Invest Canada Post PDAC Investment Summit: Series 1

0:36 Hello everyone. Mesdames et messieurs, bonjour, Danjay. I want to begin by acknowledging that I'm living, working and speaking to you from the traditional territory of the Kwanlin-Dun First Nation and the Ta'an Kwachin Council. I'm excited to be here today to welcome everyone to the first of 4 Invest Canada North post-PDAC virtual summits. The summits promise to be an engaging opportunity to hear from those working in the north on important topics like ESG and partnerships, northern advantages and opportunities, and some of what the company's plans are for 2021. I'm pleased to be here representing the Honourable Melanie Jolie, the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages, and she sends her best wishes.

1:24 I'm the Parliamentary Secretary responsible for CanNor, the Canada Northern Economic Development Agency, as well as being the member of Parliament for the North for the U. C. Many of you know the important role that can nor place in Canada's 3 territories, working in collaboration with northerners and indigenous peoples to advance the economic potential of the territory. The North offers a wealth of sustainable economic development opportunities and vast possibilities, including especially resource development in the mining sector. A world-class showcase like PDAC provides invaluable opportunity for CanNor, in collaboration with Invest Canada North, to share information with you about opportunities and untapped mineral potential in the North, and I'm glad we can continue the conversation with these summits.

2:19 Going forward are shared goals to promote and develop. Sustainable resource sector in the Northwest Territories, none of it and you can and increase investment in mineral development. Strong resource sector is the cornerstone of the northern economy, which brings associated benefits to territorial and Indigenous businesses. A collaborative approach to developing a resource economy helps us to tie in other considerations, such as important socioeconomic, cultural and environmental factors. Building a vibrant, inclusive economy contributes to the resiliency and sustainability of Northern communities and the over well-being of Northerners and its Indigenous peoples.

3:06 Working with Invest Canada North and other organizations to help build a diversified, sustainable and dynamic economy across the territories contributes to the economic prosperity of the North. The government of Canada is pleased to support Invest Canada North. Northerners, indigenous and territorial businesses welcome investment and new opportunities. So I look forward to listening to the summits and welcome participants from today's panel. North Arrow Minerals from the Northwest Territories, and White Gold Corporation and Flow Metals from the Yukon. Masi Cho, Merci, Gunusji, Suga, Sinla. Thank you. Merci, goodness, je suis gazouillat. Thank you.

3:59 Hi, everyone. I'm Brian London of Gold Newsletter and the New Orleans Investment Conference. I have the great pleasure today of hosting a panel for the Invest Canada North Post-PDAC Summit. And I have with us today 3 wonderful companies and executives representing that company. I have Scott Sheldon of Flow Metals. I have Ken Armstrong of North Arrow Minerals. And I have David D'Onofrio of White Gold. 3 companies that are very interesting and very exciting and we're going to hear from all 3 of them and their plans for this year and how they're addressing some key issues facing all companies from exploration through development and production in this modern day and age and especially in Canada's north.

4:48 I'd like to open up with some comments on the gold market and therefore the junior mining market and how it all kind of works together. We find ourselves right now in the gold market in a bit of a waiting game, in kind of a period of transition. And it's been a bit of a horror story for gold bugs and gold bulls. And really, those are bullish on any sectors in the junior mining sector. I'm a big believer that you don't get a bull market in the junior mining sector in any of the metals, whether it's copper, zinc, diamonds, uranium, rare earths, any of the associated other aspects in other sectors, unless you have an underlying gold bull market in gold and silver to draw investors to the mining sector, to the junior mining sector in general. And right now, we're in a bit of a holding pattern for gold and for silver. We broke out of the starting gate in 2021 in great fashion with a couple of days of fantastic gains, but then the markets, the broader markets, primarily the bond market that seems to drive just about everything, started seeing the signs of inflation down the road. They saw massive spending bills coming out of the U.S. Congress and started bidding treasury yields higher, demanding higher returns in the face of what they viewed collectively to be a

6:20 significant and ongoing and perhaps accelerating dollar depreciation, which actually is necessary. And that's kind of the bigger story for the metals is that It is necessary for the dollar and really all currencies around the world to be depreciated over the coming years because debts have been built up to such astronomical levels. And that's what I'd like viewers of this panel to take away from this. We're in a period where the bond markets are demanding higher yields, and that is putting a damper on the metals investing in gold and silver because yields are rising. What hasn't happened yet is the actual inflationary numbers to come through, which would then counteract those rising bond yields and send real yields, inflation-adjusted yields, lower. And that will help drive the metals. In the meantime, that sentiment has yet to shift for the metals. What we're seeing is that investing or sentiment for gold and silver have reached really historically low levels. So as we're speaking, it has not perhaps bottomed these price trends for gold and silver, but they are bottoming.

