Hollow Water sand mine snagged by controversy at separate, unrelated project

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This article was published 03/01/2024 (664 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The president of a Manitoba silica sand mine — which has won community and regulatory approval and is vying for investment — says a different sand mine, which is controversial, has made it tough for his company to raise money.

“Because Sio (Silica) has been in the news so frequently, there is confusion out there — it’s frustrating,” said Glenn Leroux, president and CEO of Canadian Premium Sand Inc. It plans to quarry silica sand near Hollow Water First Nation and use it to make solar panel glass at a plant in Selkirk.

“We’ve done all the things right to get our environmental act licences for the plant and extraction site,” Leroux said in an interview Tuesday from Calgary. “We’re shovel-ready. We’re just raising money and Sio’s in the news all the time,” he said.

In recent weeks, former Tory environment minister Kevin Klein and former acting environment minister Rochelle Squires both said they were urged by then-economic development minister Jeff Wharton to approve the Sio Silica sand mine near Vivian in the dying days of the Progressive Conservative government.

They both refused, saying to do so would violate the practice of an outgoing government refraining from making major policy decisions following an election. Wharton has denied having the authority or the intent to push them to make any decision.

Sio Silica made headlines in the spring, when the Clean Environment Commission held public hearings in potentially affected communities, and in June, when the R.M. of Springfield barred the public and media from a municipal council meeting into the contentious proposal, alleging a councillor had been threatened. Angry residents had rallied to say the project could put drinking water, used by thousands of people, at risk.

The commission reported in June that there wasn’t enough information to decide whether any long-term effects of drilling hundreds of sand-extraction wells could be mitigated.

Klein, the environment minister at the time, said he wouldn’t approve the project without expert assurances, and that a technical review of the proposal was underway.

While some members of Hollow Water have opposed the Canadian Premium Sand project, the company has signed a participation agreement with the community, and neighbouring Seymourville, that includes an acknowledgment of environmental protection and remediation as well as co-operation to determine details like the best times for truck traffic to minimize noise disruption.

Whereas Sio Silica proposes to drill hundreds of extraction wells in the R.M. of Springfield and sell the silica sand — which is used to make solar-panel glass, fibre optics, electronics and in the hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” process — Canadian Premium Sand proposes mining sand from an open pit and manufacturing the glass used to create solar panels in Selkirk.

Work could begin this spring if the firm can raise the money, said Leroux.

“This is a $900-million project. That is a large sum of money to go out and raise,” he said.

“One of the challenges business in Canada has right now with respect to anything in the renewables space is the incentives the U.S. has through its own Inflation Reduction Act.” It includes US$369-billion for energy security and climate change programs until 2032. “They stand these programs up quickly and they commit to them,” said Leroux.

“As Canadians, we have to get these types of projects going or we’ll continue to sell our raw materials to those with the ambition and the wherewithal to build facilities. It’s crazy.” Potential U.S. investors question why CPS doesn’t manufacture the solar glass there, he said.

“We can produce this type of solar glass with a 50 per cent lower carbon footprint than all that is coming from the Pacific Rim,” Leroux said of Manitoba.

He said Manitoba is a transportation hub with affordable electricity and the human resources needed for an industry to develop around it.

The solar-glass plant and sand-extraction process would result in 270 jobs and generate $300 million a year in revenue, mainly in U.S. dollars, Leroux said.

Right now, the company is “a bit hamstrung” and looking around the world to raise money, he acknowledged.

It hasn’t sought media attention for a couple of reasons, one being that claims made by activists opposed to the project have gone unchecked by media, Leroux alleged.

Also, the company doesn’t want to be “the type that uses the media to get through to politicians,” he said.

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“I think there’s respectful and professional channels to use through the infrastructure the government has set up.”

Canadian Premium Sand has written letters to Premier Wab Kinew and Indigenous Economic Development Minister Ian Bushie, who is from Hollow Water First Nation, and Economic Development, Investment, Trade and Natural Resources Minister Jamie Moses, and is in regular contact with economic development bureaucrats in government, he said.

“We’re a publicly traded company and we need to behave like a publicly traded company with all the respect and professionalism that should demand,” Leroux said.

It’s listed on the TSX as CPS-V. After trading at 60 cents per share in late May, it opened at 37 cents per share Wednesday.

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca

Carol Sanders
Legislature reporter

Carol Sanders is a reporter at the Free Press legislature bureau. The former general assignment reporter and copy editor joined the paper in 1997. Read more about Carol.

Every piece of reporting Carol produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.