The world expert on Canada's geology is petrologist Wayne Goodfellow with the Geological Survey of Canada in Ottawa. He's an expert on rocks and incorporates a knowledge of chemistry, physics, mathematics, geophysics, structural geology and geochemistry. I interviewed him at last week's Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada conference in Toronto about how Canada is a mining giant but is also one of the most unexplored nations in the world.
"If I was going to hazard a guess," he said, "there are three to five times more than has ever been found or exploited ... three to five times more the current reserves as well as what we have left. It's huge. There are vast areas in this country where boots have never been on the ground."
Mining has built Canada and underpins its economy now, and Canadians don't realize, nor do their politicians, that they are sitting on an even greater treasure trove. And everything in the world is grown or mined.
The best infrastructure bets for governments to bankroll would be to link, by unpaved road and transmission lines, Canada's dozens of "stranded" orebodies --major discoveries of metals and minerals that are too remote to tap. Mr. Goodfellow said these deposits are known and building roads to them would not only open them up for production but create an exploration boom in their vicinities.
The most dramatic example is a "giant" lead-zinc deposit.
"The Howard's Pass deposit in the Yukon is probably the largest reserve for lead and zinc in the world. It is a belt that is 20 to 30 kilometres long and this area is continually mineralized," he said. "There is no access, only an airstrip, no roads, no power grid, no rail."
Infrastructure is needed to produce base and precious metals because of the huge tonnage of rock that must be transported from the mine to a mill, refinery then markets.
"The concentration of effort in Canada has been in the south where you have infrastructure," Goodfellow said.
For instance, the single greatest discovery in Canadian mining history is the nickel belt in Sudbury, the world's biggest deposit. This multibillion-dollar development would never have been found nor discovered if the Canadian Pacific Railway had been routed differently. The railway passed through the area in remote northern Ontario.
"There have been other remote mines built, such as the Polaris lead-zinc mine above the Arctic Circle, but these were viable because they were on water so transportation was available," he said. "But there is no access in Nunavut or the interior of Canada, which is virtually unexplored...."
Canada must exploit its natural competitive advantages in order to retain living standards. This nation is the second-largest piece of real estate in the world, which represents a mining, oil and agricultural advantage.
Canada will never be a manufacturing powerhouse, a Silicon Valley North, another New York financial capital or a biotech giant. As governments respond with stimulus packages to keep Canadians employed, they should also invest heavily in strategic economic development.
Mining is a high-tech industry that will never be replaced and should be harnessed for the good of the country and the world.
dfrancis@nationalpost.com - Diane Francis blogs at financialpost.com/dianefrancis
