Continuous investment in R&D the fastest route from drill bit to dividend, says Osisko’s Roosen – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – May 17, 2021)

Global mining news

In recent years, the Canadian federal government’s changes to environmental assessment legislation have impacted mineral exploration investment in Canada “pretty significantly,” Osisko Development Corp. (TSXV: ODV) CEO and co-founder Sean Roosen tells The Northern Miner.

The new federal Impact Assessment Act came into force in August 2019 and has helped push the development timelines of projects out by several years to an average of about 15, to get from the drill bit to dividends, according to the Canadian gold exploration kingpin.

“The permitting process is arduous, it’s often unclear which levels of government will participate, and multiply that by Canada’s general acceptance of interference from foreign nongovernmental agencies (NGOs) against mineral development projects, and it quickly becomes clear that Canada is somewhat in retreat in terms of exploration,” Roosen says in an interview.

“It appears to me the focus of the federal government is more often to do with a preoccupation to getting re-elected, with a government that tends to be somewhat in retreat in terms of discharging their obligations to the Canadian public, who are the real shareholders of the country, to continue to advance these mineral investment opportunities and create the jobs and the wealth that comes out of the resource sector,” he says.

For the rest of this article: https://www.northernminer.com/news/continuous-investment-in-rd-the-fastest-route-from-drill-bit-to-dividend-says-osiskos-roosen/1003830992/