Biologist and Wildlife Conservation Society Canada representative highlights negative pattern of Yukon mine failures
Chris Addison Aug 8, 2025 1:00 PM
A year on from the Eagle Mine failure, and as cyanide, mercury, cobalt, and copper continue to pollute the waters downstream, the Eagle Gold Mine Independent Review Board has delivered its report. While the review to determine the causes of the failure was undoubtedly diligent and has produced prudent and supportable recommendations, the way its findings have shaped the conversation about what should follow raises serious concerns.
Subsequent commentary has focused only on the Board’s conclusion that five geotechnical factors were the proximate cause of the disaster, reinforcing a story of an isolated and preventable incident. The broader implications are far less reassuring.
The report identified several additional issues in construction and production that, while not the driving forces behind this disaster, were significant enough to be worthy of concern to the investigation. The report also shed light on shortcomings in permitting, compliance, monitoring, and reporting that, if done properly, would likely have identified a problem well in advance of a disaster. While we can trust the Board’s findings on the causative factors of the disaster that took place, what its report fails to highlight is any number of other disasters that were waiting to happen because of the wider operational failings at Eagle Gold Mine.
The most distressing thing in all of this is that it is not an isolated story of a large mine failure in the Yukon. This is another chapter in a story of systemic failures to protect Yukon ecosystems and communities writ large. To echo First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun Chief Dawna Hope, every quartz mine in the Yukon since devolution, except for Brewery Creek (which is currently owned by Victoria Gold Corporation), has been a failure of one kind or another. Abandonments, bankruptcies, and ecological damage are not the exception to otherwise responsible mining in the Yukon, they are the expectation.
These failures are not just regional anomalies – they are symptomatic of a broader nationwide trajectory that prioritizes speed over scrutiny and profit over people. And now across Canada, governments are pushing to “streamline” environmental assessment processes, reduce perceived regulatory burdens, and
expedite major industrial projects in the name of “critical” minerals, economic opportunity, and geopolitical urgency.
However, we know that environmental regulations and permitting requirements are not the reason large industrial projects experience delays. As confirmed by recent research in British Columbia, delays are almost universally caused by economic factors. The projects that face long delays are the ones that are not economically viable. If anything, it’s ignoring environmental regulations and proper consultation with Indigenous Peoples that will delay project approvals, as well as breed further systemic failures. Taking longer to make bad decisions is a pretty good definition of poor process.
What is being framed nationally and in other jurisdictions as a path toward energy security and nation-building is, in reality, a dangerous erosion of the very safeguards meant to prevent disasters like Eagle Mine. When the same failures – regulatory gaps, weak oversight, poor consultation, and corporate collapse – repeat across multiple projects, under multiple governments, the problem is no longer technical. It is systemic. In the Yukon, this can be addressed through effective successor legislation to replace the Quartz and Placer Mining Acts, neither of which could even comprehend modern mining in the Yukon when they were created. Recent statements by both Chief Hope and Yukon Chamber of Mines president Jonas Smith expressing dissatisfaction with the framework and process are disappointing on one hand. However, optimistically this may provide an opportunity to start again with a more robust process and comprehensive outcome.
Finally, the Independent Review Board’s work, while diligent, was ultimately constrained by its mandate. It answered how, but not why, Eagle Mine failed – or why so many mines across the Yukon are set up to fail in the first place. Granted, this is not what the review was set up to achieve. But, until we confront
that deeper reality, disasters like Eagle will not be rare. They will be routine. The Yukon deserves better. It is time — not just for technical reviews or regulatory tweaks — but for a full public inquiry into the systemic failures that have long shaped resource development in this territory. Only through such a
reckoning can we prevent the next project from becoming another story of broken promises, environmental harm, and community neglect.
Chris Addison is a Registered Professional Biologist and has worked in wildlife research and management in Canada and the United States since 1997. He has extensive experience in natural resource law and regulation having worked for 10 years in that capacity for the Government of British Columbia. Chris has lived in Whitehorse since January 2024, advancing Indigenous-led conservation initiatives with the Wildlife Conservation Society Canada.
