Editorial Focus on Canada’s potenmtial

The potential for mineral exploration in South America will undoubtedly be one of the key mining stories of the 1990s. There has already been a shift in focus by some of the more farsighted, international mining companies into Chile, Brazil and other countries throughout Latin America. So it should come as no surprise that the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada recently devoted a full afternoon of its annual convention to the topic of “New Realities in Latin America: Opportunities and Challenges.”

While the session was an excellent one, we can’t help but feel the association is straying from its mandate by promoting the potential of South America while the future for exploration right here in Canada is far from rosy.

It wasn’t long ago that mining operations in less developed countries were considered one of the major reasons for our own industry’s demise. It was argued by some that we just couldn’t compete with their low labor costs and with socialist governments’ policy of maintaining employment at mines even if it meant incurring operating losses. Decision makers here in Canada were told in no uncertain terms that they should certainly not lend any assistance to those big, bad copper producers in Chile.

Now, however, the race is on to appropriate the resources of those countries for our own mining companies. The approach now is: if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Help from any quarter in achieving that end is welcome.

That is a broader, more international approach that we support. Canada’s interests are served by helping Canadian mining companies develop the resources of other nations and we welcome efforts to increase the presence of Canada’s mining industry throughout the world. But that is not the job of the PDAC.

Not that the PDAC should ignore what goes on elsewhere. By all means, it should help keep its members aware of developments in other countries as this business becomes ever more international in scope.

But allocating a major portion of the association’s convention program to extolling the virtues of other countries is not appropriate. Are there not sufficient issues facing the industry right here at home that need to be addressed?

The PDAC’s mandate is, after all, to foster “the responsible development of this country’s rich mineral resources” — not Chile’s, not Brazil’s, not Costa Rica’s but Canada’s. If the PDAC expands its role to promote the virtues of other countries, who will speak for Canada?

It may be difficult to keep one’s focus on the less glamorous issues facing Canada’s mineral exploration industry, but the PDAC has been doing an admirable job of it for 58 years. Indeed, the association’s strong efforts are one of the reasons why Canada has a vital mining industry that can now expand beyond our national boundaries. To maintain that strong foundation, however, the PDAC should continue to focus on the industry in Canada. Leave Latin America for others to promote. A Meaningless Moratorium

Nova Scotia has decided to continue for another five years its prohibition on uranium exploration. Even if the moratorium were lifted, though, it is unlikely that exploration companies interested in uranium would beat a path to the province’s door.

Fortunately, when the province decided to extend the uranium moratorium, it also decided to open some 500,000 acres of the province, staked for uranium in the early 1980s, to exploration for other minerals.

The ban, imposed on several major companies during a heated provincial election campaign, had more to do with getting the John Buchanan government re-elected than with the social, economic and environmental costs and benefits associated with uranium exploration and mining. Nova Scotia’s South Mountain Batholith — geologically similar to the Central Massif, a uranium-producing intrusive in France — had potential for sizable uranium orebodies.

In the intervening years, however, high-grade uranium discoveries in the Athabaska Basin of northern Saskatchewan and significantly lower uranium prices have overshadowed any mine- making potential uranium mineralization in Nova Scotia. As the situation stands, that mineralization will remain just that — mineralization, moratorium or no moratorium.