The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Does a Record High Gold Price Benefit Ontario?

Episode Date: October 16, 2024

In the past, a higher gold price would have spurred more exploration and mine development in Ontario. But investors' preferences have changed since the last time gold was in favour, and some recent federal regulations are adding time and expense to mine development. A look at whether gold mining in Ontario has lost its allure just as the yellow metal hits all time highs.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Canada is the fourth highest producer of gold in the world, behind Russia, China and Australia. Almost 50% of Canada's gold is mined right here in Ontario, and the price is at a record high. But it's become harder for companies to raise money for exploration and new discoveries, and some new regulatory changes have made building new mines in Canada tougher. So does gold hold the same allure that it used to? Let's ask. In Kirkland Lake, Ontario, there's the mayor, Stacey White.

And joining us here in studio, Sean Boyd, Chair of the Board and former CEO of Agnico Eagle Mines Limited. Michael Fox, CEO of Indigenous Community Engagement and a member of Winoosk First Nation near the shores of Hudson Bay. Michael Fox, CEO of Indigenous Community Engagement and a member of Winoosk First Nation near the shores of Hudson Bay. And Bruce Tatters, who's the CEO of Red Cloud Securities.

And we are delighted to welcome you three here to our studio. And Your Worship, good to have you on the line from Kirtland Lake, Ontario. I want to start by just showing, here's what it's all about, folks. That's what it's all about. That's a little chunk of gold. That's from Magnico's mine in where? Quebec, the Laurent mine. The Laurent mine.

How deep did you have to go down to pluck this out? Well, that mine we're currently mining down at 3.4 kilometers underground. You've got to be pretty brave to go that far down into the earth, right? The miners have done an incredible job there. Wow, wow. Okay. We are having this conversation in part because of the numbers I'm about to share. Sheldon, if you would, bring this graphic up because, and for those listening on podcast, I'll just read the

chart that we've got going here. We're tracking the price of gold since 2022 today and it is currently trading at record levels north of $2,600 an ounce and that's in American funds. So it's up there. Sean, starting with you, what factors are pushing the price of gold so high these days? There's been a lot of central bank buying over the last two to three years, largely from China.

So gold's reacting to that, so good demand. Supply is constrained, it's not growing dramatically even at these high prices. As you mentioned in the top, it's not growing dramatically even at these high prices. As you mentioned in the top, it's tough. It's a tough business. It's tough to find quantities of gold in economic quantities where you can actually build a mine. So supply-demand fundamentals are really strong and it's likely going to continue to go higher. Well, I'm going to follow up with Bruce on that. It's 2,600 US an ounce right now. Can it sustain that in your view? Well, yes, because the very interesting thing about gold right now, Sean was

absolutely correct that central banks around the world, particularly non G7 countries, have been accumulating it a lot. But a lot of consumers in China, retail people, have been a big reason for this as well. There's been a lot of trouble in the Chinese economy. There's been a lack of faith in the real estate with some of their major real estate companies collapsing. And there's not been a lot of faith in the Qi government and in some of the policies. And so they've been reaching out for gold for safety over that part of the world. Gotcha. We're going to look at another chart now.

Sheldon, if you would bring this other one up. This is the production of gold in Canada province by province. And we're looking at a pie chart again for those listening on podcasts and who can't see this chart. 2% in Manitoba, 2% in the Yukon, 10% in BC, 26% in Quebec, a good chunk, 14% elsewhere, 46% of Canadian gold production is done in the province of Ontario, almost half. And here's another chart we're going to show as well. This is Ontario's producing gold mines, and there are 17 of them, and they are, as you might suspect, primarily in northern Ontario, around Timmins, Kirkland Lake and Red Lake which is north of Thunder Bay that is way up

there north of Thunder Bay and Sean let me go back to you here how many gold mines does Agnico Eagle operate in Ontario? We operate the Kirkland Lake Macassa mine which the mayor would be familiar with and the Detour Lake mine and the Detour Lake is a sizable mine it's in the top 10 in the world and we also have the Canadian Malartic mine across the border in Quebec which is also top 10. I'm sure the mayor is well aware of it which is why I'm going to ask her how important it is to her economy in Kirkland Lake. Well absolutely we've always been a gold-based economy over the last century and we are very very fortunate not only do

we have that Macassam mine site within our borders of course we have Alamos Gold over in Metatch and the promise of upper Beaver as well just down the highway on the other side. And how important is it to you that gold continues to trade at $2,600 an ounce US and more? Absolutely so we definitely are keenly aware that that is good news for the local economy and the surrounding areas. Michael, let's go to you.

