Papineau mayors back their mining stand with up to $100,000

Tashi Farmilo

The Papineau MRC has committed up to $100,000 to prepare a brief opposing mining, stepping up a long-running campaign that the Regroupement de protection des lacs de la Petite-Nation has helped lead against a graphite exploration boom, a stand that hardened last summer when residents in five northern municipalities voted nearly 95 per cent against the proposed La Loutre mine.

The mayors of the Papineau regional county municipality voted on May 20 to put as much as $100,000 toward a brief on mining, the latest move in a fight that has been building across the Petite-Nation. For residents who have watched exploration claims spread across their lakes and country roads, the decision is the clearest sign yet that the council means to put weight behind its opposition.

The money builds on a resolution adopted in April, in which the council called mining out of step with how the territory wants to grow, whether at the exploration stage or the extraction stage. Prefect Paul-André David framed the spending as a matter of follow-through, saying the elected officials needed to match their words with action and equip themselves to defend the area's identity. He returned to the themes that have anchored the MRC's position from the start, namely protecting the water, safeguarding the environment, and keeping communities united behind a common vision.

To understand why feelings run so high, it helps to look at what lies underground. The Outaouais holds rich graphite deposits, and the mineral is in heavy demand because it goes into the batteries driving the shift to electric vehicles. That appetite has sent a rush of exploration claims into the area. Across the MRC, those claims number in the hundreds and reach nearly every village, a striking total given that Papineau accounts for less than a tenth of the wider Outaouais.

Much of the resistance comes from the people who live closest to the shoreline. The Regroupement de protection des lacs de la Petite-Nation, a coalition of lake associations launched in 2019, has carried the campaign for years, and its "Incompatible with mining activity" signs now appear in more than 20 municipalities. Its spokesperson, Louis St-Hilaire, has long argued that few industries reshape a place as permanently as a mine.

One project has come to stand in for the entire debate. La Loutre, proposed by the British Columbia company Lomiko Metals, would be an open-pit graphite mine near Duhamel, roughly 80 kilometres northeast of Gatineau, set among inhabited lakes in the cottage country the area is known for. It is exactly the sort of operation that has alarmed the nearby cottagers and year-round residents.

The pushback reached its peak last summer. On August 31, the five municipalities of the Alliance des municipalités Petite-Nation Nord, namely Duhamel, Lac-des-Plages, Lac-Simon, Chénéville and Saint-Émile-de-Suffolk, held a consultative referendum on La Loutre. The result was lopsided. Of nearly 3,000 ballots cast, 2,754 went against the project and just 115 in favour, close to 95 per cent opposed. Kitigan Zibi Anishinābeg, on whose traditional territory the mine would sit, chose not to take part, with the community saying Lomiko had yet to answer its questions about protecting the water and restoring the land.

The vote was advisory rather than binding, and it did not close the file. Quebec had in fact already declined to bankroll the mine. In September 2024, Mathieu Lacombe, the minister responsible for the Outaouais and the member whose Papineau riding takes in Duhamel, announced that La Loutre lacked the public support the government insists on, and Natural Resources Minister Maïté Blanchette Vézina confirmed that the provincial funding agency, Investissement Québec, would not finance it. Lomiko Metals called the move surprising and disappointing, questioning how the decision could come before key studies were finished and arguing it ran against Quebec's own plans for critical minerals. The company has carried on with exploration since the referendum and maintains it can clear the province's environmental review, while acknowledging it still has work to do to win people over.

The stakes are real on both sides. Backers of mining point to the jobs and investment a project could bring to a rural area, and to the value of producing graphite at home rather than depending on foreign supply. Critics see open pits carved beside lakes and forests as a threat to clean water, to wildlife, and to the tourism and recreation economy that gives the Petite-Nation much of its character. The MRC has come down firmly on the side of caution.

The timing is no accident. Quebec spent two years rewriting how mining is governed, and the National Assembly passed the overhaul, known as Bill 63, in late November 2024. The law renames the old claims as exclusive exploration rights and, for the first time, gives regional governments a concrete tool to fence off land, through a new measure that lets an MRC designate territory it considers incompatible with mining. Just as telling for places like these, the reform takes private property and town centres off the table for new claims, with only narrow exceptions, while allowing municipalities to ask the province to lift or narrow those protections when conditions on the ground warrant.

The changes reach well beyond who can stake a claim. Every new mining project must now pass through the province's public environmental hearings at the BAPE (Office of Public Hearings on the Environment) which gives residents a formal place to weigh in instead of learning about a project after it is already underway. Companies face stiffer financial guarantees to restore sites once the digging ends, and the law tries to curb the speculation and idle claims that let titles pile up with little actual work behind them. Quebec has also promised Indigenous communities a larger say. The scope of the problem is hard to miss, since exploration claims across the province more than doubled in five years, from roughly 143,000 in 2019 to about 356,000 by 2024.

There is a catch, though. The law has passed, but it is not fully in force yet. Before the final pieces take effect, the government must write a detailed rulebook spelling out how everything will work in practice. A first draft of that rulebook appeared in March, and the public was invited to comment on it. That comment period is the MRC's chance to make its case directly to the province, and it is the main reason the mayors want a strong brief written and ready to submit.

The Papineau MRC has committed up to $100,000 to prepare a brief opposing mining, escalating a years-long campaign that the Regroupement de protection des lacs de la Petite-Nation has helped lead against a graphite exploration boom in the region, capped last summer when residents in five northern Petite-Nation municipalities voted nearly 95 per cent against the proposed La Loutre mine. Photo: Courtesy of the RPLPN (Group for the Protection of Lakes of the Petite-Nation) Facebook page