023 

The B.C. port workers strike could cost companies hundreds of millions of dollars per week, experts and business groups say, with smaller operators and consumers feeling the biggest pinch.

Industry organizations say the job action by 7,400 waterfront employees that began Saturday will back up shipments, deplete inventories and boost prices on goods in shorter supply.

The economic toll will amount to at least $250 million per week, said Werner Antweiler, chair in international trade policy at the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business.

“The first week or two, businesses are usually able to bridge quite fine. It gets increasingly worse after that, as some businesses will run out of inventory and cannot replenish it easily,” he said.

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Dock workers walked off the job before negotiations over wages, automation and contracting out hit a deadlock.

Business organizations, as well as officials in Alberta and Saskatchewan, have called on Ottawa to step in and end the strike, but federal Labour Minister Seamus O'Regan has said he wants the union and employers to go back to the negotiating table after they hit an impasse this week.

Companies face the choice of riding out the strike by drawing on existing stock and holding on to exports that cannot be shipped - resulting in lost sales and storage costs, respectively - or finding alternate routes for their products, including through already stretched ports in the United States.

“Even if some businesses are rerouting through this channel, it will be more expensive. It will take longer because now things will be starting to queue and it will have spillover effects on the entire system,” Antweiler said.

In a Transport Canada study of the five-day Montreal port strike in 2021, the government projected the economic cost could reach up to $100 million a week. Antweiler based his $250-million estimate on that analysis, with the value of cargo moved at B.C. ports up to three times higher than at the Port of Montreal.

The hit could be even greater in this case, since West Coast cargo volumes are so much greater and thus tougher to reroute, he said.

In a letter to the prime minister Wednesday, 120 business groups expressed “deep concern” about the five-day job action, saying it would fuel inflation, raise costs and dent the economy while hampering exports.

“The damage started being done even before the first picketer picked up a sign, and it's simply compounding by the day,” Canadian Chamber of Commerce CEO Perrin Beatty said, calling on the federal government to intervene in the stalled talks.

British Columbia's 30-plus ports - the Port of Vancouver is the country's biggest - handle roughly 16 per cent of Canada's total traded goods, according to the BC Maritime Employers Association. Beatty said $800 million worth of cargo passes through its terminals each day, from consumer products to auto parts and potash.

Small and medium-sized businesses will be hurt most, since they have fewer resources and less leverage to lean on, said Dennis Darby, who heads the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters trade group.

“Companies don't run huge inventories, as we learned during the pandemic,” Darby said, adding some will be able to hold out for just a few days.

“They may have contracts with their customers and they don't have the ability to pass on (cost) increases,” he added. But for those that can, “it just adds to the potential inflationary effect.”

While entire contracts may be at risk if products are not delivered on time, undelivered perishable goods could also mean retailers lose out on sales and “considerable revenue,” said Jasmin Guenette, vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business.

READ MORE: Port strike will have ‘dire’ effect on supply chain: BC Chamber of Commerce

Grocers and manufacturers run some of the tightest supply schedules, meaning the price of products from Asia - non-perishable food, car parts and computer chips, for example - could rise faster than in other sectors, according to the Sauder school's Trevor Heaver, former chair of the World Conference for Transportation Research.

“This will impact prices for consumers. Diverting to other ports is costly,” said Brian Kingston, CEO of the Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers' Association. “The immediate impact is on the importing of finished vehicles.”

The Port of Vancouver brought in about 334,000 vehicles last year, he said - a sizable slice of the 1.5 million vehicles sold in Canada in 2022.

However, Peter V. Hall, a professor in urban studies and geography at Simon Fraser University, said that most supply chains are flexible and many product values are resilient.

“Toys or furniture or clothing are ... not going to lose their value if they're not delivered tomorrow,” he said.

Nonetheless, consumers could eventually see higher prices in sectors ranging from fashion to electronics, said Bob Ballantyne, senior adviser and past president at the Freight Management Association of Canada.

“The fact that so much in the way of retail goods come from (East Asia) these days - from China and Vietnam and Korea - means that retailers, and obviously then consumers, will be impacted by this in a big way,” Ballantyne said.

“The pinch will be felt very broadly across the entire Canadian economy.”

Meanwhile, exporters may soon face a storage crisis, as well as potential temporary closures.

“If it's industries with a continuous process like some chemical industries, shutting down those operations is a big deal and costs a lot of money,” Ballantyne said.

Companies that churn out commodities such as lumber, fertilizer and sulphur are all contending with a halt on overseas shipments out of West Coast ports.

