Ontario Prospectors Association

Ontario Ministry of Northern Development & Mines – Job Posting

Click here to view Job Posting – District Geological Assistant, Sudbury, Ontario

Click on Property Exchange tab above or this link http://www.ontarioprospectors.com/property-exchange/ to view new properties for option.

NWOMMS – Awards Dinner Speech

SPEECH TO NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO PROSPECTORS ASSOCIATION AWARDS BANQUET at the NORTHWESTERN ONTARIO MINES AND MINERALS SYMPOSIUM

April 3, 2012

The coming, modernized mining act, is set to dump a whole new pile of rules and regulations upon us, starting this coming summer.

The Act, originally designed to address a few very valid complaints from First Nations Communities and private land owners, has mushroomed into a mass of plans, permits, regulations, bureaucrats, trainers, go-betweens and compliance officers who will give you a ticket if you break the rules. 

Instead of tweaking a few regs that would have made things work better, the government has created a sledgehammer to swat a few mosquitoes.  And I fear, when they start to swing that hammer, that it will end up doing a whole lot of unintended damage.

It will take you much longer to gain approval to explore. 

You may have to make the detailed methods and locations of your exploration activities available to the public on a government website before you explore. 

You will have much less flexibility to be creative and responsive in your exploration programs. 

And most of all it will increase your cost of doing business.

Most mines start out as showings discovered by prospectors, defined by junior exploration companies, and then developed by intermediate or senior companies into viable mineral deposits.  Statistically, only 1 in 10,000 showings ever becomes a mine.  It takes a lot of little fish to eventually make a big one that will make a profitable meal.

Increasing our costs of doing business, and the length of time it will take us to adjust our work programs, will affect individuals and small players the most and will result in fewer showings entering the mineral development food chain and, thus, fewer mines down the road.   

Also, we like to work quickly and efficiently in the mineral exploration industry.  Long-term planning usually means deciding what we’ll do tomorrow. 

Tomorrow’s work plans are often based on the interesting drill core we saw today, those assay results that came in the last email, or that new anomaly on the geophysical map from the survey we just completed.

Canadian explorationists are in demand worldwide because of our knowledge, our innovation and our ability to carry out high quality work quickly and efficiently.

Research and development, and productivity, are alive and well in our industry.  As you experience this symposium you can easily see the wide range of new ideas, new equipment and new techniques that are constantly being developed to help make us faster, more efficient and more environmentally friendly.  Early stage exploration, below the advanced project stage, has almost no long lasting impact on the environment.

This is our advantage.  And it is Ontario’s advantage, too, as mineral deposits are developed and money is invested in local, regional and the provincial economy.

But despite all the government’s talk about encouraging more productivity, more R and D, and less red tape, this ‘Modernized’ Mining Act deliberately sets out to slow us all down so that we’ll have to work at the speed of Government Time.

And anyone who has gone through the special hell of waiting 6 or 8 weeks for an MNR Work Permit to do a little bit of maintenance on some stupid little bush road in the middle of nowhere – will know what I’m talking about when I say government time.

Under the new mining act this type of delay will be built into everything we do.  It’s quite possible that entire field seasons will be lost and impatient investment dollars will go elsewhere.

It’s as if we are being punished for being too efficient.

And it sure doesn’t make any sense to me.

You in this room are all very busy, but make sure you take the time to attend the information session that will be held on Thursday morning at the Miners United meeting here, in this hotel, or the ones that will be held on April 25th in Dryden and April 26th in Thunder Bay. 

Make sure you send in your comments and make your opinions known loud and clear.  The deadline for comments is May 1st.

The anti-development, preservationist hordes have played a large part in drafting this legislation.  They have the Southern Ontario votes and the ear of government. 

It’s important that you make YOUR voice heard too.  YOU are the ones who will have to live with these regulations on a daily basis.

David S. Hunt, P. Geo.

MNDM – Online Claim Staking Survey

As you are aware the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines has begun planning for a transition from ground staked claims to an online claim staking system. The whole process of moving to electronic claim staking system is expected to take some time.

The first step in this process is to gain insight into our clients’ expectations for this system, and to provide some preliminary feedback on how to make Ontario’s system, robust, user friendly, and meet their business needs of our exploration clients.

In this context, we have developed a short online survey which asks some preliminary questions for which we would like to hear from the Ontario Prospectors Association and their membership.

The survey can be found at: http://app.fluidsurveys.com/s/mndm-2012-survey/.

The informal survey consists of 12 questions and typically takes less than 10 minutes to complete.

Property Exchange Updated

A new mining property for option has been added to the Property Exchange page