7:38 What I try to emphasize and stress to investors is that don't worry about what's going on today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month, look a year or 2 years down the road and imagine, see if you could possibly imagine gold and silver prices being much lower or any lower than they are today. Instead, the most likely outcome, The odds favor the fact that gold and silver are going to be trading for much higher levels. And then junior mining companies, exploration companies will also be trading for much higher levels, whether they're directly involved in gold and silver or not. So it's only a matter of time for this bull market trend, broader bull market trend, to get back in gear, both for the metals and for the mining shares. And I think it's

8:30 time for investors who look at these big cycles, the grand sweep of these trends, to begin accumulating some of the better companies that are involved in this sector, because by and large, and almost without exception, they're all trading for very low levels compared to where they were a few months ago and compared to where, especially compared to where we expect metals prices and the overall market to be months hence. So With that said, we have 3 wonderful

9:02 companies involved today, 3 very exciting companies involved today. And I'd like to go in turn to the executives involved in each of these companies to get a brief overview of where they are right now and what makes that company go, what they're focused on, and why investors, briefly an elevator pitch, if you will, why investors should be interested in their companies. Scott Sheldon with Flow Metals, let's go ahead and start with you. Sure, sounds good. Thanks, Brian. So I'm president of Flow Metals. We're a purely Canadian company. We have 100% ownership in 3 gold projects. The first one is the New Brenda project in British Columbia. That's a large 100 square kilometer property just beside the Alki grade gold mine.

9:51 That's recently taken over by Gold Mountain. They just raised about 10 million bucks to that. So it's a pretty exciting looking piece of land. We also have a project in Quebec. That's the Ashwinipi Gold Project. That was a partnership with Windfall Geotech. The property itself was a result of a massive 330,000 kilometer artificial intelligence study that took about 5 years to go through. And that study was looking for a BIF style deposits or banded iron formation. That's also an exciting project that we're looking forward to getting to this year. And lastly, our 60 mile project, That's our flagship. That's where we spent most of our time this past summer. And that sits on 3 active placer camps.

10:38 It's an area with a very long history of exploration dating to even before the Klondike Gold Rush. And one of the exciting parts of that property is it has over 20 kilometers of strike length.

10:51 And yeah, and it's also a 15 minute drive to the Alaska Highway, which makes it pretty convenient, makes exploration fairly, fairly easy. And this summer, we found a new shallow high grade zone as well, which was pretty exciting. But most of our results are still pending at this time. So there should be some more news coming out soon.

11:12 And yeah, that's a quick overview. Thank you. Thanks, Scott. We talked about flow not long ago, I guess early in the year, late last year, and you gave me the story, and it's very exciting, particularly 60 Mile to me. I have a long acquaintance with that going back to the first, well, not the 1st Yukon Gold Rush, but I guess the last UConn Gold Rush, which we'll talk over at David in a moment. Next, let's go to Ken. Ken Armstrong with North Arrow. A bit of a diversion from our topic just now, you're involved in diamonds, but you are, I mean, it really is amazing having been involved in the diamond industry or diamond rush back in the early 90s, how this is really an echo of that time in that You have a number of the giants of that, or the giant, or perhaps of that period that Diamond Rush involved in the company and a number of who's involved in the mining industry involved. Can you give us a brief overview, an elevator pitch, if you will, on North Arrow?