How many First Nations residents work in this sector, in the province or country? Well, that's a good question. It's probably the highest proportionally hired by the mining industry compared to other sectors. I think those areas you mentioned there's high percentage of indigenous communities involved in the mining operations either in the training or in the operations as employment or in the business. And if they're not working actually in the business itself maybe in

spin-off industries what are they doing? So they could be trucking, they could be providing supplies, janitorial materials, there's a whole supply chain that these mining operations provide opportunities for the indigenous communities. Is it working? It's totally working. I would argue that you know over time you know there's been an evolution of indigenous participation, to indigenous partnerships, to indigenous proponents within the sector. Bruce, coming back to you, if gold is trading so high and people all over the world want it, why is the funding environment so problematic right now? Well, it's a very complicated question.

There's probably several reasons. One is the nature of the gold rally to this point has largely been an Asian and non-Western society gold run. And they've been buying gold itself rather than the stocks like Western people would. We got excited about gold over in the Western world. Here we tend to buy the stocks and the commodity. Over in the East, they tend to just buy the commodity. So there's not been the, because of the gold rally, it's been principally a non G7 gold rally,

is part of the reason. There's also been some structural problems in the North American and in the funding markets to do with a whole host of reasons that have made it much tougher. Larger producing gold companies haven't done as much exploring. Pension funds, we were fortunate at Red Cloud to put Frank Juister and Pierre Lassonde on a trip across the country talking about the lack of investment by the Canadian pension funds and others in the Canadian mining space. Did that help? Well it got a message out help takes time and so you know the Canadian pension funds have less than

three percent or have only three percent of their assets invested in Canada and most of them invested abroad and don't actually have mining people at their funds so if gold gets excited there's no one to actually analyze and decide to buy anything in this country. Sean what would you add to that in terms of why the funding environment seems so problematic right now? It's a tough business so in 40 years I've seen the gold price when I became CEO in 1998 the gold price was $260. Here it is up 10 times.

So it's nice that we're here. It's nice that it looks like it's going to stay at a strong price, but it's a long-term business. It's volatile. It's much more difficult than mining copper and nickel because gold tends, the mine lives tend to be shorter. So you have to take a long-term view. The returns haven't been there for the big companies,

but we're an interesting case study in investors and how to invest over time. Our biggest shareholders are non-Canadian. I can pick up the phone today and call BlackRock in London or Fidelity in Boston, where I can't really pick up the phone and call someone at a Canadian pension plan and say, look, this is what we're thinking. Why not?

It's a challenge, because I think it's their, in my view, it's their investing model. Whereas the big non-Canadian players work on what we've seen as establishing a relationship, investing in good management teams with good businesses over time, and taking that long-term view, and trading around a core position. I haven't seen that from the Canadian pension funds.

But that's besides the point. I think the point is that we're at a price level now where the returns are there. It's hard to repeat what Ignico has done from a junior to multi-mines to being the biggest market cap mining company in Canada, but you've got to keep the drills turning. And the challenge is to get the funds. We're spending $300 million US a year on exploration, but we still rely on juniors.

We've got a $400-500 million investment portfolio of junior mining companies. So again, it's long-term working with communities, building relationships, but the future's bright, I think. Let's challenge... Hold up on that for a second. We're going to get to the future. One more quick one for you. The name of your company, Agnico.

Explain. Agnico, A-G, chemical symbol for silver, nickel, cobalt. Started in 1957 in the small town of Cobalt with an amalgamation of four tiny silver producers. So that's our history in Ontario. Big story around mining 100 years ago. Cobalt was the place to be. Then it was Timmins.

So Canada's got a huge opportunity here if we pull all the partners together to really build this business. Your worship, can you build on that? How does Kirkland Lake see the future if this thing really continues to fly? You know, absolutely. Echnico Eagle has been an extremely good community partner. We're right now working on a partnership towards new sub-development. So definitely with their help, we know that Kirkland Lake is going to expand well into 2030. Do you have any idea what percentage of the people who live in Kirkland Lake

would either directly or indirectly owe their living to the mining business? So definitely, looking at numbers of employment, Echnico Eagle directly employs almost a thousand people. So that is, you know, when you have a population of only 8,000 within your community, that is a large chunk of employment. We do know that people are traveling because we simply didn't have the housing available to locate these people within our community,

but we are working on that considerably right now with the help of Econico Eagle and the Ontario government as well. And in terms of the economic development that these mines create and the taxes that they pay, what does that enable your community to do in terms of public works and public goods that it might otherwise not be able to do?

