Province closes lands to prospectors

The Ontario government has drawn a line in the sand, and around 378 park areas protected under the province’s Living Legacy program. Those lines will prohibit prospectors from staking claims within these boundaries.

The government announced its intentions at the annual convention of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada, held in Toronto.

The new policy is largely the result of lobbying by the Partnership for Public Lands (PPL), a coalition of environmental groups with a power base in southern Ontario.

The news did not come as a surprise to Garry Clark, executive director of the Ontario Prospectors Association (OPA).

“We have a real problem in this province,” says Clark, who has been involved in ongoing land use negotiations with the PPL. “The exploration and mining industry is small compared with the PPL’s strength.”

He says the new policy is comparable to the elimination of spring bear hunting in northern Ontario in 1999. In that instance, a well-orchestrated public relations campaign outlawed the annual $50-million activity, triggering a backlash among many northerners.

In February 1997, the government initiated the Lands for Life program, which affected Crown lands in an area covering 45% of the province, mostly in the north. The program was opened to public consultation in March 1999 and became official in July 1999. At the time, Premier Michael Harris called it “the biggest expansion of parks and protected areas anywhere.”

Prospecting and claim-staking were allowed in protected spaces. Indeed, between 2% and 4% of the total protected areas area is staked, and some of the claims are in the geologically rich greenstone belts. The fate of these claims is now uncertain.

The government could be persuaded to provide compensation, or the boundaries of some of the parks could be moved to exclude claims.

“We want to deal with this on a case-by-case basis,” says Dan Newman, minister of Northern Development and Mines, adding that the province will recognize existing claims. He notes, though, that some of the companies have had trouble raising money for development.

Meanwhile, the province will contribute $3.5 million, through the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, to fund a geoscience mapping project aimed at attracting investment to the Lake Nipigon area, north of Thunder Bay. The area is prospective for gold, nickel and platinum group metal deposits.

The OPA, Lakehead University, and private partners will likewise provide $3.5 million, for a total of $7 million. The project will include geological mapping of bedrock, regional geophysics, and mineral deposit studies.

The province also released the results of a lake sediment survey outlining 21 areas where significant geochemical anomalies occur in the English River-Graham-Wawang Lake region, about 100 kilometres northwest of Thunder Bay.

The geochemical make-up of the area is prospective for Olympic Dam style mineralization, which is the name of a large Australian deposit containing copper, rare earth elements, gold and uranium.