Despite obstacles Ontario attracting miners

In spite of high taxation rates, compensation costs and land tenure and access problems, Ontario is still an attractive place to mine minerals.

That was the message delivered at a Mineral Development Forum held in Toronto.

Entitled “Co-operative Development in the Mineral Industry,” the forum was part of a 2-day mining symposium organized by the province’s Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM).

Executives in attendance, though clearly concerned over the aforementioned problems, said they strongly support mining in Ontario. Douglas Fraser, president and chief executive officer of Placer Dome Canada, and Margaret Witte, his counterpart at Royal Oak Mines (TSE), even unveiled plans to increase activities in the province.

Reiterating her government’s support for the sector, Mines Minister Shelley Martel cited recent programs designed to stimulate exploration. These include the automated land management system known as CLAIMS, the Ontario Prospectors Assistance Program (OPAP) and the Ontario Mineral Incentive Program (OMIP). Central to the conference was the unveling of “ERLIS,” a computer system of the MNDM which contains more than 1.5 million pages of documents and 120,000 maps. When completed, the $22-million project will provide prospectors with instant access to information pertaining to geography, geoscience, exploration, mining and land tenure.

Premier Bob Rae told the conference that ERLIS “puts the province on the leading edge of research and development in geoscience information.” He hopes eventually to market the technology to other business sectors and countries. To date, $7 million has been spent on the project, with funding supplied from the MNDM relocation budget, Jobs Ontario Capital Initiative and the Northern Ontario Development Agreement.

In other news, Martel announced that the Ontario Geological Survey had made two significant discoveries in the past field season. One was that diamonds and kimberlite indicator minerals had been found in alluvial material near Wawa. The second was that samples collected from the Tower Syenite in Conmee Twp. had returned gold values up to 0.31 oz. per ton.

The remainder of the symposium was devoted to technical presentations relating to geoscience research and field studies by government and universities.