BCBusiness

July/August 2021 - The Top 100

With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.

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Allen Edzerza, a Tahltan Nation elder. "Indigenous people have to be involved and have ownership. Otherwise the projects don't have the certainty they think they do." First Tellurium is part of a growing responsible mining move- ment. In the past couple of years, high-profile customers, including Apple, BMW Group, Tesla and the government of California, have committed to buying responsibly produced metals. The investment and finance community are increasingly scrutinizing mining busi- nesses and their supply chains for everything from climate risk to human rights violations. Progressive mining companies are paying attention. They see advantages in avoiding bad PR and gaining preferential access to customers and funding. There's also the potential to receive a premium for their products and easier permitting. For their part, governments like the idea of a sus- tainable mining sector that will attract more investment, and with it, jobs and tax dollars. This is an important moment for B.C., a mining hub with deep roots in the sustainability move- ment. How the government and the businesses based here respond will determine whether the province emerges as a leader or gets left behind. KEEPING PROMISES For B2Gold, operating responsibly is essential to its business model of investing in countries where there are risks of nationalization, tax gouging and other challenges. President and CEO Clive Johnson, a mining veteran, started the company in 2007. It's now the largest gold miner based in Vancou- ver, with operations in Mali, the Philippines and Namibia, and exploration projects in Colombia and Burkina Faso. Last year, the company pro- duced more than a million ounces of gold. From the outset, Johnson has focused on going beyond the regulations of the country he's oper- ating in. His company's annual report includes a 170-page account of its environmental, social and governance ( ESG) actions. B2Gold recently won two honours for those efforts: the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada's 2021 Sustainability Award and the Mining Journal's Most Sustainable Miner for 2020. Johnson says he runs the company with a responsible focus for three reasons: it's the right thing to do, he cares about "what's writ- ten on my tombstone," and it's good for business. "When we go into a country, we make promises to the presi- dential level," he says. "We tell them we want to invest billions of dollars, hire local people, pay taxes and take care of the environ- ment. One of the ways we manage the political risk is to live up to the promises we make." Not following through breeds worry and vengeance. It's a major motivation for governments to raise taxes or change agreements to get what was promised, Johnson says. Being fair, respectful and transparent builds trust, which keeps mines running. Throughout the COVID-19 lockdowns, B2Gold's mines contin- ued operating. The company asked staff to work longer shifts to shrink cohorts and reduce exposure. "Government and employees wanted us to keep working because they trusted we'd keep every- one safe," Johnson says. "It takes years to build that trust." And it pays off. B2Gold reported gold revenue of $1.79 billion and cash flow from operations of $630 million in fiscal 2020. Both are records. Its stock has gained 1,600 percent in 13 years. "If we deliver on our promises, when we go to the next country, they can call up Mali and ask what they think of B2Gold," Johnson says. "It paves our way forward." THE CA SE FOR CERTIFICATION But not every jurisdiction has Mali's phone number, and not every investor knows green- washing from good deeds. Increasingly, there's demand for an independent, rigorous and uni- versal standard for metals mining, like organic for food and Fair Trade for manufacturing. The Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance's ( IRMA) Standard for Respon- sible Mining is emerging as the favourite, even though it's only a year old. The standard traces its roots to B.C., where the first attempt to develop a sustain- ability benchmark came out of a spate of mining disasters in the 1990s. At the time, Alan Young worked for an NGO in Vancouver fighting every min- ing proposal on principle. But when he looked around his house, he realized how reliant modern life is on metals. "So I and a few others started to ask, What does responsible mining look like?" says Young, now a sustainable mining consultant based near Ottawa. The first indication came early in the 2000s, when Tiffany & Co. started to worry it could lose market share if consumers connected its supply chain to a tailings pond breach or human rights abuses. So the jewelry giant organized one of the first sustainable mining conferences in Vancouver. Around the same time, the Mining Asso- ciation of Canada was introducing Toward Sustainable Mining, its grading system for metals mines. Seven other nations have adopted TSM, and all MAC members must meet a minimum grade. But "if you fail TSM, you should no longer be a member of anything," Young says. "TSM is a benchmark, not an assurance. JULY/AUGUST 2021 BCBUSINESS 77 OWNERSHIP STAKE First Nations have unceded rights to the land, says Cheona Metals founder Allen Edzerza GOOD QUESTIONS First Tellurium chair Tony Fogarassy seeks Indigenous consent

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