A new study by Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia has found flaws in the environmental review process for mining operations in Canada.

The federal government is adding mining and energy projects to the fast-track list according to the latest reports out of Ottawa.

Lead author of the study and associate professor at Dalhousie, Alana Westwood says Canada and its provinces and territories operate under a patchwork of laws and regulations, with little to no consistency between jurisdictions.

“You get really different standards depending where you’re operating” says Westwood. That includes “where that mine is being proposed, what information is shared, what information needs to be collected, (and) what projects qualify.” She cites Ontario as an example, where mining projects don’t even qualify for the provincial environmental assessment process, “they have to opt-in, if they want to.”

In Newfoundland and Labrador, Westwood found department officials helpful in gathering what information they could, but documentation is scant.

Westwood says what’s even more troubling is that the “mega mines” now being proposed are “not the coal mines of our grandfather’s generation” and the environmental stakes are very high.

“If you think about the Rogers Centre where the Blue Jays played, imagine an open pit that size, and now multiply that by about 800. That is the size of the pits of many of these proposed mines, the size of a small city some of them in terms of the footprint.”

She says environmentally, “we have evidence of groundwater pollution from mines lasting thousands of years from Europe, we’re looking at potential if mines aren’t done right, hundreds of thousands of years of contamination.”