Search for gold to offset cost of disaster at Yukon mine, government says
Victoria Gold's Eagle gold mine site north of Mayo, Y.T., is shown in this handout aerial photo taken Wednesday, July 3, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/HO — Yukon Government
WHITEHORSE — A court-appointed receiver plans to start sifting for gold in cyanide-laced water stored at the Eagle Gold Mine in Yukon.
The Yukon government says proceeds will be used to help pay for some of the cleanup after a disaster at the mine a year ago.
The failure of the mine's heap-leach facility, which contained millions of tonnes of cyanide-laced ore and water, set off the disaster and subsequent takeover by the receiver.
A statement from the territory says the gold being recovered is found within cyanide water stored in ponds at the mine site and the process will also destroy some cyanide, helping treat the contaminated water.
It says work continues at the gold mine to manage a large amount of additional water from the spring snowmelt, and contaminated water is being treated and discharged.
The government says it's too early to say what the value of the gold being recovered might be but the receiver will report those results in further reports to the court.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 13, 2025.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Globe and Mail
an hour ago
- Globe and Mail
Carney sets out foreign policy shift as G7 convenes under the shadow of Trump's trade war
The audacity: Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to host U.S. President Donald Trump at the G7 summit, and in his first big foreign and defence policy speech on Monday he declared that the U.S.'s predominance on the world stage is 'a thing of the past.' But Mr. Carney wasn't trolling Mr. Trump. He wasn't delivering a morality tale for Americans as he spoke about rising threats from hostile powers and rogue actors. It was a stark recognition that the world, and Canada's place in it, is in a period of disruption. The diagnosis is not unique. The U.S. is withdrawing from its global role as backbone of economic systems and security guarantor. It is, in Mr. Carney's words, 'beginning to monetize its hegemony,' charging tariffs for access to its market and threatening to withdraw its security umbrella. When Mr. Carney hosts leaders of the G7 group of nations this weekend in Kananaskis, Alta., the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Japan and Italy will come with questions about that disruptive change on their minds. How much of the old U.S.-led world will be preserved? How much will their countries have to change to meet the new one? There's no shortage of dangers. On Friday, G7 countries scrambled to co-ordinate, and urge de-escalation, after Israel launched a series of strikes on Iran – and the volatile Mr. Trump posted dark warnings to Tehran on social media. There are deadly conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza. China's rising power has raised nerves in Taiwan and across East Asia. For G7 leaders, immense global challenges weigh on agenda overshadowed by Trump At the G7, the trade war will be everywhere but on the agenda The whole world is facing a shakeup – first and foremost the closest U.S. partners, the countries that have relied on the superpower for stability, security and prosperity. Canada, tied to the U.S. by trade and geography, is on the front lines of a global reset. 'It feels like the first moment since the fall of the Iron Curtain when we may be going into an interregnum between the end of one international order and emergence of another,' said Patrick Travers, who served as foreign policy to former prime minister Justin Trudeau. For Mr. Carney, the G7 summit is not simply a début as host to a group that, including non-G7 invitees, now counts the leaders of 15 countries plus the heads of the European Commission, World Bank and NATO. The rookie Prime Minister has no shortage of confidence, including in his ability to steer a global meeting. Yet this one means moderating between the unpredictable Mr. Trump and Canada's other close allies, ensuring there's no blow-up. A wider rift can leave Canada more alone. A tantrum from Mr. Trump might even jeopardize bilateral talks on trade. Kananaskis will be just the start of Mr. Carney's summer sprint through summits: In a week, he will travel to Europe for a Canada-European Union summit where he promises to make a deal of military procurement, and a North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit where the alliance's members are under pressure to commit to a massive expansion of military spending. On foreign policy, Mr. Carney is already marking a sharp turn. That speech he gave about the changing world on Monday wasn't just a rationale for his sudden announcement of a $9.3-billion increase in defence spending. It laid the underpinnings for a sharply different Canadian foreign policy. For so long, Canadians felt safe, surrounded by three oceans and a friendly superpower, prosperously situated next to the world's largest market. For decades, spending more on defence was deemed unrealistic. Politicians – Liberal and Conservative – found voters didn't care about foreign policy, so Canada didn't really have one. Now the world is crashing in on Canada. Mr. Trump's tariffs threaten entire industries, most notably the auto sector. Demands for far greater defence spending, if fully adopted, would force tough choices about Canada's social spending. Now Mr. Carney is proposing to meet what he called a 'hinge moment' by embracing a harder-nosed foreign policy. At the heart of it is the Big Hedge. Mr. Carney is proposing to hedge against U.S. influence over Canada. Part of it is doing more at home, by expanding the military, building a domestic defence industry and also strategic industries such as critical minerals. But a lot of it is aggressively courting relationships with other countries, including a defence-industry