Grain products continue to flow abroad, in line with rules under the Canada Labour Code. Two B.C. coal-export terminals near Delta and Prince Rupert have continued to operate, since their workers have separate collective agreements from that of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union Canada.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 5, 2023.

 

The carbon costs of global wood harvests

• Liqing Peng, 
• Timothy D. Searchinger, 
• Jessica Zionts & 
• Richard Waite 

Nature (2023)Cite this article

• 
  

• • Article
  • Open Access
  • Published: 05 July 2023

  details

Abstract

After agriculture, wood harvest is the human activity that has most reduced the storage of carbon in vegetation and soils1,2. Although felled wood releases carbon to the atmosphere in various steps, the fact that growing trees absorb carbon has led to different carbon-accounting approaches for wood use, producing widely varying estimates of carbon costs. Many approaches give the impression of low, zero or even negative greenhouse gas emissions from wood harvests because, in different ways, they offset carbon losses from new harvests with carbon sequestration from growth of broad forest areas3,4. Attributing this sequestration to new harvests is inappropriate because this other forest growth would occur regardless of new harvests and typically results from agricultural abandonment, recovery from previous harvests and climate change itself. Nevertheless some papers count gross emissions annually, which assigns no value to the capacity of newly harvested forests to regrow and approach the carbon stocks of unharvested forests. Here we present results of a new model that uses time discounting to estimate the present and future carbon costs of global wood harvests under different scenarios. We find that forest harvests between 2010 and 2050 will probably have annualized carbon costs of 3.5–4.2 Gt CO2e yr−1, which approach common estimates of annual emissions from land-use change due to agricultural expansion. Our study suggests an underappreciated option to address climate change by reducing these costs.

READ ON   The carbon costs of global wood harvests | Nature

Chinese owner of Manitoba mine wants to drain lake to extract more cesium from one of world's few deposits

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Federal government may scrutinize Chinese mine near

 Nopiming park amid rising tensions

Bartley Kives · CBC News · Posted: Jul 06, 2023 

A capsule containing cesium. The Tanco Mine in eastern Manitoba has one of the world's largest deposits of the critical mineral. (LuYago/Shutterstock)

The Chinese owner of the Tanco mine in eastern Manitoba has revived talk of partly draining a lake in order to extract more cesium from one of the world's few deposits of the critical mineral.

Sinomine Resource Group is musing about a long-term redevelopment of its mine it purchased in 2019 along the shore of Bernic Lake, a small Canadian Shield body of water located between Whiteshell and Nopiming provincial parks.

The goal is to reach cesium that can not be mined right now because it's embedded in vertical columns that hold up the roof of the underground mine.

"There's a type of mining called 'room and pillar' where you mine a big cavern underground, but you leave pillars which are like poles of rock that support the ceiling. If you don't have them, the whole mine collapses," said Christopher Ecclestone, a mining strategist at Hallgarten & Company in London, U.K.

"When Tanco was mining this thing for decades, they left these pillars to support the roof. And the Chinese are talking about taking them out."

• Federal government moves to cut China out of Canadian critical mineral industry

The push to mine what's left of Tanco's cesium stems from the worldwide scarcity of the element, which is used in drilling fluids for oil and gas wells, medical imaging and maintaining time in atomic clocks, among other uses.

In its pure form, cesium is liquid at room temperature, may burst into flames in air and will explode in contact with water.

In nature, it's usually locked up far more safely in a rock called pollucite. Nowhere on Earth has as much of this mineral as the Tanco mine, which once possessed two-thirds of the planet's easily accessible pollucite.

The Tanco Mine is located about 135 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, between Whiteshell and Nopiming provincial parks. (CBC News Graphics)

In June, the general manager of Sinomine's North American business division told the Globe & Mail the company could extract more cesium from the Tanco mine by replacing the existing rock pillars with artificial supports for the roof.

The Beijing-based company's preferred option for the Manitoba mine, however, would be to partly drain Bernic Lake in order to reach cesium from the surface, Sinomine's Frank Wang told the Globe in a story published June 17.

"The final goal definitely is we want to have open-pit mining," Wang told the Toronto-based newspaper.

While Sinomine declined subsequent CBC News requests for interviews, Tanco general manager Joey Champagne confirmed the parent company is weighing several ideas for redeveloping the mine.

"We are currently evaluating various options for the long-term development of Tanco, each of which requires further assessment. Any potential expansions will undergo a rigorous review process and be in compliance with applicable Canadian laws," Champagne said in a statement this week.

"At this stage, we do not have any additional information to share until we have more concrete plans in place."

