It's about 30 slides, but we will use specifically about 11 of them, because the other ones are text. But when there are pictures it will be much easier to understand.
My presentation is not going to be about our association because you are already familiar with it. There are some basic concepts on page 5. What you see there are the stages of mining activities, including exploration, restoration and follow-up, in terms of duration, investments and other criteria. As you can see, the investment is huge, and so are the timelines. On pages 6 and 7, I just want to show the importance of timing for specific mining projects. In our industry, we have to reconcile ourselves to the cyclical nature of metal prices.
On page 6, you see an example showing a mining company that has operated a mine for a very short length of time, just five years. But development took six years and exploration more than seven. The red part shows the actual mining. The price of metals is shown in green for American dollars and blue for Canadian dollars. If you move the production period to the left or the right, that is, if you hold the project back or speed it up, you can end up in a period when the project is going to make money, or it absolutely isn't. But page 7 shows another project, the LaRonde mine. Its 30-year lifespan means that it is much easier for the project to be profitable.
On page 9, we talk about land use. This page shows that, while exploration has to cover a vast amount of territory, the actual mining only affects very small areas. In Quebec, the public has the impression that mines take up a lot of territory. That is not true. Mining operations, past and present, take up only 0.03% of the province, and always have. That is the equivalent of three-quarters of the island of Montreal. In a word, then, the land area used for mining is very small.
On page 12, we compare mining to other areas of commodity production. You can see that, with 1.4% of the firms in Quebec, mining provides 5.1% of the jobs, 10% of the investments and 12% of the exports.
You have the pages here.
I'm sorry. I will show you the picture so you will see what I'm talking about.