Natural Resources committee  It's—

Natural Resources committee  Ultimately it does, through the taxes collected from the mines—

Natural Resources committee  —which come into operation as a result of the discovery.

Natural Resources committee  No, no, you're right.

Natural Resources committee  The geological surveys provide basic data, which is an indication of what mineral resources might exist in the provinces and in the various states, but it's a long way from actually knowing it's there. So the exploration company then says, okay, we think there may be something th

Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure of the exact question, but the one-to-five ratio is moneys spent, with the expenditure on mapping and also collection of geomaterials—other data sets and so on. The exploration industry uses this data. It gives us the information to be able to say this is a good area

Natural Resources committee  Well, this figure is calculated by examining, over a five-year or ten-year period, expenditures by government on data sets, and then it looks at the expenditures by mineral exploration companies following up on the results of these data sets. So the government spends, we'll say,

Natural Resources committee  I'm not sure exactly what you mean by “examples”.

Natural Resources committee  Yes, it has a great positive effect. It really helps the junior mining industry attract funds to carry out exploration.

Natural Resources committee  It would be nice to come up with some mines that have been discovered, right off the top of my head, but I can think of some in the ring of fire in Ontario. A lot of the junior companies that started the first exploration up there would have used flow-through funds and the minera

Natural Resources committee  They're chalk and cheese. Mining exploration is low impact. A geologist wanders over the surface, or uses his computer with geomatic materials and satellite materials. We go into the field to take samples and measurements. The largest impact in the north may be the camps we have

Natural Resources committee  Perhaps it would be more useful if I provided a long list of these things to the committee afterwards.

Natural Resources committee  Yes.

Natural Resources committee  My personal experience in the Greenland example is that they had an office where you would put forward your exploration plan, and then they would take that plan to each different department and ministry that had regulations controlling exploration and development within their jur

Natural Resources committee  I think it has to do with the universities. If the enrollment of certain courses gets below a certain level, they have a tendency to cut them out. They are looking for bums in seats. That's the expression they tend to use, and I think what we could do is show more support for the