Bang for the buck: Quebec superior to Ontario for exploration, says junior miner.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: MINING

Amillion dollars doesn't stretch as far as it once did--not if you're in the exploration business in Ontario.

The province may be lauded for its rich mineralogy, but the president of a Sudbury-based junior mining company said it's become a tad pricier and more risky to find new discoveries compared to Quebec. "To actually make a discovery takes a huge effort and a lot of money, and you're going to get a lot farther with that money in Quebec than you are in Ontario right now," said Tom Morris of Northern Superior Resources.

The exploration community is in dire straits, with many junior miners struggling to raise project financing and their stocks trading below 10 cents.

The situation doesn't appear to be getting any easier based on Morris' recent presentation at a Sudbury mineral symposium describing the myriad obstacles that small mining firms face to operate in Ontario that go beyond just proving up geology.

Based on his company's experiences in both provinces, Morris delivered a part-business analysis, part-cautionary tale on where the money is spent on a hypothetical million-dollar exploration budget.

The message from Morris is that the best bang for your drilling buck resides in Quebec where 63 per cent (or $630,000) of the budget is spent on actual on-the-ground exploration compared to only 46 per cent (or $460,000) in Ontario.

The greatest disparity between the two provinces, Morris said, is the difficult process to engage First Nations.

In Ontario, First Nation engagement consumes 20 per cent of the exploration budget, compared to just three per cent in Quebec where Northern Superior works through the James Bay Cree regional authority's expeditious one-window approach to initiate a program. A pre-development agreement there never exceeds $10,000. In Ontario, those costs can exceed six figures.

"When I go from one community to the next (in Quebec) I know the engagement process is going to be the same."

said Morris in an interview. "It would be good to see the same thing in Ontario."

Here, engagement is an "inconsistent." "costly" and "time-consuming" process that can involve multiple communities, each with its own consultation protocol. Navigating that path to work out an exploration or benefits agreement is usually left up to the junior miner's owner, a geologist.

Factoring in standard administration costs combined with First Nation-imposed "access fees" can reduce that $460,000 drill budget by more than $100,000.

But in Quebec...