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economic study

Fish Lake, B.C. would have been turned into a tailings pond if the Prosperity Mine project had been approved.Sibylle Zilker / The Globe and Mail

The on-again, off-again debate over the proposed Prosperity Mine in the British Columbia Interior has fresh momentum with an economic study that concludes the project would boost provincial gross domestic product by $11-billion and create 71,000 jobs.

First nations that have spent years fighting the project are scheduled to hold a news conference in Ottawa on Wednesday to denounce the mine and call on the federal government to cease any further reviews of the project.

The standoff is playing out as B.C. Premier Christy Clark has made mines – eight new ones by 2015 – the bedrock of her jobs plan.

Numbers in the report, by the Centre for Spatial Economics, include:

71,000

Jobs created over the life of the mine

$4.3-billion

Federal tax revenue

$5.5-billion

Provincial tax revenue

$11-billion

Production revenues

950 million

Tons of copper

4.5 million

Ounces of gold

$11-billion

Increase in B.C.'s real GDP from the project

5,400

Potential increase in B.C. population related to the project

20

Years of operation

$1.4-billion

Investment in machinery and equipment by outside contractors in relation to the project

18

Number of years since Taseko began its environmental assessment project for the mine

320

Number of presentations made to a federal review panel over 30 days of public hearings in 2010

2,700

Number of people who attended the hearing sessions

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