Mr. John Plourde reports
PACIFIC BOOKER MINERALS INC. WILL SEEK LEGAL RECOURSE
All attempts by Pacific Booker Minerals Inc. to meet with the current leadership of the Lake Babine Nation have been ignored or dismissed out of hand. Officials in the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) have informed Pacific Booker Minerals that a new application would not be considered unless it was actively supported by the Lake Babine Nation (LBN), the closest indigenous people to the company's wholly owned Morrison project.
Pacific Booker Minerals started work on the project in 1997 and, since 2004, has stated its intent to bring the property into production for copper, gold and molybdenum. Pacific Booker Minerals has spent $43-million of investors funds to attempt to capture what is perceived to be a very significant opportunity for the area. If the project does not proceed, that investment will have been lost. Not only the initial investments but also the returns probable from the operation of a very attractive mining opportunity for most of the last decade and for more than another decade to come will have been lost. The local people and others have lost the opportunity for thousands of person-years of well paid employment and other related business opportunities as well.
Previously signed agreements with the elected officials of the Lake Babine Nation, including a memorandum of understanding (MOU), prepared by the LBN and signed in March, 2012, were apparently repudiated and the 2012 MOU has been referred to as an alleged MOU by LBN legal representatives. That MOU agreed to support the project if the environmental assessments concluded that with the implementation of appropriate mitigation measures, the project was not likely to result in environmental effects that will significantly and adversely impact the LBN way of life. The EAO's final assessment report concluded just that.
In spite of that and having been informed by the responsible officials of the provincial government that Pacific Booker Minerals had met all relevant criteria for an environmental assessment certificate to be issued, that certificate was refused in 2012. After the British Columbia Supreme Court quashed that decision in 2013, the province waited until 2022 to again deny the certificate.
The company believes that it has exhausted all options with any chance of placing its wholly owned Morrison project into production and is left with exploring all avenues of legal recourse against the province and the Lake Babine Nation.
We seek Safe Harbor.
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