CRS draws up research plans

The Centre for Resource Studies (CRS) at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., has become leaner and more focused in its research.

During the past year, in order to free up funds for research, CRS has cut in half its number of permanent staff.

Director George Hood, after consulting with industry people and others with an interest in the mining sector, says he “became convinced that we had to make CRS-sponsored research as relevant as it could possibly be and still maintain the standards associated with scholarly research.”

To that end, a coherent research agenda was drawn up to address three fundamental concerns:

* the importance of mining to the Canadian economy;

* critical policy issues (for example, the environment, land use and aboriginal claims) confronting the Canadian mining industry; and * appropriate strategies for Canadian mining companies.

CRS has a new contract with the Institute for Policy Analysis at the University of Toronto to determine the significance of mining, on a national and regional level, to the Canadian economy.

Three CRS studies under way are a post facto analysis of the Whitehorse Mining Initiative Leadership Accord, an analysis of the implications of the Aboriginal Royal Commission on the Canadian minerals sector, and an analysis of the Canadian environmental assessment processes.

CRS also recently completed a “call for proposals.”

To make itself more relevant to the practitioner, CRS plans to become active on the book-publishing front. It recently published Mining Exploration Agreements by Karl Harries, and other handbooks are planned. CRS has also negotiated a contract with a U.S. publisher for the forthcoming CRS book The Environmental Impact of Mining, and has been negotiating a distribution agreement with BiTech Publishing of Vancouver, which is active in the earth sciences sector.