The court-appointed receiver put in charge of Victoria Gold Corporation’s Eagle Gold Mine following a heap leach facility failure on June 24, 2024, underscored the mining company's cash flow woes when the receiver appeared for questioning in the Yukon Legislative Assembly last week.
Senior vice presidents of PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. (PwC) Michelle Grant and Graham Page attended the assembly virtually on April 30, 2025, the second last day of the spring sitting of the legislature. PwC has sought $220 million from the Yukon government. The territorial budget for 2025-26, which passed on the final day of the sitting, is $2.36 billion.
Despite some technical hiccups with the remote video feed, Yukon Party MLA Scott Kent, Yukon NDP MLA Kate White and Yukon Liberal Party MLA John Streicker, who is mines minister, grilled the witnesses for about two-and-a-half hours that afternoon.
The Official Opposition Yukon Party has argued Victoria Gold Corporation never should've left; the NDP wants to hear from the mining company about what went wrong and stands by calls for a public inquiry into systemic issues including the government's role in mining failures around the territory.
Grant summed up the key concerns leading up to PwC’s appointment by the Ontario court: a lack of communication, transparency and understanding about what Victoria Gold Corporation was doing prior to the receivership proceeding.
She noted the major environmental impacts and loss of jobs and income for businesses and communities in the territory as a result of the cyanide-laden landslide. The receivership’s main duty is to oversee environmental cleanup.
Grant also highlighted remediation milestones the receiver has hit since taking over the mine site: Building a safety berm, adding temporary water storage, upgrading the water treatment plant to remove cyanide and other harmful contaminants, starting to discharge treated water, installing groundwater collection and monitoring systems, coming up with a groundwater interception plan for contaminated water and working on stabilizing the heap leach.
“Recognizing the extraordinary circumstances and heightened public interest, we have taken steps to enhance transparency well beyond what is typical in a receivership,” Grant said.
For example, Grant pointed to regularly communicating with the Yukon government regulators and First Nation leaders, participating in a media briefing with the Yukon government, holding a briefing for opposition MLAs and filing regular court reports and updates on the site, which are publicly posted on the Victoria Gold receivership web page.
“We understand the responsibility that comes with stewarding these funds, and we are committed to ensuring that they are used effectively, efficiently and transparently to address the specific challenges posed by the heap leach failure,” Grant said.
She noted PwC is looking into potentially monetizing gold and other precious metals contained in the waste and water materials during remediation.
Later on, she reiterated that any money that comes in through asset monetization will go toward offsetting the costs of the receivership, including remediation costs.
Grant said Yukon government legal counsel approached PwC on or around July 26, 2024, prior to the receivership proceedings.
“This receivership is unique,” she said.
“That said, PricewaterhouseCoopers Inc. has a lot of experience acting as a court-appointed receiver. In addition, we have specific experience working on environmental remediation projects, including specific projects in the mining sector, oil and gas sector, and pulp and paper sector.”
She also noted PwC’s experience assisting governments with disaster relief.
Grant spoke to PwC’s relationship with the Yukon government given the government’s capacity as regulator and lender to the receivership.
The receiver sent representatives to the mine site the first day of the receivership, the legislature heard.
When asked to describe the mine site on that first day, and what actions had been done between the heap leach failure and Aug. 14, 2024, Grant said she can’t answer comprehensively due to the passage of time. She referred to the receiver’s first of four reports to the court regarding the status of regulatory orders issued to Victoria Gold Corporation. The third court report describes the site matters they dealt with in the first six weeks, she said.
Grant highlighted PwC’s concerns:
“We were concerned about adding water storage capacity to the site. We were concerned about where water treatment was at and how we were going to enable the mine water treatment plant which, as we indicated numerous times, did not have the capacity to treat cyanide-contaminated water and how it would need to be augmented to enable that. We were concerned about a number of other aspects of the remediation and work that needed to be completed,” she said.
“That concern obviously was alleviated over time as we had boots on the ground and support from our technical advisors to assess the situation and to start actioning some of the items to move the works forward.”
Grant said Victoria Gold Corporation was facing a "liquidity crisis" that also drove concern.
The company stopped mining and, in turn, its future cash flows were negatively impacted, the legislative assembly heard.
“The concern with the liquidity crisis was whether or not they would have sufficient funds available to remediate the failure event,” she said.
“That cash-flow information that we were provided with effectively said that they would have run out of cash by the end of November.”
Grant explained that means the company wouldn’t have had enough money to carry out remediation work after November, unless the emergency works were completed by that date. She didn’t know if the company had factored in all the necessary emergency works.
Grant said the SHE Consulting firm was hired to oversee health and safety services.
Grant slammed Victoria Gold Corporation’s drug-and-alcohol testing program.
“The program that Victoria Gold had in place was ineffective,” she said.
“We implemented an entire new testing protocol with the support of SHE Consulting since our appointment.”
A top priority during freshet includes keeping cyanide-contaminated water separate from mine contact water to avoid overwhelming storage and water treatment on site, per Grant. Discharging treated water from the site, intercepting and collecting groundwater for treatment and stabilizing the heap leach are other priorities as the snow and ice melts.
“To continue to advance these priorities, we require funding, which is being provided by the receivership lender. We require capable technical expertise, which is supported by our technical advisors,” she said.
“And we require capable employees and contractors, so that includes the Victoria Gold employees who are currently working tirelessly on-site and all of the local and other contractors who are supporting the work. All of these are critical to the success of the remediation efforts on-site right now.”
In total, 147 employees remain on Victoria Gold Corporation’s payroll, per Grant. Four are from the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun and 50 are Yukoners. Additionally, two First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun workers are employed by the water treatment specialist.
Streicker pledged for his department to respond to the opposition’s questions that were best suited for the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources.
On May 5, 2025, PwC published a four-page update on the receivership to its website.
An independent review board is expected to wrap up its work and deliver a report in June on what caused the failure in the first place.
Contact Dana Hatherly at dana.hatherly@yukon-news.com
