With reference to your editorial “Penny Wise, pound foolish” (T.N.M., Dec. 3-9/01), I imagine our government might cite the decline in mineral exploration in British Columbia during recent years as an excuse for reducing the staff of the Geological Survey Branch.
As a veteran prospector, however, I agree that it’s the wrong place to make cuts.
A more common-sense approach would be to eliminate the legislation introduced by the NDP government, which put mineral exploration under the jurisdiction of the Mines Act and engendered a lot of extra bureaucracy and red tape. At the discretion of a regional inspector and at the whims of various bureaucrats and non-governmental agencies, a prospector might now be required to wait two months for a permit and tie up a thousand dollars in a security deposit in order to drill a hole or strip an outcrop.
Eliminating this unnecessary legislation and its inherent bureaucracy would save a lot of money and, at the same time, remove a serious disincentive to mineral exploration in this province.
Walter Guppy
Tofino, B.C.
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