Bruce Duncan's Canada Carbon Inc. (CCB), unchanged at five cents on 420,000 shares, is in a litigious mood. The company, which hopes to mine graphite and marble at its Miller project, near Grenville-sur-la-Rouge in southwestern Quebec, is appealing a decision by Quebec's agricultural board (CPTAQ), to "administratively close the file" on whether to remove the company's property from the agricultural reserve. CPTAQ did so, it says, because it was notified late last year that Canada Carbon's project was noncompliant with Grenville's zoning bylaw. Mr. Duncan says that this is an error, as the regulations state that graphite mining is not subject to the zoning regulations, adding that CPTAQ violated the rules of procedural fairness.
Mr. Duncan directed most of his ire at Grenville's municipal government and its councillors, stating that the company is "in the process of filing a lawsuit" that seeks to annul the resolution of noncompliance that the council adopted late last year. It also wants the court to declare that Canada Carbon has crystallized its right to a mining and marble quarry from the moment it filed its request with the CPTAQ a year ago. Canada Carbon proposes an open-pit mine that would extract 1.2 million tonnes of marble and about 900,000 tonnes of graphite-bearing rock over a 10-year period. A two-year-old preliminary economic assessment put the discounted net present value of Miller at $110-million after taxes, based on a $44.3-million mine plan. |
