The Nova Scotia government is invoking a rarely used legal provision to allow an Australian company to explore for lithium on private woodland without permission from the landowners.
Continental Lithium, a subsidiary of Manhattan Corporation, has already explored an area in southwest Nova Scotia that it calls the “Big Betty Prospect” through drone surveys.
The company said it tried last year to get a land access agreement to continue its exploration work, but negotiations with the owners of more than 1,200 hectares of woodlands “became protracted.”
The company asked the provincial government last April to intervene and the request was granted at the end of January.
‘Visionary approach’
In a media release, Continental Lithium thanked and congratulated the province for the move, calling it part of a “visionary approach” to managing competing land-use interests and supporting the development of the critical minerals sector in Nova Scotia.
“Moreover, it reflects the government’s determination to act swiftly in implementing the Premier’s recently announced mandate priorities, ensuring that no time is wasted in achieving these crucial objectives.”
Continental Lithium declined a request for an interview.
The media release says the land access paves the way for exploration work that includes surface sampling and investigative drilling.
The Houston government has been talking about making it easier to mine in Nova Scotia as a way to make the province more self-reliant. But as Taryn Grant reports, there’s only so much that can be done to influence the mining industry’s decisions.
The land access was granted a few days after Premier Tim Houston told his caucus and the public that in his second mandate he would focus on increasing natural resource development.
Houston has argued that tapping into the province’s natural resources could bring greater economic self-reliance — something he says is necessary in the face of looming American tariffs, a slowdown in population growth and a worry that federal transfers could shrink.
A first for Houston government
Section 26 of the Mineral Resources Act allows Nova Scotia’s natural resources minister to intervene when a mineral rights holder or prospector wants to access private land and can’t get the landowner’s consent.
Natural Resources Minister Tory Rushton said this is the first time he’s used Section 26 since he started leading the department in the fall of 2021 when the Progressive Conservatives came into power. His department says the provision has been used only one other time in the past two decades.
Rushton said in general, he would rather see landowners and mineral rights holders come to agreement on their own.
“That’s what we tried to encourage before we got to this Section 26 process, and that’s what we’ll continue to encourage,” he said in an interview.
The land that Continental Lithium has been granted access to is owned by a company called Green Bear Woodland and managed by Vladi Private Islands, which has offices in Halifax and Hamburg, Germany. A spokesperson at the property manager’s Halifax office said the land is used for sustainable forestry and doesn’t have any buildings on it. They would not comment any further on the case. CBC News was unable to reach the landowners directly.
Rushton said the landowners weren’t entirely opposed to granting access. Rather, “it got to a point where there wasn’t necessarily total agreement on the process forward.”
Rushton said part of the reason he felt it was appropriate to intervene in this case is because lithium is on the province’s critical mineral list. It’s one of 16 minerals identified as being important for new renewable energy technologies. Lithium is a key component of EV batteries.
Concern from woodlot co-op
Patricia Amero said the case is concerning. She’s a registered professional forester and the general manager of Western Woodlot Services Cooperative. Her organization has 450 members in western Nova Scotia. Green Bear Woodland is not among them.
“[Seventy] per cent of our province is privately owned. So if the province wants to do more mineral exploration, that means that a good portion of that could be on private [lands] from one end of the province to the other,” said Amero in an interview.
“I just hope, at least, that the landowners are compensated in some way,” she added.
Rushton said he did not order compensation, as he has the authority to do, and Continental Lithium would not say if they are compensating the landowners.
Amero said she’s seen mineral exploration on woodlands before, and it can require some forest clearing, which might warrant compensation. But she was more concerned about what could come next: a commercial mine and possible expropriation.
She said fair compensation should take into account present-day value and any future income that might have come from managing the woodlands. However, for some landowners, Amero said the value of their land is not purely monetary.
“We work with landowners that are very tied to the land, it’s been passed through the generations, it’s almost like a part of their family. So with those kinds of folks, I don’t know if they would be able to come to some kind of agreement.”
Rushton would not broach the possibility of expropriation in this case, saying he didn’t want to presuppose the outcome of the exploration work.
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