partnership with the European Union. If that sounds very similar to the economic policy Mr. Carney propounded during and since the election campaign – building the domestic economy with national projects and diversifying trade – it is because both are aspects of the same strategy, driven by the same urgent external pressures. Fearing Trump's anger, non-U.S. G7 members will pursue low-bar victories in Kananaskis 'I think he understands that foreign policy and domestic policy, in the world we're living in, are two sides of the same coin,' said Carleton University international affairs professor Fen Hampson. Mr. Carney argued Monday that more defence spending is necessary for Canada to protect itself, promising submarines, drones and long-range rockets to rebuild Canada's depleted military. But he was also pitching that as a driver for the domestic economy, and as a lever to diversify trade. And Mr. Carney was also rushing to finally meet the long-standing NATO target of spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence, before the G7, in the midst of talks on tariffs with Mr. Trump – who links trade deficits and military underfunding together into one big claim that the U.S. subsidizes Canada. But Mr. Carney's speech signalled it is part of a more tough-minded approach. He deliberately departed from the preachy tone and talk of promoting values that had been a staple of Canadian diplomatic rhetoric. 'Canadian leadership will be defined not just by the strength of our values, but also by the value of our strength,' he said. The list of non-G7 leaders invited for 'outreach' sessions included reaching out to leaders that Mr. Trudeau would not have chosen – leaders with whom Canada has had clashes of principle, but who are substantial economic and geopolitical players. Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman won't attend, but Mr. Carney had invited him to thaw relations chilled since 2018 because of Canadian complaints about his country's human rights record. India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi will come – over objections of Sikh-Canadian organizations and some Liberal MPs – even though Canada accused Indian agents of organizing the 2023 assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. 'I think it's realpolitik, in a lot of respects,' said Vincent Rigby, a former national security and intelligence adviser to Mr. Trudeau, and now a professor at McGill University's Max Bell School of Public Policy. 'I think he is going to be a hard-headed realist.' Mr. Rigby noted that also means Mr. Carney has to recognize the limit of a hedging strategy. Canada can try to diversify its defence relationships, perhaps using procurements of needed equipment like a fleet of diesel submarines to build a strategic alliance with a European supplier. But just as Canada can't replace trade with the U.S. overnight, it still must co-operate with the U.S. on North American defence. Mr. Carney has indicated he is considering joining Mr. Trump's proposed Golden Dome ballistic missile defence system. He has also put the purchase of additional U.S.-made F-35 fighters under review. 'The foreign policy is very much about strategic autonomy. But how do you define it? How much autonomy is enough?' Mr. Rigby said. 'With the United States it's all about finding the sweet spot.' The search for that sweet spot is also the preoccupation of all the other traditional U.S. allies in the G7 coming to Kananaskis. In March, the European Union loosened rules for national deficits to allow for more defence spending, in a plan called ReArm Europe. Japan has embarked on a massive military build-up. In May, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer struck a new trade and security deal with the European Union, closing some of the distance created by Brexit. European countries are working on various forms of hedging. 'I'd like to say it's hedging, but I'm more inclined to say it's a bit of thrashing around. Hedging would imply that there is a clear view that stands behind a collective European position. There isn't,' said University of Kent professor Richard Whitman, an expert on British and European foreign and defence policy. Some European countries still hope to ride out Mr. Trump's term, while others want to act, he said. 'Some European governments are in a difficult place, because their head tells them one thing but their heart, and probably their pocketbook, tells them something else − which is that we're not quite ready to take on all of these burdens.' For Europeans, the reckoning has been different. Canada has been confronted with tariffs that threaten its economy and Mr. Trump's talk of making it the 51st state. In Europe, the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was a shockwave that brought a new urgency to domestic military spending and energy security. Mr. Trump's re-election, and his ambivalence and sometimes hostility, toward supporting Ukraine has been a second shock. That will be a potential fault line in Kananaskis. The last time Donald Trump came to Canada for a G7 summit he had kiboshed a common trade initiative before it started and tried to blow it up as he left. In 2018, the G7 co-ordinators from each country, dubbed sherpas, were working on co-operation to curtail Chinese dumping of low-cost steel on foreign markets. Six weeks before the summit in Charlevoix, Que., Gary Cohn, the director of Mr. Trump's National Economic Council, phoned Senator Peter Boehm, then the sherpa for Mr. Trudeau, to say the whole thing was off. Mr. Trump had instead decided to impose 25-per-cent tariffs on steel – including on the other members of the G7. At the end of the summit, Mr. Trump, more consumed by his imminent meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, left the summit early – and tweeted angrily from Air Force One when Mr. Trudeau, responding to Mr. Trump's comments on trade negotiations, said Canadians are polite but won't be 'pushed around.' The President tried to unapprove G7 communiqués that had already been issued. In between, however, the Charlevoix summit wasn't full of conflict, Mr. Boehm said. At the time, a widely circulated photograph from inside the summit – with leaders standing across from and around a seated Mr. Trump with arms folded across his chest – was seen as evidence the summit had been a tense gang-up on an obstinate president. In fact, Mr. Boehm was debating communiqué wording with then-U.S. national security adviser John Bolton, and Mr. Trump had commented, 'Game on.' 