When workers at Agnico Eagle Mines report back to work today at the LaRonde gold mine in Quebec’s Abitibi region, they’ll arrive in staggered groups at three separate entrances. Before they’re allowed in, a nurse will take their temperatures and give them a screening questionnaire. Assuming they pass, they’ll move inside to greet their supervisors behind plexiglass wickets and slather themselves with hand sanitizer.
The new safety measures — a sampling from a 20-page list of Covid-19 requirements, according to CEO Sean Boyd — become most challenging as the workers enter the giant elevator for a 45 minute trip that takes them three kilometers underground.
“Normally in the cage you’re jammed in there like sardines,” Boyd said in an interview Tuesday. “We’ve reduced the capacity in the cage by more than 50%. The workers will enter one by one, they’re separated by a curtain, they can’t face each other, they can’t speak to each other.” The measures are extensive, he says, but “we certainly think it’s safe.”