THUNDER BAY – As commodity prices continue to struggle, prospectors have taken advantage of more than half of a provincial stimulus envelope to encourage exploration.
Minister of Northern Development and Mines Michael Gravelle announced Tuesday the government has invested $2.7 million of the $5-million exploration support his ministry launched in December.
Twelve of the 25 junior exploration companies the program has supported are exploring in Northwestern Ontario.
“We think this is making a real difference. It speaks specifically to the efforts we want to make to help the juniors continue do the work they need to do in order for us to see mines opening up in the near term, middle term and long-term,” Gravelle said.
The funding can be used to either support exploration efforts in the field or it can be spent on day-to-day operations.
The program’s second wave will open on May 30 and applications will close on Aug. 30.
Ontario Prospectors Association executive director Garry Clark praised the program’s pliability, which allows funding to be spent on exploration efforts in the field as well as day-to-day operations.
Clark called the stimulus a “huge move forward” and an incentive for companies not only to stay in Ontario but to keep working through the downturn.
“Some of them were just sitting on money, just waiting for the economy to change but with a 30 per cent rebate, it really makes them go out and do some new things,” he said.
“Day-today costs are one of the things that are hardest to fund. You can always get flow-through dollars, which is a tax diversion that people invest in junior companies. But when it comes to hard dollars, they’re harder to get.”
The OPA and Gravelle’s ministry also announced support for prospector training programs that will begin in June. Sessions to take place in Thunder Bay, Northeastern Ontario and Southern Ontario as well as 11 First Nations are aimed at expanding the industry’s labour base.
“We need more people in the field. We want to encourage the public -- certainly working with many aboriginal communities as well – to get more prospectors on the ground so they can do mineral exploration,” Gravelle said.
“We need to find ways to help junior exploration companies because they are such an important part of the mining cycle. We want to do everything we can to help them.”
