LETTER TO THE EDITOR — Saskatchewan gives prospectors short shrift

Perhaps my exploration experiences in Saskatchewan over the past four years may serve as a warning to other well-intentioned prospectors.

In 1996, my company, Copperquest, optioned a property in northern Saskatchewan to a Calgary-based exploration firm. We were paying $32,000 a year to keep the lease in good standing. To date, the Calgary company has spent close to $8 million, not including the $1 million we spent from 1969 to 1972.

You’d think the province of Saskatchewan would be pleased to attract that sort of money. Wrong.

At one point during the program, Saskatchewan’s Department of Energy and Mines returned 52 claim blocks en masse, saving them for up to six months. Some were refused for recording due only to the fact that, in minus 30 weather, we hadn’t written “International” in full as part of the company name on claim posts. Then, the department had the nerve to tell the deputy minister that it saved the claims because it hadn’t been able to contact either office of our company. Unbelievable.

In a separate matter, the department refused to record claim lots received after the 20-day limit. We restaked the claims, which, with the helicopter and wages, cost $8,000. It was then discovered that the applications had been received in time but that they had sat in the department’s mail room for four days. No compensation.

In August 1998, Copperquest participated in a map-staking lineup in Regina. We sat in second place for 24 hours a day for two weeks. When the party at the head of the line left his chair open and we had the audacity to move into first place, I was arrested and charged with a criminal act. Those charges have been dropped, but the provincial government denied it had anything to do with the lineup.

There isn’t even any dispute process in Saskatchewan’s Mining Act, and matters must be settled in civil court.

If you want to explore and spend your money in the East Germany of Western Canada, give the Department of Mining and Energy my regards.

James Parres

Thunder Bay, Ont.