Bill 43 : Mining Act

On May 29, 2013 the Minister of Natural Resources introduced Bill 43 to the National Assembly, amending the Mining Act. The Bill must go through all the hoops before being adopted by the National Assembly.

Here are a few comments on certain provisions of the Bill:

- Section 102 makes it mandatory to conduct a project feasibility study and an ore processing feasibility study to obtain a mining lease; this is a new requirement that will lead to significant costs for mining companies and create uncertainty. What will the Minister do once the study is filed—force mining companies to process the ore in Quebec by refusing to issue a mining lease? Such a decision could, in each case, require an additional investment of several hundreds of millions of dollars. In theory, processing in Quebec is always possible, but at what cost? We believe it would be preferable and especially more advantageous to encourage processing through tax or financial incentives (ex: preferential