Doug Silver knew that Canada was an important for mining and gold, but he didn’t realize how important until he crunched the numbers.
In June, Silver, who is CEO Balfour Holdings, spoke to Kitco at the Mining Investment Event of the North in Quebec City where he gave a keynote.
“It was just amazing how many different aspects I could look at. Canada was always number one. It has the most deposits, it has the most companies, it’s got a fantastic stock exchange, great regulators, good democracy,” said Silver.
Silver noted that Canada’s mineral endowment is varied.
“Canada leads in so many different types of deposits, and that’s good because you don’t want your industry only focused on one commodity,” said Silver.
Silver noted that Canada developed a lot of the laws, regulations and frameworks for mining that were then exported around the world.
“You’re in Canada. You follow all the Canadian laws, and then you go to a lesser developed economy where they don’t have any of these laws, particularly environmental laws. Are you going to behave differently? Of course not. Your shareholders would crucify you. They naturally want you to be consistent across all your properties,” said Silver. “You bring Canadian practices to that country, and if the practices do a good job, those practices will spread…making those country more transparent.”