Ontario prospectors lament loss of grants

The cancellation by the provincial government last month of the Ontario Prospectors Assistance Program (OPAP) has drawn mixed reactions from grassroots explorers. Some prospectors see the withdrawal of a program that doled out $2 million a year to small operators as a threat to Ontario’s status as Canada’s top mineral producer, while others think it will force the industry to become self-sufficient and less dependent on government handouts for its success.

The dissolution of the program is part of the latest round of cost cuts at the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines (MNDM) by the Progressive Conservative government. The program was developed in the late 1980s to assist Ontario prospectors in grassroots exploration. Up to $15,000 a year was available to prospectors to work their claims.

“The government decided it wasn’t going to fund grants to individuals anymore,” says Richard Cowen, a spokesman in the ministry’s Sudbury offices. “It’s the last of its breed.”

The program has been marked for cancellation since 1995, when the newly elected Tories announced that grant programs in every ministry would be cut. OPAP was the only program of its kind remaining at MNDM following the cancellation of the Ontario Minerals Incentive Program in 1996. Other MNDM mineral programs, including the Ontario Treasure Hunt and resident geologists offices, won’t be touched in the near future, “to my knowledge,” says Cowen.

The disappearance of OPAP will “seriously jeopardize the province’s ability to find mineral resources,” says Robert Komarechka, who, as president of the Sudbury Prospectors & Developers Association, represents 100 prospectors in the area. He says the program’s demise, coupled with recent cuts made to the Ontario Geological Survey, will lead to fewer prospectors discovering fewer deposits. “It gets down to the point where exploration isn’t even worth doing anymore.”

Dale Alexander, president of the Kirkland Lake-based Northern Prospecting & Developers Association, says his 200 members have expressed “general dismay” over the axing of OPAP.

“Everybody knows you shouldn’t plan on a grant mechanism, but it has nurtured the exploration community for 11 years,” he says. “It’s been very, very good for them and positive things have come out of it,” he says.

According to numbers released in the spring by the Ontario government, OPAP has been responsible for the optioning of 425 properties to junior companies and the spending of an additional $73 million — money pumped back into the economy — since its inception in 1988.

One prospector who says he will now have difficulty funding work programs is Gordon Salo, who used the money from OPAP to hire help and equipment to work his Sudbury-area claims. He too thinks the cancellation of OPAP will have dire consequences for Ontario exploration. “Why work on a property for several years and have the government de facto take it away by surrounding you with a park,” he asks. “And then, because you’re still holding those claims, they take away the funding to keep them active. It’s almost as if they’re trying to drive [prospectors] out.”

David Christianson sees the withdrawal of public funds for exploration differently. “The cancellation of OPAP is the kick in the ass that [prospectors] need to move forward,” he says.

Christianson, president of the 400-member Northwest Prospectors & Developers Association and a prospector himself for the past 35 years, wants the sector to become more self-sufficient. “Luckily, we had OPAP to take away from; otherwise we would have seen a couple of million chopped from our resident geologists program. If we don’t start taking over some control of the services that we need, the death knell [for exploration in Ontario] will be binging and bonging.”

Christianson recently spoke with Mines Minister Tim Hudak, who told him that the government will support any move by the prospectors to help themselves.

What that move will be, however, has yet to be decided. Komarechka says he would like to see the return of flow-through share financing, a program that has been successful in attracting exploration dollars to Quebec. “Exploration spending in Quebec is more than double what we’re spending here in Ontario, and it’s not because they have better geology.”

Christianson proposes the hiring of a consultant first to identify the needs of the five regional prospectors’ associations, and then submit a business plan to the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund, a provincial corporation that finances infrastructure projects in the north.