April 17, 2015, North Bay, ON, Canada – Knight Piésold’s Richard Cook, a senior environmental scientist from the North Bay office, delivered a presentation on April 14 at the 2015 Nunavut Mining Symposium, held in Iqaluit, Nunavut. Over 452 delegates from companies with operating or advanced exploration projects in Nunavut, government and Inuit agencies, and industry service providers attended the territory’s annual mining forum on April 13-16, 2015.

The main thrust of the presentation entitled “Northern Mineral Development: We All Need to Have Skin in the Game” is that northern mineral development is expensive and challenging, and all stakeholders need to do their part to enable the industry. This is particularly important with today’s commodity prices and the challenges exploration companies face in raising large sums of money required for mineral exploration in Nunavut.

Similar to Cook’s presentation, a number of presentations at the symposium also focused on changes needed to support the industry during this difficult time. This included a joint presentation by the Mining Association of Canada and the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, who have been co-authoring a review of northern mineral exploration costs and tax regime. For a large number of years now, Patricia Mohr, vice-president of economics and commodity market specialist at Scotiabank, said in her keynote presentation that “conditions are quite challenging in the mining industry.”

Knight Piésold continues to provide various engineering and environmental services for projects in the territory, such as the Mary River Project and the Back River Project.