BURST
The province has approved the expansion of an existing copper mine in B.C.’s southern Interior, which will extend the life of its operations until 2040 and is the sixth mining project to be given the go-ahead in the last year.
On Monday, B.C. Mining Minister Jagrup Brar announced approval of the Copper Mountain mine’s New Ingerbelle expansion, which will see the its owner, Hudbay Minerals, “push back” the boundaries of its existing open pit and expand its annual copper production by up to 90 per cent, according to company material.
Mining at Copper Mountain, and its predecessors, has had its ups and downs since first opening in 1923, with lengthy shutdowns in the 1960s and 1990s.
Its latest configuration, opened by the Copper Mountain Mining, has been in operation since 2010, employing some 800 workers. Hudbay Minerals, which bought the mine in 2023, said the New Ingerbelle expansion, which will go ahead in three stages, will extend its operations for at least an additional 12 years.
Copper Mountain is the largest employer for Princeton, a town of almost 3,000 20 km north of the mine, so extending its life “provides the community with job security and economic security,” Mayor Spencer Coyne said in a statement.
Princeton and District Chamber of Commerce president Joyce Edwards added that she has seen a lot of new, younger faces in town, so the expansion will keep some lifeblood in what was becoming more of a retirement community.
“I have a gift store in town and I see younger people coming in all the time,” Edwards said. “They’ve all said that their husbands have got employment at the mine, so they must be hiring some younger people.”
“And those people are going to be here for a long, long time,” she added.
Hudbay estimates that Copper Mountain will produce some 750,000 tonnes of copper, 900,000 ounces of gold and 5.5 million ounces of silver over its extended lifespan, and bolster the province’s hopes to make mining a bigger part of diversifying trade away from the U.S.
Environmental groups have raised concerns over Copper Mountain’s expansion because it would involve raising the height of its tailings dam. In 2023, a consortium of 22 environmental organizations, including the Wilderness Committee and David Suzuki Foundation, lobbied government to not approve the mine’s expansion without putting it through a full environmental assessment.
Brar, on Monday, issued Mines Ace and Environmental Management Act permits to Copper Mountain, which the Environmental Assessment Office determined “does not meet the threshold to automatically require an environmental assessment.”
Earlier in February, Hudbay Minerals signed new participation agreements with the Upper and Lower Similkameen Indian Band, which included terms related to environmental protection.
The approval of Copper Mountain’s expansion is also the latest in a string of approvals the province has issued in its push to expand mining.
In January, the province, along with the Tahltan Nation, signed off on the environmental approval of Skeena Gold and Silver’s proposal to reopen the Eskay Creek Gold and Silver mine north of Stewart, and Centerra Gold’s extension of the Mount Milligan Copper and gold mine northwest of Prince George.
Last December, the province green-lit a major expansion of Artemis Gold’s Blackwater gold mine southwest of Vanderhoof, which only began operations in May of 2025. Earlier in 2025, the province approved a $2.4 billion expansion of Teck Resources’ Highland Valley copper mine and expansion of the Quintette coal mine in B.C.’s northeast.
Last week, Brar added three additional mining projects to the list of mining projects his critical minerals office is looking at expediting through the regulatory process for new mines.
Those are Northisle Copper and Gold’s proposal on northern Vancouver Island, a Surge Copper’s Berg copper and molybdenum project, and Defense Metals’s proposed rare earth elements project east of Prince George.