Yukon Geoscience forum looks beyond current downturn

Global demand for minerals may be in a slump, but organizers of this weekend's Yukon Geoscience forum insist there won't be a lot of worried hand-wringing.

"We most certainly won't be focussing on how depressed things are," said Samson Hartland, from Yukon's Chamber of Mines, adding the territory has several mining projects "in the queue."

"We're the envy of other jurisdictions," Hartland said.

That may be true for those willing to look optimistically into the future, but 2015 has been anything but an enviable year for Yukon mining.

In January, Yukon Zinc closed the Wolverine mine near Watson Lake and went into receivership. North American Tungsten's Cantung mine, near the Yukon/N.W.T. border, closed in the fall. Production at Alexco's Bellekeno mine has been suspended since 2013. 

Still, Hartland says this weekend will be about strategizing. 

"It's going to be about what we can best do to position ourselves so that we can be the most competitive, and capitalize once things do turn around," Hartland said.

Thinking strategically

The big question is, when will things turn around?

"If I knew that, I'd be rich," said Pierre Gratton, president and CEO of the Mining Association of Canada. He's coming to give a speech at the forum that he says will be partly targeted at governments.

"It's more important in a downturn to be thinking strategically of the next upswing which invariably comes, thinking longer-term," Gratton said. He suggests building infrastructure to reduce the cost of mining in the North, and streamlining environmental assessment processes. 

"Being efficient about these things, so that these projects that are still making their way through can hit the ground running when the upswing returns," Gratton said.

'Down, not dead'

Andrew Cheattle, executive director of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, is also scheduled to speak at the forum, and he also planned to focus on the positive. He said the industry is "down, not dead."

Cheattle says Yukon accounts for about five per cent of all exploration spending in Canada, and spending this year is expected to be up from 2014. 

And even though Yukon has been slipping in the Fraser Institute's annual ranking of investor confidence (the territory was ninth this year), Cheattle said "to be top ten is something to be proud of." 

He also joined the chorus singing of the cyclical nature of mineral prices.

"How long we stay in this downturn is anybody's opinion, to be fair," Cheattle said. "My own? I would say another year to 18 months.

"Metals and minerals are part of our daily lives."