Everything You Missed at PDAC 2015
For the 83rd consecutive year, the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) event was a massive success.
Comprised of the who’s who of the mining industry, the event welcomed a total of 23,578 attendees from over 100 countries to the annual four-day convention in Toronto. The crowd included everyone from investors, analysts, executives, geologists, government officials and students.
“We consider this a very successful year, attendee feedback has been extremely positive and the number of attendees is similar to last years,” said PDAC President Rod Thomas. “The quality of networking and learning opportunities continues to be a prime attractor for attendees.”
The PDAC event commenced with a flurry of positive announcements supporting Canada’s mineral exploration and mining industry, including the federal government’s renewable of the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit (METC) and the appointment of Jeffrey Davidson as Canada’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Counselor for the extractive sector.
Also announced during the event was a proposal from federal finance minister Joe Oliver to include certain environmental and aboriginal consultation expenses to the Canadian Exploration Expense program.
The federal government, in partnership with the Ontario government, also announced the study of an all-weather transportation corridor in the Ring of Fire region.
“The provincial and federal governments in Canada are important partners in creating conditions that allow the mineral industry to flourish nationally and internationally,” says PDAC Executive Director Andrew Cheatle. “We look forward to further building upon the constructive activities that occurred at PDAC 2015.
A number of events such as the CSR Event Series, Aboriginal Program and Investors Exchange received overwhelming support from the general public.
In case you missed it
The 2015 PDAC event included a wide range of discussions on various topics in the mining industry. This is what you missed.
Crowdfunding:
“Crowd sourcing has the potential to be big for startups and initial fieldwork,” said Cheatle. “However, it seems like an unlucky solution for the bigger projects, especially when you’re talking about diamond drilling and air-born surveying.”
Shifting to automation:
“We know autonomy is very important to enhancing operations in the mining industry,” says Cheatle. “It has the proven capability of increasing productivity be 20 percent and is overall a more efficient way of mining. Canada has been on the forefront of a lot of this technology and we’ve seen the shift to automation for some time now, before mainstream media picked up on it.”
Future of Canada’s mining industry:
According to Cheatle, Canada is, and will continue, to be a leader of metals and mining on the world stage.
“Despite difficult times, the Canadian mining industry has shown resiliency to get through this. The future of the Canadian mining industry looks very strong.”
PDAC 2016 is expected to take place at the metro Toronto Convention Centre from February 28 to March 2. Click here for more information.
WATCH: Rod Thomas (President of PDAC) and Kevan Cowan (President, TSX Markets & Group Head of Equities) open the TMX market.
