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The provincial government has sided with an Australian gold miner over a Nova Scotia Christmas tree grower.
Natural Resources Minister Charlie Parker announced Friday that he has issued a seldom-used vesting order that will allow DDV Gold Ltd., a subsidiary of Australia-based Atlantic Gold, to expropriate 14 parcels of land in the Moose River Gold Mines area for an open pit mine.
The 14 hectares encompassed by those parcels include 3.3 hectares owned by Higgins Family Christmas Trees, a long-time local business.
The Higgins family have repeatedly told DDV that they didn’t want to sell, even for the $300,000 which the company is reportedly offering for the land.
“This is exactly what we hoped the government wouldn’t do,” said Cleve Higgins, whose father Forrest owns the business. “This sets a dangerous precedent. It says to Nova Scotia landowners that a mining company can just come along and take away your land because it wants to.”
The Higgins family has retained Halifax lawyer Robert Pineo to seek a judicial review into the decision. If successful, said Higgins, they would then apply for an injunction halting the expropriation.
Wally Bucknell, executive director at Atlantic Gold, says the family is playing politics by trying to build a groundswell of opposition against a project that will bring much-needed jobs to the Musquodobit Valley.
“I understand a man’s land is his right and we’re not happy about this,” Bucknell said in an interview. “But we see the benefit for the common good.”
He added: “If we didn’t get this land we would have packed up and gone home.”
In a press release, Parker said that he weighed a number of factors in OK’ing the expropriation.
Ultimately, the release indicated, it came down to a question of the private interests of the landowners versus “the substantial public interest” in seeing the development of a mine that could create about 150 jobs while in operation and 300 jobs during the construction phase.
“This was a difficult decision to make, and while it may not be to everyone’s liking, I am confident that it best serves the public interest,” Parker said.
The deposit at Moose River Gold Mines contains about 635,000 ounces of gold with a current worth of $700 million. The project is expected to produce about 90,000 ounces of gold per year for five to seven years.
The company has said that it needs the Higgins land, which has been in the family for more than 120 years, for the project to be feasible.
The Higgins family says the land, on which they say that they grow trees and store equipment, is critical to the operation of their business.
“They knew from the beginning that it wasn’t for sale,” said Higgins. “They went ahead anyway assuming that they would get the appropriation all along.”
Bucknell, however, says the company is holding out to make a point, not because it actually needs the land to grow Christmas trees.
“We’re done deals with 29 people in Moose River and everyone is happy,” he said.
Parker’s decision was lauded by the Mining Association of Nova Scotia, which said it shows “support for the mining and quarrying sector” and that development of the mine will mean “growth in the local economy and rural employment.”
But the government’s decision had its critics, including local MLA Gary Burrill, a New Democrat backbencher and United Church minister.
“This is a decision that I regret,” said Burrill, who represents Colchester-Musquodoboit Valley.
He said expropriations are usually for a public good, like getting land for a road. He said there’s a public good in this case with the promise of jobs, but he doesn’t see that as the primary good.
“The primary good here is the private good of an international gold mining company, so in my view, the vesting order expropriation process is not the way to go,” he said.