12:17 Yeah, thanks, Brian. It is a bit of a diversion, but we can come back to that as well. But yeah, North Arrow is a diamond explorer. We're listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, our symbol is NAR. And exploring for diamonds over the last few years has been a bit of a lonely labor. There aren't many juniors just solely focused on it, but we've stuck to our guns. And the reason for that is we are a group of people who've been involved in the diamond sector since the 90s and have been successful at finding and defining and diamond deposits and putting them into production in Canada and in Africa. Our chairman is Grant Thomas, who is the president of Abra Resources, which ultimately became and continued to be the 40% owner of the Divec mine in the Northwest Territories. And we're actually exploring properties in that region right now as more of a brownfields approach at our Loki project. We're active there. I'm just completing some geophysics right now.

13:14 We've also within North Arrow been looking elsewhere in Canada. We found brand new diamond bearing Kimberlite fields in Saskatchewan at our Piku project, and also up on the Mel project in the Melville Peninsula.

13:27 And our key project, though, sort of our flagship is a project called NowYet, which is also located in Nunavut. It's very unique because it's located right next to the community of NowYet on Tidewater, essentially. We work from town. We don't have an exploration camp. And it's there. We're not at the discovery stage. It's actually a Kimberley's been found. It's called Q1 to 4. It's big. It has a significant inventory of diamonds. In fact, at over 20 million carats, it's the largest inventory of diamonds in Canada that isn't under the control of a diamond producer right now. And with a partner, Burgundy Diamonds, we'll be collecting a bulk sample there this summer to get 2000 tons

14:07 fully funded by Burgundy, a $5.6 million program. Everything is in place for that to start in June. And the goal of that program is to recover a larger parcel of diamonds to get a better handle on what we think is the value proposition there, which is that there's a population of fancy, vivid-colored diamonds. They're orangey-yellow. If you were to look at them, you'd say they're golden color. It's a very unique, very rare color that we think

14:32 shows that these diamonds, if there's enough of those colored stones there, the value proposition could be there to really make this project work going forward. So it's a large deposit. We're kind of beyond that discovery stage risk, and instead we're more getting a larger sample to get a better handle on overall value. And diamonds, similar to the story with gold, we see indications of a turn. We're seeing big investments being made by the largest players in the sector at both ends of the pipeline. Some of the largest producers like De Beers and Lucara are making multi-billion dollar investments to expand their existing operations.

15:07 And on the retail side, we're seeing investments like Louis Vuitton and their purchase just a couple of months ago of Tiffany, to the largest luxury retail brand in the Western world, and they've paid over $15 billion for that. And these are big investments being made by the most knowledgeable players in the diamond space. And clearly they wouldn't be making those investments if they didn't see a future in the diamond space. So we're right there on the cusp of identifying and trying to discover the next deposits to be put into production. Thanks, Ken. That is, I want to emphasize, a very exciting story, and it

15:50 is a different story because back in the early 90's there were. I guess hundreds of companies involved in this big. Diamond rush in very few of them today, but a lot of this projects that they discovered back then and

16:04 subsequently over the many years or in North our right now so it's kind of a one-stop shop for the entire sector. Speaking of one-stop shops, David, White Gold, with Sean Ryan's involvement, has been looked at as kind of a Yukon one-stop shop with the number of properties that he has been able to assemble over the years, a number of which have gone in and out of other companies, but have now or have been over recent years reassembled within White Gold. I look at White Gold nostalgically because Gold Newsletter was Johnny on the spot in

16:36 that. Big Yukon rush we recommended under world resources which obvious which discovered white gold and art deposits. In fact, we're not only the first but I think the only newsletter to recommend underworld was very good to our readers and kind of sparked that, well, did spark that whole Yukon land rush. But again, it rose, it faded. And now all of those, not all, but many of those properties are now within the white gold umbrella. Can you talk with us a bit about White Gold?

17:00 Absolutely. Great to be here. Thanks for including us. I really appreciated some of your commentary at the beginning and look forward to discussing that a little bit further on. Whitegold is a very unique gold exploration company for a number of reasons. I think part of the main thing that's attracted us to get involved with White Gold through the Par 1 Group, which is a Toronto-based merchant bank that has been extensively investing in mining and exploration for almost 20 years now, was the uniqueness of the opportunity that was presented to us from Shawn Wright. As you mentioned, White Gold is based in Dawson, a district in Yukon, and this is the area that was made famous by the Klondike Gold Rush of the late 1800s, where People flocked from literally around the world, risking it all in search of riches. Since that time, there was a tremendous amount of gold that has been found, approximately 20 million ounces that's on record from surface and plaster mining camps in that district.

