Provincial legislation restricting the practice of geoscience to registered practitioners does not answer the requirements of the profession, says Richard Moore, chairman of the geoscience committee of the Prospectors & Developers Association Canada.
Speaking at the Geoscience Summit, held recently in Ottawa, Moore said the most important geoscience issue facing the exploration and mining industry today is the need for a one-stop system of licensing for Canadian geoscience and engineering practitioners.
The provincial legislation, currently being enacted at various stages across the Canada, is intended to establish standards of practice. However, Moore says the system does not reflect the highly mobile nature of geoscience and engineering, and hinders the national and international practice of many Canadian practitioners.
The solution is a one-stop system of multi-jurisdictional licensing across Canada that would allow practitioners to obtain national recognition of professional licensure while respecting provincial and territorial laws.
Such a system would also facilitate reciprocal agreements with other countries to accommodate the many international geoscientists and engineers who work for Canadian-based companies and consulting firms.
“For our mutual benefit, we must work together to achieve a regulatory structure that is simple, flexible and effective,” says Moore.
The PDAC is concerned about two other geoscience issues, which Moore described to delagates at the summit. For the previous 10 years, there has been a shortage of young geoscientists and declining enrolment of geoscience students in university. One reason this has occurred is because major mining companies are playing a diminishing role in providing long-term employment in the geosciences. Cutbacks at geological surveys are another reason.
The second major issue is what Moore described as “the never-ending need for data.” Efficient exploration needs data, he told his audience, and that means not only new mapping but the collection of geophysical and regional geochemistry information.
Governments should consider funds to geological surveys as investments in future economic benefits, not costs, he added.
The exploration and mining community also needs continual updating of mineral deposit models and regional tectonic models to become efficient explorers, says Moore. While this work has traditionally been the purview of researchers and the Geological Survey of Canada, it has been hampered by the declining number of researchers, which in turn reflects the lack of students.
— The preceding is from PDAC in Brief, a quarterly publication of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada.
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