Geoscience funding a must

One of Canada’s main competitive advantages that attracts mineral exploration investment is its geoscience knowledge base. This includes high-quality geological maps and other geoscience data produced by our federal, provincial and territorial geological surveys.

In a country as vast as Canada, the challenge of maintaining an appropriate and adequate geoscience knowledge base is considerable.

Funding for public geoscience is an investment in the public good. Government geological surveys directly contribute to this public good by providing the highest quality, most complete, most accessible natural resource data sets. The data can be used to assess the quantity and quality of Canada’s fresh water, determine the background concentrations of naturally occurring elements in our waters and soils (to distinguish between natural variation and anthropomorphic induced change), and evaluate energy and mineral potential for long-term sovereignty considerations and planning.

Regional-scale mapping and metallogenic studies conducted by government geological surveys form the knowledge base on which mineral exploration is founded. Targets are frequently generated as a result of new geotechnical survey activities or when a new understanding of host rocks, provided by government mapping or re-mapping, leads to a re-evaluation of old mineral occurrences.

For each mine discovered, payback can be orders of magnitude higher than exploration expenditures, which themselves are a good return on government investment in public geoscience. A 1999 study estimated that every $1 million of government investment to enhance the geoscience knowledge base stimulates $5 million of private-sector exploration expenditures. This, in turn, will result in the discovery of new resources with an average value of $125 million.

The Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) is encouraged by various geoscience initiatives being undertaken. For example, the Targeted Geoscience Initiative (2000-2005) has funded more than 30 joint mineral and energy geoscience projects across the country, and this, in turn, has attracted considerable private-sector interest.

Ministers are asked to honour commitments made on behalf of their jurisdictions to champion the long-term funding necessary to support the implementation of the Co-operative Geological Mapping Strategies Across Canada and to commit long-term funding to the Northern Geoscience Initiative.

The PDAC is asking ministers to support this recommendation because:

— commitments were made by mines ministers in 2000 to provide the long-term funding for geoscience activities;

— funding geoscience activities is an investment made by governments for the public good; and

— Canada’s geoscience knowledge base attracts mineral exploration investment and leads to the discovery of new mineral deposits.

— The preceding is an edited excerpt from a brief submitted to the 61st Annual Energy and Mines Ministers’ Conference on behalf of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada.