Ontario’s mines division

Nineteen eighty-seven marked the first full year of operation for the Ontario Ministry of Northern Development and Mining’s Division of Mines and Minerals. This division was set up to better serve the exploration and mining industries and to provide products and services to facilitate the exploration, discovery and development of mines in Ontario.

With this goal as part of its mandate, one branch of the division — the Ontario Geological Survey — conducted 60 field survey projects in Ontario during 1987. The results, released as Miscellaneous Paper 137 at the recent ogs Geoscience Research Seminar in Toronto, are available in the 1987 Summary of Field Work. Three similar seminars will take place in Thunder Bay, Timmins and Red Lake in February.

The ministry’s Mineral Development and Lands Branch includes the Mining Lands Section which safeguards prospectors’ and developers’ investments through the Mining Act. In addition to a mineral analysis and statistics group and an industrial minerals group promoting the development of industrial minerals in the province, there is the Ontario Mineral Exploration Program (omep) which provides incentives to mineral exploration companies.

Omep grants and tax credits of up to 25% of eligible exploration expenses are available to individual entrepreneurs, exploration companies with no current mining operations in Ontario and other non-mining corporations. In 1987, $13.3 million was granted to industry through omep representing an increase over the 1986 total of $9.4 million. Nearly all of the money was spent in northern Ontario where the bulk of mineral exploration activity takes place.

Omep has provided financial assistance toward the exploration work of seven deposits that became producing mines, including two of three producing mines in the Hemlo camp.