Canadian Government May Fund Multi-Million Dollar Mapping Effort

Canada's federal government may be close to helping fund a plan to map the country's resource-rich north Radio Station 1130 reported:

A spokesman for the Prospectors and Developers Association for Canada made the comment Monday, after a speech at a prospectors' convention by Cassie Doyle, Canada's deputy minister for natural resources.

Doyle, in her speech to delegates, stressed the importance of the decade-long plan to map Canada's resource-rich north, especially in this "pre-budget" period.

"I was left with the impression that the government was going to be funding it," PDAC's Philip Bousquet said in an interview, referring to the mining community's proposed Co-operative Geological Mapping Strategy, which would cost $500 million over 10 years.

The association has been meeting in Toronto, where federal funding for the mapping plan has been a subject of debate. The association says the federal government's spending on geoscience has declined by 50 per cent since 1980. Under the plan, the federal government would spend $25 million annually for 10 years, to be matched equally by the provinces and territories.