Ontario provides $13M for junior mining exploration companies

Ontario’s Minister of Mines and Timmins James Bay MPP George Pirie announced millions of dollars Tuesday to help junior mining companies in the province.

Pirie said exploration investments last year totaled more than $950 million and the government wants to encourage more.

Ontario’s Minister of Mines, George Pirie announced a multi-million-dollar investment in the Ontario Junior Exploration Program. (Lydia Chubak/CTV News Northern Ontario)

He said the Ford government is funneling $13 million through the Ontario Junior Exploration program to help 84 companies, 19 in the Timmins area or north of it.

"They're limited to (an) upper limit of $200,000, so they've got to be relatively small companies," Pirie said.

"But that's what we want to we want to encourage -- the small juniors to be doing exploration. That's where exploration starts. They're the ones that are the risk-takers or the entrepreneurs. They're the ones that really drive exploration at a grassroots level."

Steve Balch, Canada Nickel's vice-president of exploration, said the program has helped it in the past and it might help it again in the future.

"We developed a resource in part with some of this funding, and now we want to go into production so we're looking at pretty big dollar figures," Balch said.

"(It's) nice to see some of that money coming from the provincial and federal governments."

Ontario’s Minister of Mines, George Pirie announced a multi-million-dollar investment in the Ontario Junior Exploration Program. (Lydia Chubak/CTV News Northern Ontario)

He said government support for the mining industry has improved in the past three or four years, but he said it still takes anywhere from 15 to 20 years to get a mine into production, a long time for investors.

Pirie said that’s why the province changed the Mining Act.

"That's why we changed the regulations so, yeah, whatever we're doing is successful because we're No. 1 (in) exploration in Canada and we have been for the last two years," he said.

Balch also wants more government help when it comes to competing with international mining companies.

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"Because of the way they mine and process without any environmental standards, they don't treat their water, they don't treat the air and they don't treat the local people very well, either," he said.

"So we have to do all that differently here, but it costs money so in order to compete against those other countries, we need some help from our governments."

To date, the province said it’s committed $35 million over four years to the Ontario Junior Exploration Program.