BC Business
The highly public Mount Polley tailings pond spill
The final step According to B.C.’s energy and mines minister, Bill Bennett, Mount Polley could be operational by the end of June. After spending $70 million recovering from last year’s high-profile tailings spill, Imperial Metals Corp. has submitted all the necessary paperwork to get the open-pit copper and gold mine up and running again, according to Bennett. The mine’s 370 employees have been waiting to get back to work since Mount Polley closed last August. The final step is approval: making sure all the paperwork that’s supposed to be there is, and if so, Bennett says the province will provide a permit to reopen the mine this month.
Jobs, jobs, jobs Speaking of getting people back to work, B.C. had a stellar month for employment, according to the latest Statistics Canada numbers. In May, the province added a whopping 30,000 jobs. Of course, that just offsets the whopping 29,000 it lost in April. Not to mention two-thirds of the gains were in part-time employment. Still, B.C.’s unemployment fell to 6.1 per cent from 6.3 per cent in April, which is good. Not as good as March’s unemployment rate, mind you: 5.8 per cent.
That’s a lot of tankersIf Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to Burnaby gets green-lit, expect to see a lot more oil tankers in Burrard Inlet: from five a month now to 34. That number was disclosed during a media tour of the company’s Burnaby terminal Thursday. The City of Vancouver along with the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation last week released a report citing an increase in the likelihood of oil spills were the $5.4-billion upgrade approved. Kinder Morgan, in turn, is now pledging $100 million to protect against—or potentially clean up—oil spills in the inlet. (via The Canadian Press)