After three unsuccessful attempts by two succeeding governments
and persisting threats of elections, one would have walked away
from the idea of reforming the mining regime in Québec. With
the defeat of Bill 43 which proposed a major overhaul of the
current mining regime, the current minority government presented
Bill 70, entitled "An Act to amend the Mining Act
(Québec)" just a few weeks before the holiday break and
got it approved on December 10, 2013 after an epic legislative
sprint.
Despite the fact that Bill 70 includes more modest changes than
what the current government initially proposed in Bill 43, the new
rules address a number of environmental concerns, foster greater
transparency in the mining industry and attempts to promote greater
social acceptability of mining projects. Most of these changes had
already reached consensus in previous aborted bills. Others only
aim at codifying existing industry best practices.
