Finance committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Philip Bousquet. I work for the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. I'm here with Eira Thomas. She is a member of the PDAC board of directors and executive chairman and director of the Stornoway Diamond Corpo

Finance committee  It would. The investors and companies are looking for some measure of certainty on tax policy, tax credits, and regulatory regimes. That's why we've asked for this to be made permanent. It would allow companies to plan on a longer timeframe. Eira, do you have any comments?

Finance committee  Thank you for the question. There has been great impact on companies' ability to raise flow-through share financing. It's decreased over the past year. For this year, some estimates are that it would be approximately 50% of the 2008 total, so what we're looking for is to try to

Finance committee  It's competitive in the respect that we are competing for investor dollars going anywhere around the world. We are a competitive industry; keep the costs low. As Eira Thomas mentioned, we have good geology, but in a period where investor confidence is low, we need additional ince

Finance committee  Thank you, Tara. Our association, representing 8,000 members, individual and corporate, exists to protect and promote mineral exploration and to ensure a robust mining industry in Canada. Our recommendations to this committee are the following. First, make the current mineral

Finance committee  Thank you. As we heard, when you're in a period of growth there is a challenge for finding skilled workers, and the mining sector is facing that challenge across the country. We've worked through an organization called the Mining Industry Human Resources Council. It's a sector c

Finance committee  For the northern strategy, it makes sense for the government to look at where that private sector investment is going, where the opportunities are. Our sector focuses on mineral exploration and mining. When you look at Nunavut, NWT, Yukon, mining is a major industry in each of th

Finance committee  Thank you. The matter you raise and which we have in our brief refers to the eligibility of exploration expenses; matters such as consultation with aboriginal communities and environmental feasibility studies. The PDAC worked with Canada Revenue Agency to clarify the eligibility

Finance committee  The last number that we have through Stats Can was from the 2006 census, and it shows that about 7.5% of the mining workforce is aboriginal. That is certainly higher today. It's an area that as an association we've worked at promoting. One of our objectives is to increase aborigi

Finance committee  On the exploration side there is, of course, no production revenue. Companies such as Tara's and other exploration companies rely solely on investor confidence. The past few years, as you've seen such market instability and recession, have affected individual investors' investmen

Finance committee  When you look at regions such as Nunavut, much of Nunavut is still unmapped. The technology for mapping improves each decade, so the money that Natural Resources Canada committed in 2008—$100 million over five years to the geomapping for energy and minerals program—has made signi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. My name is Philip Bousquet. I am senior program director with the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. I am here with Scott Cavan, the PDAC's program director for aboriginal affairs. I also bring greetings from Glenn

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, I'd agree with Paul's remarks. I think the opportunity is there. What you would want through legislation and regulation is clarity, as Paul said. At the exploration end of things, you would need to be able to raise money for those projects, so you have to have clarity with r

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  At this stage, where people are discussing this and putting together papers that would frame how the structure would look, I think a role can be played by our association and others in terms of commenting on drafts that are being put together. I'm sure our association would be

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  An example I might suggest would be the Paix des braves in Quebec. It goes back to 2002. It involved resource revenue-sharing from hydro, minerals, and energy. It results in annual payments, some of which contribute to the establishment of entrepreneurial initiatives. The Cree Mi