Well, absolutely. With this, there's a Housing Enabling Water Systems Fund grant that's coming out of the province. And it was with the assistance of Ekniko Eagle and Alamos Gold that we were able to get the engineering portion done to get to that stage for that grant process. And with that, we are going to be able to bring our infrastructure up to date to allow for massive sub-developments. And that is so critical because we all know without funding dollars for infrastructure, a community simply cannot expand. Michael, maybe you could build on that answer in terms of what standard of living can First Nations now enjoy that

if the mining sector isn't there might otherwise not be the case? Yeah, it depends where you are in Ontario. So in the existing mining camps, I think the indigenous communities and organizations, they have a pretty high level of conceptual sophistication about the sector and they're commercially involved. And in other areas it may be new, like in certain treaty areas, probably like Treaty Three, there wasn't many mining. Which is where?

Treaty Three is where? Treaty Three is northwestern Ontario. Okay. So we had like new gold was probably the new mine that happened around Fort Francis. So that cluster of communities had to get on a multiple steep learning curve about what mining is and everything. So it takes time to build capacity and build the confidence and have the capital

to deploy it to get involved in these sectors. Let me ask you about something else. This is an important principle in mining. It is called the duty to consult. What is that? Yeah, so I would expand on that. It's duty to consult and accommodate. So I think it's part of the legal framework in Canada, based on the constitutional framework we have here, and it's part of the honour of the Crown. So any decision the Crown has to make when it comes to touching Aboriginal treaty rights has to be considered. the Indigenous communities that are going to be impacted on that.

So I think the exploration of the mining sector has been ahead of the curve, I think, on that, particularly the associations in preparing its members to get involved in creating partnerships, creating project agreements. I'm going to go to Sean now. He calls it a duty to consult and accommodate. Are you prepared to add those two extra words? Yes, and I think that's the way we've managed our business. I think it really was driven home.

We went to Nunavut the first time back in 2007 where we weren't really sure what to expect and we went to the community of Baker Lake and we left after three days and we said, boy, we can do business here because we weren't judged as miners or from the south. The conversation was how could we partner and this also ties into the question around the perception from investors about the industry. The industry has to do a much better job explaining the benefits, explaining what we're talking about here.

And we've been, I've spent a lot of time in Ottawa on the last year trying to articulate the opportunity set that we see as miners, people that are there every single day doing this. And it's not just mine building. If we do this properly and it's not sort of standing up and saying, oh by the way, we're going to build the Upper Beaver Project in Kirkland Lake or the Holt Bay Project in Nunavut and you're going to get all these spin-off benefits. No, it's when you're announcing that it's to talk about the impact that mines are having from the context of building community. And in some parts of Canada, it's building the nation.

And we're trying to connect these three points now, mine building, community building, and nation building, and doing it at the provincial level and doing it at the federal level, because we're good at mining in Canada. But we're really good at mining when we're working together and we make sure everybody's participating. And we've been at the forefront of that.

And we wouldn't be where we are in terms of the size of our been at the forefront of that. And we wouldn't be where we are in terms of the size of our company and the quality of our business if we didn't establish the partnerships with the communities and the employees. Let me get Bruce on that as well. There's a duty to consult. You heard Michael call it a duty to consult and accommodate.

Do you think the mining sector does both? I think in the last, I think it's been an evolution. And I would suggest to you that if you were to look back 25, 30 years ago, to generalize is always very difficult because there are some really good actors and there are some not so good actors at any given point in time. But I would generally make the comment that if you look over time, the mining community has done a really good job of pulling up its bootstraps. Whether you're talking about large producers like Agnico or even the smaller explorer and developer companies out there, they are far more mindful of communities, far more mindful of engagement today than I would have

suggested 30 years ago. So I think I think it's there and I think Sean's right. I think the advocacy for the mining industry to the general public and the benefits to Canada is probably the last frontier that we really need to do a better job with. Sorry, can I add? I think it's mindset. So when we went to none of it, we were saying to ourselves, as we went up discussing it, remember, we're visitors. We're visitors. And if we conduct ourselves like visitors,

