Pro Bono students help Bedford Mining Alert

Photo by Aimee Burtch

Bedford Mining Project supervisor Justin Connidis, Law '79, and PBSC student members Cecile Ko, Artur Opalinski, Katie Higgins and Stefan Zhelev of Law '13

The lakes and forests of Frontenac County north of Kingston have been home and haven for generations of residents, cottagers, fishermen and other visitors. The rugged Canadian Shield terrain is also a target for prospectors hunting for everything from gold to uranium.

One area of interest currently is Bedford District, a part of the county that may contain commercial deposits of graphite. About 12 years ago the potential for disruptive prospecting activity here led about 100 local residents to form an advocacy group called Bedford Mining Alert (BMA), and the group then recruited the Queen’s chapter of Pro Bono Students Canada to help them conduct critical research to support revisions to Ontario’s Mining Act and regulations.

First enacted in the 19th century, the Mining Act has started undergoing some much-needed modernization in the past two years, thanks in part to input from groups like BMA. For instance, the Act permitted prospectors to stake a claim, enter a property and strip overburden, dig trenches and pits, sink shafts and excavate up to 1,000 tons of material, all without any obligation to have environmental approvals, a remediation plan or the landowner’s permission or ability to halt the work.

Not surprisingly, this right of “free entry” for prospectors frustrated property owners across the province who wished to preserve the natural beauty of their land but were powerless to stop mining-company backhoes and bulldozers from rolling in.

It’s scenarios like this that originally galvanized the BMA members, who still work to better understand their individual and community rights under the Mining Act and to lobby government for improvements to the law.

That’s where Queen’s Pro Bono students come in.

Pro Bono Students Canada is a national organization that provides opportunities for law students to gain research and client skills and legal experience in assisting not-for-profit clients on public-interest projects. An insured practising lawyer – in the BMA’s case, Justin Connidis, Law ’79 – supervises the students.

“It’s a useful service that benefits the client and broadens the law students’ education,” says Connidis, Counsel to Dickinson Wright LLP in Toronto, who teaches a Queen’s Law course called Mining Law, Policy and Communities.

Since 2005, Queen’s Pro Bono volunteers have provided BMA with research on subjects including the liability of real estate vendors, agents and lawyers for not adequately disclosing or explaining the existence of a property’s mining rights and claims; the liability of surface rights owners if a prospector is injured on their property; and a property owner’s ability to obtain lower property taxes because of the separation of mining rights or because of potential mining activity on a neighbouring property.

“The Queen’s students have speeded up our understanding of the issues involved,” says BMA member Sandy Cameron, adding that their information has helped the group craft several submissions, including one for the ongoing provincial review of Mining Act regulations.

Pro Bono student Katie Higgins, Law ’13, current project leader, has worked with the Bedford group for the past two years. Like her predecessors, who are now graduates, and with this year’s three other student members, she has carefully pored over the Mining Act, other legislation and reform proposals to identify and explain obscure or contentious regulations that continue to affect BMA clients.

“The BMA has some important goals, given the legal framework of mining and the free-entry system,” she says. “They’re helping to modernize legislation that in some respects is bizarre and out-of-date. It’s been great working with them, and I’ve learned a lot.” 

For more information on the Queen’s chapter of Pro Bono Students Canada, visit http://law.queensu.ca/students/proBonoStudentsCanada.html