One bidder, now $542M: inside the Faro Mine cleanup contract

The federal contract to manage the cleanup of the abandoned Faro Mine in Yukon has grown almost fivefold since it was awarded in 2022 to the only company that submitted a compliant bid, federal procurement records show.

Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) awarded the Main Construction Manager contract for the Faro Mine Remediation Project to Parsons Inc. in January 2022 after a request for proposals. The government’s own disclosure of the contract notes there was “only one compliant bid.” Its first reported value was $113.7 million.

By the most recent quarterly filing, the reported value stood at $541.9 million, after more than 20 amendments. The largest single increase, $126.2 million, was filed in early 2025. Seven amendments filed in the first three months of 2026 added about $121.8 million, before the latest filing revised the total down slightly. A separate federal tender registry, CanadaBuys, lists the contract at $516.1 million after its 21st amendment, in January 2026, with an end date of March 2028.

The records show no new competition for the added work.

Faro, once one of the world’s largest open-pit lead-zinc mines, was abandoned in 1998, leaving 70 million tonnes of tailings and 320 million tonnes of waste rock that leach metals and acid into the land and water, according to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). The department says most of the project’s work is contracted through Parsons as main construction manager. Parsons has worked at the site since 2018, when it became interim construction manager.

The same company manages the Giant Mine cleanup in Yellowknife under a separate PSPC contract now reported at $2.04 billion. Together, the two contracts are worth about $2.6 billion on paper.

Parsons referred questions to PSPC. It did not answer follow-up questions about the company itself, including whether it disputes any of the figures and how much of the work is subcontracted, by the Nov. 2 deadline. PSPC and CIRNAC did not respond to questions sent Oct. 27 by that deadline.

Contract values in federal disclosure are maximums that can be spent, not payments, and construction-management contracts are often built to grow as the government adds work that the manager then subcontracts. The records do not show how much of the Faro contract is Parsons’ own fees, and they do not show wrongdoing by the company.

The filings are also inconsistent: the contract’s reported end date has moved from 2026 to 2030, then 2029 and 2028, and its original value has been listed at both $113.7 million and $116.1 million. Three reductions were disclosed late, each flagged as “omitted from a previous public disclosure.”

How we did this. Canada News Media analyzed every quarterly filing for this contract in the Government of Canada’s proactive disclosure of contracts over $10,000 (procurement E210574001), downloaded Oct. 23, 2026, and matched it to the CanadaBuys award notice for solicitation EZ113-210574. Values are as published; we did not adjust for tax.

Sources: Proactive disclosure of contracts over $10,000; CanadaBuys award notices; CIRNAC, Faro Mine Remediation Project.

With reporting by a Canada News Media contributor.

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