then this is going to be a successful relationship over the long term. And I think that's the way you need to sort of look at it. And if you look at it from that perspective and start from square one as what are we going to do and how are we going to do it together, you really get the benefit of the mining, the higher gold price, the skills. And it's not just a job, it's an opportunity for a career when you look at these communities

and you can see it in the young people. There's lots of benefits here and that's one of the best parts about our job is we can go into parts of the country where sometimes there's not a lot of opportunity and we can bring it there if we do mine building correctly. I want to get her worship the mayor on this as well. The duty to not just consult but accommodate. What does that look like on the ground where you are? You know what you can see it in when Mr Boyd said he builds community. I absolutely support that. Without, you know, taxation is kind of something that we have to do, but community partners

like the mining industry willfully add to their community. They do these investment. They've partnered with the local hospital. They've actually donated to the Children's Department refresh of our local library. You know, they support our local museum because it's based in Sir Harry Oaks and mining. When they speak about their investments, it's not only in their own business, it's in their surrounding communities.

And I really do think they have a unique position to not add only to the economy, but to the societies that support these minds as well. Mayor White, what do you do when you want something and they don't want to do it? How do you resolve that? You know what? I'm going to touch wood on this one and say so far so good. They have been excellent community partners. I think we're on this same side here. They know that they need to bring people to Kirkland Lake to support their business and we want people to come to Kirkland Lake so we can you know be another hundred years in our community supporting local industries like the mining sector. That is a good point Sean. These are not businesses that tend to show up and leave a year or two later. You're in for the long haul in this business, aren't you?

If we do things properly. And so I go back to our mission statement, which is to generate above average returns for our shareholders, make it a great place to work for our employees, and to uplift our communities and be major contributors to communities. If we fail in one of those three areas, we're not successful. There's another part of the mission, I think, Michael, and that is the role that all of this plays in reconciliation, which is a huge job in this country right now.

What role do you see mining playing in that? Yeah, that's a pretty good question. That's why I asked it. Yes. If you reframed, I think, the sector in the past 20 years, since the first Supreme Court decision in 2024, there's been an evolution. And I would say that it may not have been called reconciliation,

but it's reconciling the interests of the mining companies and communities that are impacted. And that manifests through agreements. So you may have early stage agreements like exploration agreements later on, more substantial agreements around impact benefits agreements. Those kind of structure the relationships and paper those relationships and the activities around those mines and development programs. And so looking back, with reconciliation today, you look back and say,

wow, this sector has been doing it for 20 years. So I've been part of that. I've actually been proud of the success, not just in Ontario, but across Canada. Bruce, can I get you on that as well? In as much as if you say to a company, what's your mission? Well, our mission is to make money and return a good dollar to shareholders. You often don't hear the word reconciliation

in a mission statement. Is it really part of this sector's goals? Well, I think, listen, I think the chairman of IGNICO would probably even be a better answer for this, but what I would suggest is that when you think of shareholders solely and you don't think of other stakeholders whenever you're involved in any one of these types of businesses, whether you're exploring, whether you're developing, whether you got a construction project, the success and the longevity that you're seeking as a business for your shareholders

is better served when all of the stakeholders and all of the agreements and things that we talk about take place. Is reconciliation actually fundamental to your mission statement? Yes, it is. And we've just put out a reconciliation report and it's wrapped into sort of how we think and it's around opportunity and we see it as we move northward. That's where the opportunity set is and when we move northward we see lack of opportunity and we see social infrastructure that's not up to the standards that we expect in the South. And so, as I've said earlier, I've been in the last year in Ottawa sort of explaining,

it's not just ports we need. Agnico doesn't need ports. We can build our own roads. We can build our own physical infrastructure. What we need is government investment in social infrastructure in the communities. What's that mean, social infrastructure? Food security, housing, medical facilities that are at par with what we have here. We find in the far north when we want to open up opportunities to get a trade that a grade

12 graduate in the far north doesn't really have grade 12 skills. We've got to upgrade them. So there's a failure in the education system. So it's about how do you create the foundation so that people in the north have the same opportunities set as people in the south. And it's really education. And we've been on record as saying, look, we'll put up the first 10 million dollars for a university of none of it.

