Ontario is a tough place to do mineral exploration – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – August 8, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Prospectors’ group wants revisions in provincial plans, permitting process to attract investment, improve Indigenous relations

An onerous permitting process, Indigenous relations and project financing continue to be a hindrance to Ontario’s exploration and prospecting community. Growing wait times for exploration permitting in Ontario and other provinces were the subject of a Fraser Institute report released in July.

The survey of mining executives, conducted in 2017, indicated industry and investors were losing confidence in the province’s exploration permitting regime with applications taking longer to be processed and approved.

The polling was done before the province officially made the switch from traditional claim staking to digital map staking earlier this year.

Ontario Prospectors Association (OPA) executive director Garry Clark, who was not surveyed, read the report from cover to cover and concurs with its findings. “The reality is Ontario does stand out as being one of the hardest (jurisdictions) to permit.”

In taking the temperature of his members, Clark said the permitting process is becoming harder in Ontario to the point where junior miners have expressed concern that they can’t obtain permits in a timely fashion.

For the rest of this article: https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/industry-news/mining/ontario-is-a-tough-place-to-do-mineral-exploration-1009250