Editor’s Note HOUSE CALLS

At least once a month, as workloads and budgets allow, one of our magazine staffers flies off to tour and report on a mine in Canada. This is a matter of policy — we can’t adequately cover an industry that is strung out across the Canadian northland unless we go there frequently and talk to the people operating the mines and mills. It was my privilege recently to visit Timmins, Ont., and call on the operators of the Dome mine. I had also arranged beforehand to tour the underground workings at Kidd Creek and, for good measure, I squeezed in a visit to St Andrew Goldfields’ developing mine, near Matheson, Ont.

The visit encompassed an interesting though unrepresentative cross-section of Canada’s mines: the oldest continuously operating gold mine, one of the nation’s richest pockets of base metal ores, and a typical junior struggling (successfully it seems) to take that giant leap towards production. In spite of their diversity, these mines had something in common — all had been affected by the flood of flow- through financings. St Andrew, of course, had been a beneficiary of flow-through funds. Not so with Dome and Kidd Creek. Both outfits were suffering from the paucity of experienced miners occasioned by the sheer number of new exploration/development projects — most of which were flow-through funded.

As you’ll read in this issue, Dome’s overseers say they’re short about 20 miners. Kidd Creek had also lost a number of experienced miners to some of the newer projects. And on a recent visit to Placer Dome’s revitalized Detour Lake mine, Assistant Editor Thom Loree found that that operation also could use more miners.

While we can sympathize with the plight of the established producers, who watch good miners leave for more lucrative positions at the upstart operations, the very fact that this is happening points to the success of flow-through funding. Unfortunately, practically all the new exploration has been gold-related. And that has Kidd Creek’s director of mining, Eric Belford, concerned. He says this country is beginning to run out of economic deposits of copper and zinc. Eventually, this could erode Canada’s position as a leading base metals producer. He wonders whether a new kind of flow-through share scheme linked directly to base metals exploration might be workable.

It sounds like a plausible idea to us, but what’s needed is someone to mount a lobbying effort. Are there any takers?