This project is irresponsible and unsustainable.

The main point of the Canadian Impact Assessment Act is to foster sustainability and ensure the responsible and practical use of our environment. If we take a moment to look at data surrounding our practical need and demand for gold, for example:

Source: gold.org/goldhub/data/gold-supply-and-demand-statistics

For 2020 and most years prior, practical use of gold (technology) is about 302.2 trillion tonnes out of 3803.10 (total) which is 8% rounding up. So 92% of gold sits idle with no practical use beyond imaginary economic theory and artificially over-valued shiny trinkets.

Gold for truly practical applications in science and technology requires only a tiny fraction of available supply, meaning we have a drastic over-supply of gold for all practical needs. Humanity's artificially scarce and destructive social contract (fiat money) is therefore the only argument for additional gold mining today.

I advocate for merit-based resource allocation and economics and applaud the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada for providing the public the opportunity to weigh in and object to this misuse of public land. The irrecoverable loss of pristine Canadian land for the purpose of gold extraction would be a criminally irresponsible act and must not be allowed to proceed on the basis of economics.  

The solution to fixing our flawed (and in my opinion uncivilised) economic framework, which relentlessly fuels this sort of needless extraction of minerals for the benefit of an unproductive minority, is outside of the scope (https://civil.money) of this comment. I’m convinced it’s absolutely possible to fix the root cause, and we as temporary stewards of our biosphere can and must do better than to allow people to tear up land in order to float this artificially valued mineral on an abstract market driven largely by automated trading bots and a herd mentality for the benefit of a counterproductive minority, leaving the residents and descendants of Nova Scotians to deal with hundreds of years of liability and aftermath.