OPAP cancellation short-sighted

It has recently come to my attention that the Ontario government will cancel the Ontario Prospectors Assistance Program (OPAP) as part of a cost-reduction program. As president of a junior mining company working exclusively in Ontario and involved in the high-risk business of early-stage mineral exploration, I would like to voice my strong concerns regarding this decision.

Over the past 18 months, our small company has spent well over $1 million in Ontario, mostly on properties acquired from Ontario prospectors. Those prospectors have utilized OPAP to generate properties and bring them to the stage at which companies like ours become involved. The process has resulted in several tens of millions of dollars in direct exploration spending in Ontario every year, at a relatively small cost to the taxpayer.

OPAP is the last remaining incentive for the mineral exploration industry to work in Ontario. By removing OPAP, the government will, I believe, be driving the final nail into the coffin of the mining industry in Ontario — an action begun by Lands for Life, which withdrew large tracts of land from exploration.

I am now a resident of British Columbia, but I lived in Timmins for 13 years and have strong ties to that community both professionally and personally. While the economy of southern Ontario booms, the north is woefully ignored as a relic of a resource-based economy. Those resources helped build Ontario and Canada, and still contribute substantially to the nation’s and province’s gross domestic product. I would strongly urge the government to reconsider the cancellation of the OPAP program, as it is the first stage of the exploration process that will result in the defining of future mineral resources and the associated economic benefits for Ontario. This decision is short-sighted and just plain wrong.

— The preceding was sent as an open letter to Tim Hudak, Ontario’s minister of northern development and mines. The author is president of Vancouver-based Triex Resources.