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Volume 95 Number 6 The Global Mining Newspaper Apr 3 - 9, 2009

Daily News Friday, April 03, 2009

Filling Bay Street's mining information gap

George McIsaac, David Love and Boyd Davis all want to fill inan information gap.

While Toronto is known as the capital of the world for raisingmining capital, the three men see no reason for Bay Streetto rest on its laurels. After all, the whiz kids on Bay cansometimes be out of touch with the nitty and the gritty ofthe mining business.

With mathematics and financial prowess often the chiefcriterion for gaining eminence on the Street, there can bemore than a few people that find themselves in importantresearch positions while lacking a sound grasp of thefundamentals of mining.

The three adjunct professors want to change that and arebringing the intense two day mining course back to thefinancial district towards that end.

The course is the brainchild of Michael Doggett , a geology professor at Queen's,and was first offered in November 2006. It has since been coming to town once ortwice a year.

Doggett explains that while teaching a one week course geared towards gettingmining students up to speed on the financial side of things, he was approached bya number of people who wanted to see a "‘rocks for money people' instead of a‘money for rocks people' course."

While the course is geared towards analysts and research associates, the difficultyof the material is not out of reach for the average investor with a passion for themining game.

Each of the three instructors tackles the key elements of mining that theyspecialized in: Love takes on geology, McIsaac resource estimates and mining andDavis metallurgy.

And while investors and associates make up the bulk of the students, the coursealso delves into the technical aspects of mining in a manner that a few miningcompanies could benefit from as well.

Boyd says he realizes just how much knowledge some companies lack every timehe goes to the PDAC and visits with smaller companies.

"Often you have some kind of venture fund with $100 million, so the guy that'srunning it will take 20 different companies at $5 million a pop," he says. "All youneed is a couple to work, but 17 of them have got a whack of cash for nothing,hired a hole bunch of guys, and they're out of business in a couple of yearsbecause either their process stinks or the people running it don't know what they'redoing, or they can't bring in any more money."

And while courses like the one they are offering can help, Boyd says companiesgoing public with a project that relies on a metallurgical process need to get sometop end consultation.

"For a few thousand bucks they could get an expert review of something and getsome guidance," He says. "I'm surprised that no one ever does it."

But projects run by individuals that are more interested in spinning a story thandoing the tough technical work are only one problem, another is the muchdiscussed lack of people with sound technical knowledge available to help keep the

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industry and markets as informed as they could be.

And while the industry has fought hard over the last many years to try andconvince high school graduates to enter into mining related studies at university,the problem doesn't stop there.

McIsaac says it's not only a lack of people studying mining, it also has to do withpeople who already have such degrees moving on.

"A few friends of mine that are miners with MBAs went to work with banks orbrokerage firms," he says. "They stayed in mining at first then worked their wayout of mining. That's expertise that is leaving."

To get expertise back into the system, the adjuncts are careful to explain what canbe at times opaque terminology in geology, exploration and metallurgy, usingsuccinct examples and spending generous amounts of time taking questions andproviding clear answers.

And they have the academic chops to back up those answers.

Boyd did his post doctoral in metallurgy and has been consulting since 1988. In2002 he started his own company which runs a lab that buys copper and thenelectro-refines it.

McIsaac, who teaches the resource estimate and mining sections of the course, is amining engineer that spent and 8 years in Chile as senior project engineer andsuperintendant engineering for Lac Minerals before returning to Canada to do hisPHD at Queen's.

He now works as a private consultant, helping junior miners with a range of issuesfrom scoping studies to valuing a deposit, to devising exploration plans or how toproperly deal with mine abandonment.

Love also did his PHD at Queen's and has considerable experience both in the fieldand in the classroom.

And while none of the three are tenured professors they have a wealth of realworld experience that pure academics often lack.

"We're operators," McIsaac says. "Other professors have a different approach toproblems. They might be trying to come up with new theories and new processesbut don't necessarily take a look at what's being done out there in the world andanalyze that."

The Basics of Geology, Mining, and Processing course will get underway at theMarriott Hotel in Toronto on May 10th and 11th.

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