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Wednesday December 16 2015 3 December 21 December 22 December 23 December 24 December 25 December 28 December 29 December 30 December 31 January 1 OPEN OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSED CLOSED OPEN OPEN OPEN CLOSED ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ..... ............ EMERGENCY SERVICES EMERGENCY SERVICES remain available 24 hours a day. Have a Safe and Healthy Christmas Fort Smith Health and Social Services Authority Medical Clinic and Lab X-Ray Holiday Hours INDUSTRY MINING Snap Lake employment by location full-time equivalent positions according to company person-years worked data 2014 BEHCHOK DELINE ENTERPRISE FORT GOOD HOPE FORT PROVIDENCE FORT RESOLUTION FORT SMITH GAMTI 13.5 4.8 0.3 1.0 4.2 1.7 8.1 2.6 HAY RIVER INUVIK LUTSEL KE TULITA WEKWETI WHATI YELLOWKNIFE OTHER 32.8 0.5 0.8 1.3 2.7 3.4 181.3 489.4 By CRAIG GILBERT TheimpactofthelossoftheSnapLakemine will land eventually but it is clear skies for now at least for Northwestern Air Lease NWAL. When De Beers Canada announced on Dec. 4 it would stop regular operations at the diamond mine 220 kilometres north of Yellowknife NWAL general and operations manager Brian Harrold gured the compa- nys bi-weekly runs from Fort Smith and Hay River every other Wednesday would cease. UsuallytheightbringsoneortwofromFort Smith and picks up seven or eight more some- times 10 in Hay River and brings back eight to 11onreturn.Thecompanyusedtobringasmany as14backbutthatspareddownashasanextra Tuesday night run to the mine on the opposite weekwhichwentonlythreetimesbeforeitwas cancelledinthewakeofthemineannouncement. OnDec.7thoughhefoundoutthatistheonly businessNWALstandstoloseinthenearfuture. WethoughtweweregoingtolosealltheSnap stuff but I just got the email Monday that were still doing the same thing Harrold said speculatingthatsomeoftheHayRiverandFort Smithemployeesmayhavespecializedskillsstill needed at the mine. He noted one of the Smith employees is a cook. Were not seeing any im- pactatall.Whoknowswhathappensdownthe road but Im still fairly positive. Anglo American PLC which owns 85 per centofDeBeersitis15-per-centownedbythe government of Botswana revealed last week the Snap Lake closure is but part of a wider ef- fort to cut costs at the company as it has plans to reduce its workforce by 63 per cent or about 85000 employees worldwide. ThecompanywhichalsooperatestheVictor diamondmineinOntariocontinuestobuildthe GahchoKuemineintheNorthwestTerritories with 49 per cent partner Mountain Province DiamondsInc.GahchoKueisexpectedtostart productioninlate2016andoperatefor11years. Snap Lake spent 182 million in the North in 2014 and 2.2 billion in total since 2005 including 863 million with Aboriginal com- panies. It has created nearly 7000 person- years of employment with 2309 of them worked by Northerners. NWT businesses provide critical goods and services to Snap Lake including personnel for siteservicessupporttransportoffuelandsup- pliesonthewinterroadlogisticsandpassenger ights catering environmental monitoring explosives pipe valves and ttings screening for underground ground support shotcrete and other supplies according to the company. Diamond mines created more than 574 million of GDP in 2014 spending more than 20 million in property taxes and more than 5 million in fuel taxes. Suspension work at Snap Lake which em- ployednearly750peopleduringproductionwill requireapproximately120employees.Oncethat phase is completed the care and maintenance phasewillrequireapproximately70employees. Forty-one employees have been transferred to De Beers Gahcho Ku Project with the poten- tial for another 60 to transfer at some point in 2016.Atotalof434employeeshavebeenlaidoff from Snap Lake with 16 weeks notice. The companys CEO has said it would try to keepasmanyNorthernersonaspossible.Most NWT residents who work at the mine live in Yellowknife see chart below. The next larg- est groups are in the Tlicho region and Hay River with about 30 workers each. We understand its around 20 to 30 jobs Hay River Mayor Brad Mapes said. Some of our people that were affected have their posi- tions moved over to the new Gahcho Ku De Beers property but it is a concern to the town. Itsnotjusttheirjobsitskindofarippleeffect. Elected in October the former town coun- cillor and still-entrepreneur was concerned about the towns economy before the Snap Lake announcement. I think Snap Lake was always something theyweregoingtolookatinthefutureMapes said. The future was bleak for them for a few years. Its just hard to swallow - I dont think anybody expected it to happen that quickly. Theeconomyiskindofbadenoughinourcom- munity so its kind of affected us that way. Mapes like Harrold is staying positive. Theres really nothing that we could do he said. We cant go back to De Beers and say Give us those jobs back. Its done right No one expects anybody to run something that doesnt make any money. We also have to understand this is something that was going to come down. Every mine has a shelf life to it. We were on borrowed time with that Snap Lake project already so in some ways we should probably be happy with the time frame we did have. Snap Lake impact slow to emerge across North Northwestern Air Lease NWAL has been told to continue regular ights to the Snap Lake mine north of Yellowknife until further notice. Filephoto