So we're getting beyond Ontario and we're trying to generate interest from other levels of government because what and the pushback we get is well that's small why don't you just go to a college and everything and we said look start small but the message we're sending is a message of hope to the young people in those communities that maybe they can get a university degree and stay at home. So there's lots of things embedded in this. It's complicated but it starts from as the mayor said we're more than miners. When things happen in the community we have more capacity than governments have. When the water system

went down in a callowat the next day we had 60,000 bottles of water delivered to a callowat on one of our aircraft. So we can respond quickly. So you're not doing that if you're in for the quick hit because gold's at 2,600. You're there for multi-decades. We can be anywhere in the world, anywhere. We have those skills. Three quarters of our business is in Canada.

Why? Let me ask the mayor about that as well. It has been said that one of the biggest exports from Northern Ontario, either to the rest of the province or country, are young people. What is mining doing to reverse that? So definitely we are seeing trends of our youth staying. Of course, the opportunities for education in the North.

We are fortunate that we have a campus of Northern College within our community as well. So we need to support those specific sectors in our college courses. And I think it's brilliant that they're thinking about how we can educate our own people. Because, you know, living in the North, Kirkland Lake isn't all that north, contrary to popular belief. However, it is a way of life up here. We choose to live a simpler, quieter, closer to nature life. And you know, after COVID, we had seen an influx of people come because they were searching for that way of life as well. So the idea of supporting our youth to stay within our communities rather than to go into the South, I think that's a brilliant first step and I would support that any way we can.

And following up your worship, you heard Sean talk about the fact that he's spending more time in Ottawa trying to, in some respect, educate politicians and public servants about some of the softer, what did you call them, the soft? The social infrastructure. The social infrastructure that needs building. Perhaps you're doing that at Queen's Park as well. What kind of reception do you get for that message? You know, absolutely.

So we're very fortunate, Crook and Lake, because we're a larger northern municipality, we do travel down to conferences like AMO, Phnom, etc. So I do have those face-to-face meetings with ministers and they are very open to listen to our northern municipality and their leaders because they recognize that a lot of our resources are coming from the north and they need to listen to the municipalities where these mines are located. And one more the Minister of Mines in Ontario is the MPP for Timmons which isn't that far from where you are. I want to know what kind of listener he is. He is excellent. He is a former mayor as well of Timmons. So you know what he was in the thick of it right from the beginning. So he is very very supportive of not only Timmons which is

you know his near and dear to his heart but the entire northern community. So he has on the ground experience and he is very very supportive especially of Kirkland Lake and the surrounding area. Michael, I want to put the focus back on indigenous communities here. And it's no secret that there is a split, I think it's fair to say, in many First Nations in this province between those who have mining possibilities in their areas and those who don't.

And those who do are much more bullish on mining than those who don't. How are you dealing with that split? Well I think it depends on where you are and what the history is. Sometimes you're dealing with legacy issues that before the Supreme Court decisions and the Constitution actually existed and so sometimes you have to deal with those legacy issues prior to any new undertaking in the area. So, yeah, there are more pro-mining communities.

I would call them pro-opportunity communities. Then you have others that are still dealing with those legacy issues. And therefore, are they not supportive of the mining sector? I think it's a... I would say it's a minority. If you look, you know Natural Resources Canada has a website called, it's called Indigenous Communities and Agreements. So it's an interactive map and they update it every so often but it traces the number of agreements across Canada and I think Ontario has

the most agreements of all the jurisdictions in Canada. So if that's an indicator of the majority of First Nations involved in the sector, and I think it is a small minority that really don't want any type of development in their area. Mayor White, coming back to you, I want you to discuss, if you would, here's the thing. Everybody's thrilled that you're doing well and that the revenues coming in because of mining are allowing you to discuss if you would. Here's the thing, everybody's thrilled that you're doing well and that the revenues coming in because of mining are allowing you to do certain things that you might otherwise not be able to do. However, when

the price of gold, if and when in the future it goes back down, I don't have to tell you about boom bus cycles in northern Ontario cities and I know you don't want to be a hundred percent dependent on mining in order to keep the lights on up there. In which case, how do you deal with the need to diversify whatever's happening in Kirkland Lake so that you're not so so dependent on mining? So I think you know the success of the mines actually is a really strong selling point to other businesses locating to our area. Over the last few years we've had FedEx facilities move in, we've sold property to Char Technologies which is a biomass outfit. We have also just this past year started a development, Keepers of the Circle will be building a

modular home building facility out on Archer's Drive, which is our industrial area. So we're keenly aware that, you know, we can't solely depend on the mining or the forestry sectors to support us. We are a century old community. We have been through that boom and bust cycle, but we are aware that you know without diversification, without those indirect industries, it can be very difficult to continue and to be sustainable. So sustainable could mean that we stay at 8,000 to 10,000. We are perfectly fine with that, but we want to make sure that our

people will be able to stay for years to come. Sean, how do you deal with that in your negotiations with smaller communities, for example, when they say, you know, we appreciate what you're doing here, but we're also aware that you're not going to be here forever and the north of the country is littered with communities that used to be really significant and now aren't Because eventually the mine closes and people leave. What do you do about that? Well part of it's just how we think about the business and it gets back to investing and exploration So the Macassar mine has been running for decades and it's another deep mine

