Financing of new mines theme of PDAC convention

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (pdac) has chosen a timely theme for its convention in Toronto this year: Financing — the key to new mines.

With the future of flow-through financing up in the air — the federal government is proposing to phase out flow-through’s depletion- allowance provision, which gives investors in mining exploration programs a tax write-off, at the end of 1989 — discussion is expected to be hot and heavy at the pdac’s 56th annual get-together which runs this week from Sunday to Wednesday.

The keynote session on the topic is scheduled for Monday morning beginning at 9:45. Planned talks at the session will include “flow- through shares at work,” “future of flow-through” and “government incentives.”

Monday afternoon’s session will be on the topic of “ore reserves and evaluations,” and will deal with such subjects as “property evaluations” and “sampling and assaying.”

Changes to the Quebec Mining Act will be the subject of a seminar early Tuesday morning by Quebec government officials. Later that morning, a technical session titled “getting down to it” will look at such subjects as “underground exploration” from both a contractor’s and operator’s view, and the role of a project manager. Provincial reports

Tuesday afternoon will feature two sessions. The first will focus on “provincial activities” and feature reports on Newfoundland and Labrador, Manitoba, British Columbia, Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario and Saskatchewan.

The second session, to run from 4:30 to 6:30, will deal with “getting the gold out.” Heap leaching projects in Newfoundland, Timmins and Nevada will be examined, as will a gold deposit in Guyana.

First session early Wednesday morning will be turned over to “financing and agreements.” Scheduled for the remainder of the morning is a forum to be hosted by the Geological Survey of Canada, which in part will deal with glacial geology as it applies to mineral exploration and seafloor exploration.

Wednesday afternoon’s session, titled “new discoveries,” will take a look at a number of different mineral deposits across Canada.

Addressing Monday’s luncheon will be the chairman of the Bank of Montreal, William Mulholland, while on Wednesday the noon- hour speaker will be the executive chairman of Giant Resources of Australia (Pamour Inc.’s parent firm), Robert Needham. A “beer and sandwich” luncheon is scheduled for Tuesday.

The pdac’s annual banquet is set for Monday evening. The 4th annual Kirkland Lake Night will be “on tap” Tuesday night, with a cabaret show and dance winding up the convention Wednesday night.