Mining company Sio Silica has offered Brokenhead Ojibway Nation a five per cent share of profits from its proposed sand-extraction operation, promising the Winnipeg-area First Nation $20 million in annual revenue once the project is operating at full capacity.
The Alberta-based company, whose plan to extract up to 33 million tonnes of high-grade silica from the below the surface of southeastern Manitoba over 24 years was rejected by the NDP government in 2024, has held a series of meetings with Brokenhead members since last fall as part of a revised effort to obtain an environmental licence for its operation.
In a presentation at Winnipeg’s Club Regent hotel on Monday night, Sio Silica officials displayed a slide stating its mining operations will bring “significant financial benefits” for the First Nation, which has 2,307 members living both on and off reserve.
Those benefits include employment, training and educational opportunities, Sio Silica chief executive officer Feisal Somji said at the meeting.
“We recognize that when a new project and a new process comes into the area, you’re not automatically qualified or educated on how to to work and benefit from that,” Somji said in an address to Brokenhead members.
“We have to ensure that there is proper training, proper education and proper resources for everyone to take advantage of that.”
The sand Sio Silica hopes to extract does not lie below Brokenhead’s reserve lands. Sio Silica president Carla Devlin said the band is being consulted because it is the closest First Nation to the wells her company intends to drill across a broad swath of land in southeastern Manitoba.
“We believe First Nations need to be at the table before approval, not after. And if we’re serious about true reconciliation, then it’s about partnership,” Devlin said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
She would not confirm whether a formal partnership with Brokenhead is on the table or whether the benefits promised to the community depend on formal band support for the project.
“Right now, I can’t speak to that. I can tell you that we are actively engaging in respectful dialogue and we’re encouraging economic reconciliation for First Nations,” she said.
Brokenhead Chief Gordon Bluesky also did not confirm whether a formal partnership is on the table.
In a statement, Bluesky said it’s important Brokenhead members understand the full scope of a project proposed for its territory, where he said generations of development have impacted land and water with no benefit to the nation or the well-being of its members.
“This cannot continue,” Bluesky said. “If we are truly going to advance economic reconciliation on our territory, it must happen on our terms.”
Taylor Galvin, a Brokenhead member who lives in the community and opposes to the sand extraction proposal, said she and other band members were told Tuesday night the band has already hired an official to work on an impact-benefit agreement between the First Nation and Sio Silica.
“A lot of people who were there didn’t realize that we were even at that stage, considering there’s no licence and there’s no signed agreements yet,” Galvin, a graduate student in environmental studies, said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
“They’re already moving forward on impact benefits and have somebody who’s working on this file already.”
Sio Silica proposes to drill fewer wells, at first
Sio Silica’s original application for an environmental licence was rejected by the province over concerns about the potential effects on water quality and the geological stability of the aquifer containing ultrapure crystalline quartz, which can be used to produce solar panels, new batteries and semiconductors.
The company proposed to drill up to 7,200 wells to the east and southeast of Winnipeg to extract the sought-after substance from about 50 metres below the surface.
The Clean Environment Commission, an arm’s-length provincial body, raised concerns about the proposal and advised the government only to approve it after applying many conditions to the proposal and to insist it proceed in stages, with only a few mines drilled at first.
“As a general principle, full-scale production should only proceed if and when the body of scientific and engineering evidence confirms that the risks are adequately understood and manageable,” the commission advised in its report.
Sio Silica now proposes to drill 25 wells during its first year of operation and 75 wells the following year, according to its Monday presentation. Somji also suggested the company erred in its earlier public-relations efforts by describing its sand-extraction process as utilizing new technology.
“One of the mistakes that we made in the past is we talked about it being a patent pending process and that was really just an element of advantage that we could have on our competitors,” he said at Monday’s meeting.
“But the actual process itself is not new, it’s not novel. It’s just taking a a process that’s being used, using air to lift sand and using that to extract the material.
Since the province rejected Sio Silica’s licence application, the mining company has rebranded its project as SiMBA, amended its plans to involve more gradual drilling and started engaging with Brokenhead.
Brokenhead member Galvin said she wants to know why Sio Silica did not consult First Nations during its first attempt to secure an environmental licence and questioned the sincerity of the company’s current effort.
“It’s a political checkbox that they all have to, we all have to, abide by nowadays, right? It makes them look good,” Galvin said.
“They’re just trying to dot their i’s and cross their t’s to make everything look like they’re following through on consultation, engagement and all these different things with the nearest First Nation.”
How Sio Silica hopes to extract sand from below the surface of southeastern Manitoba.
Tangi Bell, who leads a non-Indigenous organization opposed to Sio Silica’s extraction plans, called the company’s ongoing effort to obtain an environmental licence “simply absurd.”
Bell, the Springfield-based president of Our Line In The Sand, said if another licence application is filed, she wants the NDP government to ensure the Clean Environment Commission holds a public hearing and provides funding for participants, something she said did not happen when the previous application was considered under the former Progressive Conservative government.
The province has not received any new or revised licence applications from the company, according to a spokesperson for Environment and Climate Change.
Sio Silica president Devlin said the company intends to file a new application this calendar year.
Devlin is also the mayor of East St. Paul, where Brokenhead owns 194 hectares of land, including a three-hectare reserve established two decades ago and another 25-hectare parcel that will become a new Brokenhead reserve.
She said she would consider recusing herself from any future East St. Paul decisions related to Brokenhead developments should the First Nation become a formal partner with Sio Silica.
Galvin, the Sio Silica opponent, said she does not trust Devlin because she wears both hats.
“It’s a very clear and open conflict of interest on her part,” Galvin said.
In a 100-page report issued in May, Manitoba’s ethics commissioner determined former Manitoba premier Heather Stefanson and two of her PC cabinet ministers violated the province’s conflict-of-interest law and should be fined for pushing for the approval of the Sio Silica proposal after the Tories lost the 2023 election to the NDP.
Sio Silica was not sanctioned in that report.
What critics fear could happen if silica mining in southeastern Manitoba is approved.
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