VICTORIA -- The B.C. government's refusal to release inspection reports for the Mount Polley mine dam is "nonsense" and smells like a coverup, according to the province's Opposition leader.
NDP leader John Horgan said Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett has a public obligation to explain what, if anything, the government did to address a tension crack in the earthen dam that was highlighted in a 2010 safety inspection the province has tried to keep hidden.
"To have a four-year-old record showing a 10- to 15-metre tension crack at the mine site is something the government should have responded to," said Horgan. "If Mr. Bennett has nothing to hide, he should demonstrate government took this information and acted upon it."
The government again refused Friday to discuss the report or provide subsequent inspection reports from 2011-2013, citing that it can't share any information during its ongoing investigation into how the dam breached.
"Government must protect the integrity and independence of these investigations to ensure that we do not compromise the ability to prosecute under the Mines Act or other legislation, should the investigation determine that to be warranted," Environment Minister Mary Polak said in a statement.
"The suggestion that government should provide comments or information that could compromise these investigations is completely irresponsible."
The government won't release the full 2010 report either. But The Vancouver Sun located it in the Cariboo Regional District Library in Williams Lake, where mine owner Imperial Metals has filed previous annual environmental and reclamation reports.
"It strikes me that rather than full transparency we have a sense of coverup," said Horgan. "And I would expect Mr. Bennett would want to clear his good name and the name of the energy ministry by releasing every scrap of paper."
The government's insistence that it is somehow prohibited from releasing any previous inspection reports or other information during its investigation into the breach is ridiculous, said Horgan, because it was the province that set the investigation's terms of reference and appointed its investigators.
"It's nonsense," he said. "The inquiry in no way hampers their ability to release information they were responsible for."
Premier Christy Clark said the dam crack information obtained by The Sun is forming part of her government's inquiry.
"We are in the midst of an incredibly important independent inquiry," she told radio station CKNW on Friday.
"We are going to get the answer about what happened. We are sparing no one in looking at that, in making sure the contents of the article today in The Sun are in the hands of the folks who have been investigating this for awhile. We have to figure out what happened."
Clark said getting answers is "urgent" because there are other mines similarly operating in the province. She brushed aside any suggestion that a private fundraiser from the controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals Corp. in 2012 -- which raised $1 million for her party's re-election bid -- has in any way compromised her government's handling of the breach.
