Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'm Lisa McDonald. I'm executive director of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. I'm joined here today by my colleague Jeff Killeen, director of policy and programs. We appreciate the important matters before the committee. I thank you for the opportunity to offer comments on behalf of the mineral industry.
PDAC is the leading voice of Canada's mineral exploration and development sector, representing over 7,500 members. Our work centres on supporting a responsible and competitive mineral industry. The mineral industry generates significant economic and social benefits across Canada in remote and indigenous communities and in metropolitan centres, employing over 600,000 workers and contributing nearly $100 billion annually to our GDP. It is the largest private sector employer of indigenous people on a proportional basis in Canada and a key partner of indigenous businesses.
Mineral exploration is a multi-staged process that aims to discover economically viable mineral deposits. It is highly technical and the odds of success are very low, with only about one in 10,000 mineral claims reaching the advanced exploration stage and just one in 1,000 advanced projects becoming operating mines.
Junior exploration companies do the bulk of this high-risk, high-reward exploration work and account for upwards of 70% of all mineral discoveries made in Canada. These companies typically generate no revenue and are highly reliant on capital markets to access the necessary investment capital to advance prospective projects. We have seen the competitiveness of Canada's mineral industry waning as overall investment in this sector and early-stage exploration activity reached decade lows in 2019.
The Government of Canada has recognized the importance of the mineral industry based on the significant effort and public outreach undertaken in developing the Canadian minerals and metals plan. The five-year renewal of the mineral exploration tax credit by government in 2019 is further recognition of the importance of exploration companies in the mineral supply chain. PDAC members very much appreciate this support.
We are also very encouraged by the level of government foresight and the tremendous opportunity created by the Canada-U.S. joint action plan on critical minerals. In this context we must work to ensure that junior mineral exploration companies remain competitive on the global stage. Without new discoveries there will be no new mines, and Canada's capacity to produce the minerals that are critical to our economy and the transition to a low-carbon future will be greatly constrained.
Last August, we offered a comprehensive suite of recommendations to this committee with respect to the upcoming budget 2020. I would like to focus on a single theme and related recommendations for the committee this evening, and that is a renewed commitment to public geoscience. The federal government plays an instrumental role in mineral exploration processes by facilitating public geoscientific research. Given the significant risks involved in exploration, public geoscience is instrumental in identifying mineral prospective regions to attract and accelerate exploration activities by private industry. Recent government research has shown the effectiveness of these programs, in that every dollar in public geoscience spending is estimated to generate more than seven times that much in overall economic benefit to Canada.
The two principal federal geoscience programs—the targeted geoscience initiative, or TGI, and the geomapping for energy and minerals, or GEM—are set to end next month. There has been no commitment to date by the government to fund future public geoscience programming beyond March 2020. Therefore, we recommend to this committee that the federal government make such a commitment. We also recommend continued investment in public geoscience, and we support the development of a pan-Canadian geoscience strategy by renewing and expanding the TGI program to $50 million over five years, to support continued development of new models and tools to improve efficiency by industry in exploring at depth and to extend the lifespan of mines currently in operation.
We also recommend renewing the GEM program with a minimum budget of $200 million over five years. The program should include a dedicated allotment to identify, geologically map and model critical mineral prospective regions in Canada to support evidence-based land management planning.
We recommend creating a federal funding mechanism to help provincial and territorial governments undertake comprehensive mineral resource assessments, based on geoscientific studies, in order to understand and incorporate the value of mineral potential into land management decisions.
We recommend expanding public collaboration by establishing an interdepartmental government-industry task force to investigate policy options and make recommendations to accelerate exploration and development of mineral resources critical for Canada's transition to a low-carbon economy.
The recommendations we have offered will support the establishment of a pan-Canadian geoscience strategy between federal, provincial and territorial governments by 2022, as outlined in the government's Canadian minerals and metals plan.
Thank you for the committee's time this evening and for your consideration of the recommendations we have provided.