Good morning, bonjour. Mr. Chair, honourable members, thank you for this opportunity to speak on the challenges facing the mining industry in Canada.
I will focus on exploration, the process of discovering the new resources required to build Canada's new mines, and on the research tools that are required to provide for exploration and discovery. Exploration is the scientific R and D component and first phase of a sustainable mining cycle, which starts with exploration, then development, mining, and reclamation. During each phase, environmental concerns are first and foremost.
I'll first present some significant facts about exploration, the mining industry, and research in Canada. I'll present some of the challenges. Then I'll make some recommendations for your consideration.
To tell you a little about myself, I was born in the north, in Sudbury. I was employed by major and junior mining companies for 10 years, where I worked with an exploration team across Canada and globally. I joined Laurentian University in 1990. I'm the director of Laurentian's mineral exploration research centre, or MERC. I'm also a director of metal earth, a new $104-million research project supported by the Canada first research excellence fund. Metal earth is the largest exploration research initiative in Canada ever. It will transform how we explore for metals.
With regard to some facts, a healthy mining industry is essential to Canada. Exploration is essential to a healthy mining industry. Without exploration, there will be no new resources, no mining, no sustainable northern development. Exploration is key.
Mineral resources are essential to Canada, comprising about 18% of our exports and about 4% of our GDP. Mining is, and will continue to be, a driver of the Canadian economy. It is the only real economic driver for Canada's far north development.
The mining industry, as I said, is the largest employer of first nations people in Canada. The exploration sector is often the first opportunity for first nation communities to interact with the mining sector.
Historically, exploration research in Canada has been the of the highest quality and excellence, but it is fragmented, poorly funded, and distributed throughout the university system. In Australia, mineral exploration research over the past two decades has been focused by their government to key university research centres, allowing them to tackle the big science questions, the big challenges facing the mining industry. Canada has now slipped behind Australia, but hopefully not for long.
With regard to some challenges, I'll refer to graphs that you have in the handout.
The decline in Canadian metal resources is a threat to global sustainability and security. Since 1980, the most dramatic decline has been in lead, 97%; zinc and nickel, 82%; silver, 80%; and copper, 36%. Virtually all of the zinc and lead that is mined is used for electric cars and anodizing, rust-proofing. Essentially, they're green metals. There's been no new discovery of any resources of either commodity for the past 20 years.
The real challenge is that the need for metals is going to grow exponentially, due to increasing globalization and the resulting shift in the economic status of billions of people. We need to discover the new resources now for global sustainability, security, and growth.
In figure 2, you'll see that in the period from 2005 to 2010, there's been an unprecedented drop in the number of significant discoveries, despite very large exploration expenditures. Every discovery is important, but world-class discoveries are essential. There are 80% of the world's global resources contained within 20% of the deposits. Real economic and societal impact only comes from the discovery of world-class deposits.
Metal deposits are rare. You have to increase the metal concentration by a thousand times their average crustal abundance. They're small, and essentially more difficult to find than the proverbial needle in a haystack. For example, the surface expression, or footprint, of an underground mine is less than three city blocks. To compound this, new deposits are more difficult to discover. They're deeply buried, they're covered, and the resources in existing mining districts are finite.
Exploration in remote greenfields, the only place we're going to find the new world-class deposits, is challenging, and the success rate there is less. This in part reflects our poor understanding of the geology of Canada's north and far north and the fact that we do not have adequate tools for exploration. We clearly need new tools and concepts to identify the most prospective areas in Canada for exploration in our far north.
Exploration dollars are leaving Canada. For decades Canada was the global destination for exploration expenditures. From 2003 to 2013 exploration expenditures in Canada dropped by 40%. That's $18 billion in lost investment that has gone elsewhere, compared with 24% for Australia, our closest competitor. Australia is now the preferred destination for exploration dollars. Fewer exploration dollars spent in Canada means fewer discoveries and fewer mines.
Ninety per cent of Canada's known resources are of south of 60 degrees latitude, and 95% of the mines are south of 55 degrees, yet the same geology extends to the north. How do we focus our exploration in such a vast area as Canada's north and far north? We really do need to increase discovery rates.
There are hundreds of millions of stranded economic base and precious metal resources in Canada's far north, for example, the Selwyn Basin in Yukon and Hackett River in Nunavut, which would be developed if there were adequate infrastructure and a return to more reasonable metal prices.
Our recommendations include the following. First, we need to upgrade our fundamental geoscience database coverage. The existing 1:250,000 geological mapping that is present and is currently under way, although welcomed, does not have the resolution needed to guide exploration. We need higher resolution mapping in areas with known resources and areas with high prospectivity. This will require increased funding to support geoscience and targeted mapping surveys, which is traditionally done by NRCan and the provincial and territorial surveys, or we have to look at new mechanisms, perhaps through university research centres.
Second, remove roadblocks to global exploration investment in Canada such as secure land tenure and accessibility by reducing land withdrawn from exploration or lands encumbered by first nations issues. An example would be the Ring of Fire that Vic talked about. First nations need to be recognized as co-owners of Canada's northern mineral resources. For example, in Nunavut the Inuit own many of the known mineral tenures, and the mining industry works successfully with them. In the U.S. a native group is co-owner of the world-class Red Dog Mine, the largest zinc producer in the world. We cannot have first nations feeling solely as adversarial owners of environmental protection. Co-ownership of mineral tenure would broaden their perspective.
Third, provide industry with the new tools, protocols, and models needed to make the next generation of greenfield discoveries in Canada. This cannot be done by traditional ore deposit research or by individuals working alone. To be successful, to innovate, we need to financially support and grow our research centres such as the mineral exploration research centre at Laurentian University and the mineral deposit research unit at UBC, as they can assemble, grow, and sustain the multidisciplinary teams needed to solve fundamental research problems and to innovate.
An example of this would be MERC's metal earth program, which will change our understanding of the processes responsible for the economic concentration of metals during our planet's evolution, but it will also transform how we explore for metals by providing new knowledge and new tools to the sector.
Fourth, we need to increase government funding directly or through federal agencies such as NSERC to leverage the industry dollars to support exploration and research within the university-based research centres and to directly support applied exploration driven by industry itself such as the footprints project through the Canada Mining Innovation Council.
The big-science multidisciplinary mineral exploration research programs such as metal earth, conducted by university research centres such as MERC, provide the only mechanism to bring the best minds in Canada and globally together to solve industry problems and to provide students, our future, with the education and training needed to become Canada's leaders in mineral exploration research. Young graduates with the appropriate education and skills are key to the future discovery of future mines.
Fifth, we need new funding to develop programs that target aboriginal youth at the high school level. We need to target them for careers in the mining sector and to develop and support new mining and related programs at both colleges and universities. It's really important, and we need to develop indigenous access programs that provide transitions and pathways into the fields of geology, engineering, and environmental science for first nations people. Although they constitute 10% of our workforce, there are very few in the mining engineering and geology fields, and we desperately need them. We have to target them, and we have to target them when they're at the high school level.
Lastly, I would like to thank you for this opportunity, for your attention, and for your commitment to the mining sector in Canada. It's an essential driver for our economy. It's going to be our future.
Thank you.