'It was a little bit more jovial than the picture might indicate,' Mr. Boehm said. That is part and parcel of the famously mercurial behaviour of Mr. Trump, who welcomes foreign leaders to the Oval Office for visits that can be love-ins or ambushes. 'Unlike normal times you're preparing for unpredictability,' Mr. Travers said. 'Everyone's aware that things might emerge at this summit. The United States might put new things on the table.' There are ways to smooth things, Mr. Boehm said. In Charlevoix, Mr. Trudeau followed the tradition of asking the U.S. president to open a discussion on the economy by talking about his 2018 tax cuts, and he warmed to the talk. But his interest waned in long talks with many speakers. Mr. Trump didn't care for talk about the rules-based international order. This year, Mr. Carney's team has trimmed the agenda into narrow topics. Instead of butting heads on climate change, for example, leaders will talk about combatting wildfires. Sherpas are expecting to agree on specific 'outcome' statements, not a broad final communiqué. Tariffs aren't officially on the agenda, though they will be on every leader's mind. Mr. Carney has invited Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, so there will certainly be discussions about North American trade on the sidelines. Defence spending is more a topic for the NATO summit a week later, but will certainly come up, too. 'There is a distinction between collective outcomes and what's discussed at the table. And both matter,' Mr. Travers said. 'In the G7 they have real conversations around the table as peers. It's a huge opportunity to speak to and influence the President.' There are scheduled discussions on global security, which will now almost certainly be dominated by Israel's strikes on Iran and the fear the conflict will escalate to full-scale war. One specific topic on the formal agenda – Ukraine – has the potential to spark disagreement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is invited, but there has been a split between Mr. Carney and European leaders, staunch backers of Ukraine, and Mr. Trump, who has pushed Ukraine to make concessions to Russia to end the war and has threatened to slash military support. A disagreement, a failure to find some bridge between them, could lead to a rift that flows into the NATO summit the following week. 'This is probably the nightmare for everybody that is preparing for the summit,' Mr. Whitman said. For Mr. Carney, that could be a nightmare scenario, too. A bigger rift between the U.S. and the rest of the G7 could leave Canada in the middle, and more alone. Mr. Carney's foreign policy hedging rests on building stronger ties with other countries. Mr. Carney has an interest in ensuring that Europeans don't apply their own hedging strategy by turning inward to each other in a way that leaves out Canada. He also doesn't want a confrontation within the G7 to leak into his so-far warm relations with Mr. Trump, possibly scuttling his trade and security talks with Mr. Trump. He certainly remembers that the 2018 Charlevoix summit marked the break in Mr. Trump's personal relationship with Mr. Trudeau. Underlying those summit risks is the broader unpredictability in the group of democratic nations – the G7, the EU, and others such as South Korea and Australia – that now question what kind of ally and partner the U.S. is becoming. And how fast the change will be upon them. The U.S. retreat, motivated in part by its high debt and competition with China, started before Mr. Trump and could endure after. Certainly, Mr. Carney appears to be working on the assumption that it is a lasting paradigm shift. That means a different kind of foreign policy. Canadians aren't used to the calls for sacrifice to pay for the military that Mr. Carney made in his recent speech. The extent of the sacrifice, the scale of the potential shift to be mooted in a matter of weeks, hasn't really entered the public consciousness. Andrew Coyne: Twenty years late, Canada hits the old NATO target, just in time to fall short of the new one At the NATO summit that opens in The Hague on June 24, NATO leaders are expected to commit to ramping up defence spending steeply, to the equivalent of 3.5 per cent of their GDP. In current terms, that would amount to an increase of nearly $50-billion per year for Canada, over and above the increase Mr. Carney announced. Spending that much more on the military – adding about 10 per cent to all federal spending – would almost certainly force tough choices on cutting social spending. Yet there has been a remarkable shift in public opinion. For decades, Canadian prime ministers found no constituency for increasing defence spending to the 2-per-cent NATO target. In March, Nanos Research found three-quarters of Canadians are in favour. But the potential future sacrifices haven't yet been counted. 'Do you support more defence spending if you are going to get less health care, you're going to get less housing, less transfers to the provinces?' Mr. Rigby said. 'That's a slightly different question.' For now, such questions haven't slowed the sudden change in Canada's foreign policy. Mr. Trump's tariffs, his threats, the 51st state talk – all jolted Canadians to see that a more risky world is now here. And their country is more alone. Mr. Carney has embraced a harder-nosed approach to a world facing an unpredictable interregnum.