And so the key is just to keep those drills turning on top of Macassar We have the upper beaver Project which has been known for decades. These things take time. We've had mines which we've taken 30 to 40 years to figure out but it's the ability to be patient and you can be patient when you have a strong sort of fundamental underlying business and a lot of it's experience. So we've managed through gold prices at 260 at our company. We have people that were there when gold was 260.

So we know how to do it when things you know turn down and so you've got to make sure you put things aside for a rainy day and we've done that successfully over six plus decades so we'll continue to do that but it's not easy and that's when you build up those relationships so that when times are tough you're actually counting on each other to help sort of weather those difficult periods. Bruce I want to I want you to talk to us about ownership and who owns and why or whether it's important that Canadians own these businesses and I asked because of course you know if you go to Sudbury Inco is now no longer a Canadian owned company

Falconbridge is now no longer a Canadian owned company a Cisco I gather mining no longer a Canadian owned company is it important that we keep a Canadian owned and operated sector here going? Well if you think about, you know you talked about communities up in the north and their dependence on mining. But what I would suggest to you is if you broaden out the conversation and you talk about mining and its importance in Ontario and in Canada, think about head offices of all of those businesses that you described that have left, that used accounting firms, legal firms, and other types of support firms,

and the jobs that were created in those related industries. The actual trickle-on economic effect is way larger than the straight number of jobs for one of those head offices. So I do think that we've been very short-sighted in Canada when we've thought about, you know, it's difficult because, you know, you don't want to block something when you don't have a good alternative yourself. I think this is more systemic and at the roots of how we're governed, whether or not from a top level down, the importance is there from the mindset of the politicians.

Yeah. Sean, I was going to ask you about that too, because I remember when Vale bought Inco and suddenly head office is now no longer in sub-rea of Toronto, it's in Brazil. So we lost something there. Why wasn't Inco buying up other mining companies around the world and acting like a big player as opposed to being bought out themselves? Exactly. Missed opportunity.

So we look around at BHP and Rio Tinto, major diversified mining companies and everybody talking about the need for critical metals. So we missed that opportunity as Canadians. We had everything. We had the ability to raise capital. We're right next to the biggest capital market in the world in the US. We had all the skills. We had the history. We missed that opportunity. Alcan, Gold Corp's gone now. And so, yes, we can sort of look back and say, well, we missed it, it's over. No, it's not. So we have to look to the opportunity set that exists now.

And that's what we're trying to do, to connect the mine building, community building, nation building, but to, we've built this company over six decades sort of keeping our head down and not doing a commercial on ourselves. Now we feel a responsibility given our size and our leadership position to say, no, mining is good. It does bring benefits. It's not perfect, but no business is perfect. And so we can rebuild, but we have to rebuild with bigger companies working with the junior set, but taking risks. Taking risks. And so we've invested in some new discoveries across the country.

We've invested in early stage projects here in Ontario. And it's not just a check we write. We bring our experience to the table, to their board, to say look this is how you need to think about it. And so this will benefit the communities, it will benefit the industry. I agree with the hollowing out in the head office. It's important for big cities to have big companies. It's important for those big companies, particularly mining, to be able to do things in other parts of the world to get exposure to other metals and other deposits. So we can still do that because we have the basic infrastructure here. But we need the government now more than

ever. NECO doesn't need the government but the junior sector needs the government, the communities need the government to build as we said that social infrastructure to help improve the chances of building long-term sustainable businesses in these communities that are going to benefit young people and create opportunities in those communities. I'm going to give the very messianic Mr. Boyd the last word in this discussion today. I want to thank all four of you for joining us here on TVO tonight, starting with Mayor Stacy White in Kirkland Lake, Ontario.

We're grateful for your participation today. Sean Boyd, Agnico Eagle Mines, Michael Fox, Indigenous Community Engagement, Bruce Tatters, Red Cloud Securities. Thank you so much.