General News & Comment Quebec prospectors press for support of

The Quebec Prospectors Association has been successfully lobbying the “opposition” in the fight to save flow-through financing, President Regis Labeaume told The Northern Miner in a telephone interview.

Mr Labeaume said he and other members of the association recently met with federal ndp leader Ed Broadbent, whose party has been riding high in the public opinion polls, in Rouyn-Noranda, Que. According to Mr Labeaume, the ndp leader supports the association’s position that tax reform that would do away with flow-through financing in two years would be disastrous for Canadian mining exploration investment.

The association argues that flow- through shares benefit the Canadian economy, in particular at the regional level where smaller communities have been sharing in the mining exploration boom.

Proposed by the federal government is reducing the current 33 1/3% rate of depletion allowed on exploration investment financing to 16 2/3% on July 1, 1988, and wiping out the depletion as of July 1, 1989. Under the present scheme, an investor is allowed a tax writeoff of $1.33 for every dollar spent on exploration development.

Also on the side of the association are Liberal MP Raymond Garneau and the leader of the Parti Quebecois, Pierre-Marc Johnson, Mr Labeaume said. The Quebec cabinet minister responsible for mines, Raymond Savoie, strongly supports retention of flow-through financing.

In the works, Mr Labeaume said, is a meeting in Ottawa involving the association and the mayors of northwestern Quebec mining towns and mayors of some northern Ontario towns, such as Timmins and Kirkland Lake, with the federal minister of finance, Michael Wilson.

Also on the association’s list for future meetings are Marcel Masse, federal minister of energy, mines and resources, and Quebec’s finance minister, Gerard-D. Levesque.