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Nuclear Waste Management Organization begins site selection process for 2nd deep geological repository
The Canadian government has yet to decide whether it would allow recycling spent nuclear fuel in the country, as the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) announces it will be engaging with the public to choose a site for the nation's second deep geological repository. The nuclear energy organization has launched a two-year public engagement process — which will focus on both technical safety and community willingness — to refine the site selection strategy. The formal site selection process is expected to begin around 2028. Akira Tokuhiro, a nuclear engineering professor at Ontario Tech University, said the announcement reflects strategic foresight, but he said Canada is still focused on permanent disposal, unlike other countries who are pursuing a different approach — reprocessing and reusing spent nuclear fuel. "One thing that I learned on my visit to the French site in 2013, is used fuel or nuclear waste or the spent fuel has to be reusable or retrievable," he said. "They have the technical means today to reprocess that fuel and put it back in the reactor and to extract more energy." Finland is one of the first countries to license a permanent repository with the option of retrieval. France goes further, reprocessing its spent fuel to extract more energy, a practice rarely discussed in Canada despite being technically feasible. "Canada certainly has the technical capability. It doesn't mean that it has the facilities, but it has the capability and the know-how and the smart people to recycle that or reuse that spent fuel," said Tokuhiro. "Even today, Canada is choosing not to make that commitment." While reprocessing is more expensive up front, he said, it's arguably more climate-friendly. But Canada, like many nations, has embraced a "once-through" cycle: mine uranium, use it once, and store the waste indefinitely. The reason Canada hasn't followed France's lead, Tokuhiro said, comes down to economics. "That is overall cheaper than it is to recycle. This is the same problem as plastic," he said. Reprocessing spent nuclear fuel would still generate waste Dave Novog, professor, engineering physics at McMaster University, said the current Canadian model has "proved pretty attractive" because it means Canada does not rely on anyone else in the world for its fuel or for reprocessing technology. "I think that's been a good decision so far when it comes to fuel recycling and the sort of advanced reactors that are needed to do that," Novog told CBC Thunder Bay. "Those reactors, at least in my opinion, are in their infancy and it would be a huge risk for us to sort of say those reactors will eventually come and save our waste problem." Novog said he likes the government's and the NWMO's approach, noting that "these repositories take anywhere from 30 to 40 to even 50 years to construct. And so by that time, if these advanced reprocessing technologies are attractive and commercially viable, we can always move in that direction." Novog added that by reprocessing spent nuclear fuel would still generate some waste. "We will still have to deal with and solve a lot of that waste, so I think if nuclear is really going to double or triple its capacity like they talked about in the COP agreements, we're going to be generating more waste and it's important that we have a solution for it," he said. 'Canada is planning for the future' Commissioning a second deep geological repository is part of an initiative aimed at addressing the long-term storage of intermediate- and non-fuel high-level radioactive waste from equipment and components used inside nuclear reactors and medical isotope byproducts, as well as waste from future nuclear reactors. The first repository in the Township of Ignace will store used nuclear fuel from used reactors. "There is international scientific consensus that a deep geological repository is the safest way to manage intermediate- and high-level waste over the long-term," said Laurie Swami, president and CEO of the NWMO, emphasizing the need for a permanent solution. "Canada is planning for the future." Currently, Canada's intermediate- and high-level waste is stored on an interim basis, so these solutions are not considered suitable for long-term containment. The new repository will be designed to store waste deep underground, in line with international practices for managing high-level nuclear waste. Site selection for the second repository will be guided by both technical criteria, such as geological suitability and community support. The NWMO has emphasized that community consent and Indigenous consultation will be central to the process. WATCH | Canada's permanent nuclear waste dump, 'Forever chemicals': Canada's permanent nuclear waste dump, 'Forever chemicals' 1 year ago Duration 25:25 The two-year engagement period will include public consultations, cultural verification studies, and collaboration with Indigenous communities. "We understand that many communities are getting a lot of requests to engage on major projects. And so, we want to make sure that we have the time to get meaningful input and have a meaningful discussion on the siting process before implementing it," said Joanne Jacyk, director of site selection at the NWMO. For now, the NWMO is encouraging Canadians and Indigenous peoples to learn more or take part in the engagement process by visiting the NWMO's website or contacting the organization at ILW@
CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
He thought he was calling Air Canada. The airline says it wasn't them
Social Sharing A Stellarton, N.S., man says he was baffled when he discovered his $2,000 non-refundable airline ticket to Texas was cancelled. He was even more baffled when he reached out to Air Canada, only to be told the airline's records showed that the cancellation had been made online and that they were unable to give him a refund, as per the fare rules of his ticket. "Every dollar counts," said Jeff Richardson. "We're living paycheque to paycheque, and $2,000 is a lot of money." After seven months of back and forth, Air Canada said this week they will refund Richardson's ticket. Richardson says he welcomes the refund, but remains frustrated with the long wait for a resolution. What happened? Richardson booked his flight on Oct. 22 directly through the Air Canada website. He says he was having trouble selecting his seat online, so he called the airline for assistance. He says he found a number online for Air Canada starting with 1-833, and spoke to a representative who said they worked for Air Canada. Richardson believed he was talking to the airline when he shared details about his booking and credit card information to reserve seats. However, in a statement to CBC News, Air Canada says the number is not theirs. That same day, he received a charge on his credit card of more than $200 from something called "AirReservation," which is not affiliated with Air Canada. Shortly after, he was alerted that his ticket had been cancelled. When he called the number back to complain, he says the line seemed to be busy. 3 tips to keep yourself safe online 6 months ago Duration 3:31 During a busy season of online shopping, cyber criminals may be looking to get your information. The CBC's Angela MacIvor spoke to experts about how to keep yourself, your information and your money safe this holiday season. Air Canada says it's possible that whoever was posing as the airline could have obtained enough personal information from the customer to cancel the flight. "Based on these findings, we will reimburse this customer and ensure he pays the original price quoted for a replacement ticket," said the airline. "This could serve as a cautionary tale that people should be careful to make sure they know who they are dealing with in online or telephone transactions and only use certified and official sources of information." CBC News called the number in question on June 10, and the person who answered identified herself as a representative of Air Canada. The person said they could cancel tickets for a fee and assist with arranging seating. Richardson says he remembers taking the number from the Air Canada website. It's not clear what happened, but he may have fallen victim to a spoofing attack, when a fraudster creates a copy of a website to make it appear authentic while adding false information to mislead or scam customers. The fake website could turn up in search engine results or have a URL that is similar to the real website. IP address in India Richardson says that he asked Air Canada to provide the IP address of the device used to cancel the booking through a request under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). The record showed that the device that cancelled the ticket online was tied to an IP address in India. Nur Zincir-Heywood, a Halifax-based cybersecurity expert, said the IP address can also be spoofed, meaning it can be modified to appear from a different location. So it does not necessarily mean that whoever cancelled the ticket is really in India. This makes it harder to pinpoint where the scammers are and hold them to account. "I can understand and really have empathy for the customer here because we could be in the same shoes," she said. In the end, Richardson ended up booking another flight and went to Texas in November for a work conference. He says he will be extra careful from now on to ensure he is using the legitimate website and contact information for a company. Gábor Lukács, founder of advocacy group Air Passenger Rights, says it should still not be all up to the client to protect themselves. He said Air Canada should take an active role in fighting these kinds of fraud. "Air Canada is a large corporation. It is expected to operate a system that does not lend itself to fraud," he said, noting that adding a two-factor verification system to ticket modifications may help passengers remain protected.
