Martel goes south to promote Ontario

Ontario’s mines minister made a special trip to Florida recently to pitch her province’s mineral exploration opportunities.

Addressing the third annual “Investing in the Americas” conference, which brings the mining sector of North America into contact with its counterparts in Central and South America, Shelley Martel said she wanted the mineral producers and investors present “to seriously consider the substantial investment potential which awaits you in our province.”

During the past few years, many Canadian junior mining companies have turned their attention to Latin America and its potentially rich mineral deposits. Funding which formerly may have gone into the exploration and development of Canadian grassroots prospects has been diverted southwards in increasing amounts.

“The fuel that drives Ontario’s economic engine is investment,” Martel said, referring to the province as the financial centre of Canada. “Toronto, our capital city, has been called the mine financing capital of the world. Its banks, brokerages and security dealers channel $4-6 billion into new capital annually, into worthwhile mining projects.”

Ontario, she said, has a long history of production and technological advances in mining and mineral processing. “It has met the challenges involved in discovering and developing large, complex, high-grade orebodies — such as those in Sudbury, at Kidd Creek and Hemlo — orebodies that contain a variety of base and precious metals.”

Martel said that since 1946 more than 70 significant base and precious metal deposits have been discovered in Ontario and that cumulative exploration expenditures for those types of minerals have exceeded $2 billion. On the subject of the environment, she said mining companies in the province spent almost $300 million (more than 6% of total revenues) on environmental protection in 1993. “They’ve achieved environmental improvement and new technologies that make Ontario a world leader in the promotion of sustainable development,” she said.