No plans have been forwarded to the provincial government, said Manitoba Environment and Climate Minister Kevin Klein, adding he was unaware of the company's desire to drain part of Bernic Lake until Wednesday.

"The process in every environmental licence is unique, so it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that," Klein said in Winnipeg.

The rookie minister is already in the midst of weighing an unrelated decision to approve or deny a 24-year sand-mining proposal in southern Manitoba by an Alberta miner Sio Silica.

• Critics of proposed Manitoba silica sand mine applaud environmental report that casts doubt on project safety

Unlike the silica-mining plan, which would employ novel technology, the idea of draining Bernic Lake to access more cesium below it is not new.

Tanco's previous owner approached the province with a plan to partly drain the lake a decade ago but did not obtain approval.

Right now, Sinomine is doing a good job of managing waste from the Tanco mine and is not impacting the forests near Bernic Lake or the watershed downstream, said Eric Reder, a campaigner for the Wilderness Committee in Manitoba.

"There aren't a lot of concerns about what's going on, but as soon as you want to expand into an open-pit mine, you've changed the equation," Reder said Wednesday in an interview from Lee River, Man.

"And as soon as you decide that you want to drain the lake into the lower Bird River, that's where you come into immense opposition."

A waterfall on the lower portion of the Bird River. Eric Reder of the Wilderness Committee said he fears the river's water quality will suffer if Bernic Lake is drained into it. (Submitted by Eric Reder)

Reder said draining Bernic Lake would add sediment to the Bird River, which drains into the Winnipeg River at Lac du Bonnet.

He also claimed Bernic Lake is polluted, though a report prepared for Tanco by environmental consulting firm Tetra Tech states the lake is not toxic even though it possesses elevated concentrations of antimony, beryllium, cesium, lithium, manganese, rubidium, silicon and strontium.

Sagkeeng First Nation, a Treaty 3 Anishinaabe nation which sits along the Winnipeg River and counts Bernic Lake as part of its traditional territory, called the idea of partly draining the lake very concerning.

"We have told the owners of the Tanco Mine that moving forward with that plan will require a comprehensive impact assessment and that it cannot proceed without Sagkeeng's free, prior and informed consent," Chief EJ Fontaine said in a statement.

"We are pleased that the new owners of the Tanco Mine have reached out to us in a much more positive way than the previous owners ever did, and we are hopeful that that outreach may lead to a positive, mutually beneficial relationship based on respect for the Sagkeeng's inherent rights and for the environment."

The CAO for the RM of Alexander, which straddles long sections of both the Bird and Winnipeg rivers, declined to comment on the prospect of draining Bernic Lake in the absence of a formal proposal from Sinomine.

Cesium is used to keep time in atomic clocks, among other uses. Every mobile phone in the world keeps time with the help of these precision devices. (Canadian Press)

Ecclestone, in London, said the Canadian government now has an opportunity to oppose Sinomine's expansion of its Tanco operations four years after allowing the Chinese company to purchase the mine and effectively corner the world's cesium-production market.

"The argument was it's a defunct cesium mine. So suddenly it's not a defunct cesium mine and the Chinese have it," Ecclestone said.

"The question is, does Canada or the U.S. really want that cesium owned by foreign outfit?"

Last year, amid increasing tensions with China, Canada's Liberal government started scrutinizing prospective Chinese moves into critical minerals more closely in this country.

• ANALYSIS
  Economists worry growing conflict with China will make Canada and the world poorer

Liberal MP Terry Duguid, the parliamentary secretary to environment and climate minister, said Ottawa would defer to the province over any environmental consideration involving a Tanco redevelopment — but would also scrutinize such a move on its own.

"We do have a security lens on any mining developments in our country, including this one, and so that would obviously be a consideration in both an environmental assessment and a security assessment," Duguid said Wednesday in Winnipeg, referring both to a prospective cesium-mining redevelopment and a separate Tanco proposal to refine lithium in Manitoba.

"What we want to do is keep critical minerals here at home for our battery factories and for our new economy industries of the future."

Reder said Canada should simply require Sinomine to sell the Tanco mine.

"If cesium or any of the other critical minerals that keep being floated out as this most valuable resource ever, if we really needed those minerals, then this mine should be nationalized," he said. 

"We should take this over from the mining company and operate it for the benefit of Manitobans, not for an offshore corporation who wants to profit off of this."

Ecclestone said he doesn't believe the mine redevelopment will ever happen.

"It's a sign of quite severe desperation that you're going to drain a lake just to take out the pillars of the leftovers," he said. "We're not talking about enormous deposits here. We're talking about the leftovers of an enormous deposit."