Page 20 - Bullion World Volume 3 Issue 4 April 2023

Bullion World | Volume 3 | Issue 4 | April 2023

Summary of PDAC Convention

in Canada 2023

The Prospectors & Developers 15 to 20 years. The province has (mining) corporations will finance
Association of Canada convention, proposed measures to speed up the these new mines.
one of the biggest mining permitting process in an effort to
conferences in the world, was held reduce that time frame. On March Overview of Gold
in March 2023, bringing tens of 8, Canada's Minister of Natural Among all the discussions of creating
thousands of geologists, engineers, Resources Jonathan Wilkinson, a North American critical minerals
and investors to downtown Toronto. who has previously discussed the supply chain, It was impossible to
This year's event took place in early need for streamlining, said that he locate anyone at PDAC talking about
March as usual, which felt like a would be meeting with Ontario's gold miners, whose struggles often
return to normalcy after several years Minister of Mines George Pirie to dominate the conference .
of interruptions brought on by the discuss the issue. According to
pandemic — in 2020, an outbreak Wilkinson, it's crucial to make sure There is no shortage of possible
at the conference cast a shadow; that any modifications don't weaken conversation topics, including
in 2021, the conference became or eliminate safeguards that offer the shift of many big gold mining
virtual; and last year, it was shifted participants—such as Indigenous companies into copper and the
from March to June. communities—a voice in the question of whether the collapse
procedure. of cryptocurrencies will encourage
Highlights of main aspects of more investors to use gold as a
PDAC 2023: Is it inevitable that mines will store of wealth. According to Terry
A major mineral supply chain in become smaller? Heymann, chief financial officer at
North America:- According to Douglas B. Silver, an the World Gold Council, central
The United States Inflation Reduction explorationist, mineral economist, banks bought a record amount of
Act is expected to unleash between and financier who is a member of gold in 2022, mainly in China and
US$1 trillion and US$1.7 trillion the Mining Hall of Fame and works Turkey.
in public and private funding for for Balfour Holdings LLC, mining
upstream and downstream critical industry transformation is inevitable. Ring of Fire
mineral projects, such as exploration, ESG stands for environment, social, Last but not least, the Ring of Fire
mines, refineries, recycling facilities, and governance. Investors will mining project continued to make
and electric vehicle battery plants. increasingly analyse their rate of news for yet another year. Since
The mining industry is anticipating return using a "multiple on invested nickel, copper, and other metals
a significant increase in investment capital" methodology as opposed to have previously been discovered in
as a result. Everything has changed, a "discounted cash flow" strategy. the James Bay Lowlands, a remote
according to Ken Hoffman, director "Totally overlooks the time value of area of northern Ontario, politicians
of battery raw materials at McKinsey money," he remarked of the latter, and mining executives have long
& Co. It remains to be seen whether also known as MOIC. referred to it as one of the world's
it will enable Canada, the U.S., and most promising locations. The issue,
other western nations to catch up Due to their reduced environmental as it has been for years, is that no
with China in developing a supply impact, ease of permitting, and mine can be developed until the
chain, but optimism is growing. longer mine lives, smaller mines provincial and federal governments
are more likely to be supported by contribute hundreds of millions
Shifting in Mining Timelines? local communities, who also have a of dollars, if not billions, to create
Although the process of creating new greater tendency to support them. a year-round route to move bulk
mines is famously tough in North This goes against the generally metals out of the region. One doubt
America, there seems to be some accepted trend towards larger that looms over the possible project
progress in this direction. According mines, but Balfour foresaw a change is whether or not it even makes
to the government of Ontario, the in the business model. You only have economic sense.
time taken to go from the discovery to pay attention to notice it, but what
stage to the first production stage is we're already seeing is that the large

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