Message from the ontario Prospectors association executive director, garry clark

ONTARIO PROSPECTORS EXPLORATION SHOWCASE (OPES)

“Exploration finds Mines!”

April 7 and 8, 2020

This year, the Ontario Prospectors Association is once again delivering the OPES at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay. The year has been a test of explorers in Ontario. Raising funds has been extremely challenging for some and easy for others.

The OPES will have over 80 booths and posters, 12 core shacks and more than 30 speakers. Last year, we had 500plus participants over the two days.

Speakers this year include Great Bear Resources, Warrior Gold, Musselwhite Mine, Noront, Manitou Gold, Wesdome, Alamos and Metals Creek.

OPA activities

Minister’s Mining Committee

The OPA has a seat at the committee table to help inform the Minister on issues that affect the explorers of the province. This committee consists of explorers and miners from large and small companies. To date, the meetings have been very informative and well-attended by the provincial ministers involved in mining and various deputy and assistant deputy ministers.

On Sept. 10, there was a meeting of the Minister’s Mining Committee. This was the first meeting since the inaugural meeting at PDAC.

The agenda included: • Flow-through increase write-offs in Ontario; • Support for explorers; • Resource revenue sharing and consultation.

1. There was good take-up of the concept that Ontario needs to be on a level playing field with the other provinces to be able to retain explorers. I think the Minister is grasping the idea that increased the flow-through write-off provincially will retain funds in Ontario. 2. The JEAP funding model was reviewed and the Ministry has shown that for every dollar that was rebated, 18 industry dollars were leveraged. The Minister spoke of retooling NOHFC and looking at ways to create a new program to support industry. 3. Resource revenue sharing was spoken of in context of costs and potential proximal effected communities (including municipalities) to mines sharing more than distant communities. Consultation was discussed with the idea of dealing with the communities that want to talk similar with the execution of the direction being taken for the north south road to Ring of Fire. Also, there was discussion of template agreements for MOUs as we had started with discussion with Wabun Tribal Council.

The OPA has been working with Save Canadian Mining’s Terry Lynch. Save Canadian Mining is a movement to return market rules to the fair and transparent standard that helped deliver prosperity for over 142 years. Together, we can save Canadian mining.

In 2012, IIROC and CSA removed a trading rule known as the “tick test”, which restricted short-selling to neutral or sales to positive price changes at the time of the sale. These changes were applied not only to the main listing venue of TSX Venture Exchange, but are also equally applied across all Canadian trading venues, of which there are 14 today, reducing TSX Venture’s ability to effect any change. Since removal of the tick test, the Canadian markets have evolved, and there now exists a dynamic where short-selling activities, high-frequency trading and algorithms are exploiting the lack of a tick test to the detriment of Canada’s junior markets. We call on CSA and IIROC to evaluate re-instituting the tick test. l

Garry Clark 1 (866) 622-3284 gjclark@ontarioprospectors.com