17:59 If I had to guess, it would probably be a lot more than that. It just didn't get reported. But oddly, the area hadn't really seen any modern day exploration

18:09 since that time. And even to this day, you know, there's still very active and successful placer mining operations going on. And you see the TV shows, some of the Discovery Network's most popular. But it wasn't until about 10 or 12 years ago where

18:27 people started to again think there's 20 million ounces of gold here on surface. If it didn't come from the sky, if it's on the surface, there's a high probability there's a lot more in the ground. Let's go try to look for that and apply some modern day exploration techniques. Nothing even terribly fancy, just drilling to go find some more of this and the leader in that initiative was Sean Ryan. Sean Ryan is a very highly decorated and celebrated prospector winning a number of awards at PDAC and other organizations and he was able to delineate a very effective exploration methodology that led to a tremendous amount of success. And what was particularly unique about this district is, believe it or not, this area was never glaciated. So it's not a well crop. And what Sean was able to do was to find correlations in the soil geochemistry that would be strong indicators of Gold mineralization in the hard rock.

19:25 And through developing this process, refining it, he was able to lead to some very significant exploration success. The most significant early on was Underworld, which was almost immediately after their discovery, I think within a year, taken out by Kinross for $120 million.

19:45 Tremendous success created what was literally a 2nd Gold Rush 2.0 in the district when dozens and dozens of juniors went up there and tried their luck. A few of them had some very interesting work that was done and found some things that worked. Of that group, probably the most successful was Kamenak who made the coffee discovery which was acquired by Goldcorp in 2016 for 520 million dollars. This was an incredible amount of activity that happened in the area, some tremendous amount of success for really such

20:17 a short period of time and limited amount of work that was done. What was odd is that the work sort of tapered off, as you mentioned, come 2012, 2013. And I think that very much was just a reflection of the lack of capital for the junior resources market during that time. But the way it sort of all played out was very much what led to White Goal, that Sean, who had been in the area for over 20 years, had staked up the majority of the district, done his work, and in auctioning these properties off to different juniors who had done a little bit more work, because the arrangements were

20:53 auction agreements, when the juniors sort of either put their direct attention somewhere else or paid the financing, Sean ended up getting all these properties back with the benefit of an extra $25 million of work. He spent the next couple of years looking through the data and picking the best in the crop and compiling those all into one package, which was the genesis of White Gold. That's when he came to us in Toronto. We saw the opportunity and literally fell off our chairs because what he presented was the opportunity to effectively own an entire district, which is approximately 40% of the claims, but in reality, 80% of the targets in a tier 1 jurisdiction in Canada, somewhere that has such a rich history, so much recent exploration success with Underworld

21:39 and Kamenak both being taken out by majors, all packaged up into one. We felt this was second to none. We think this area has a lot more, they're literally just scratching the surface there, and we just needed to jump on it. There's actually such a unique opportunity, we said, Sean, this is the kind of thing that the majors would love to have in their portfolio. That's when we went to speak to Agnico and a number of other majors, and they certainly bought into it right away and agreed and actually put up our first major investment to start our exploration work in 2017 when

22:11 the company was created. So that's how we now have Agnico as our 20% shareholder. Kinross also made us a shareholder because we sort of had the whole package and we're talking Kinross, you got beautiful undergrowth asset in here. Why don't you, you know, we have the team that discovered it. We're the only guys that are really doing any significant exploration in the district. You know, we're literally, Sean and his team know more about here than anyone else. Why don't you work with us to help you advance it? And those conversations led to Kinross partnering with us, rolling their assets into White Gold and taking back a major equity position in the company. And there's a lot of key catalysts coming up later this year for, or throughout this year for White Gold and really for the rest of our other 2 companies here. And we want to make sure that we're going to close with that and talking about each company and precisely what you have coming up in the very near future. So this is kind of a barbell panel.

23:09 And in the middle here, one of the topics that's become just vitally important for all companies and throughout from exploration through development and production is ESG investing has become a bit of a buzzword out there and everybody's applying this filter to their investments. And you know, it stands for environmental social governance. And if you look at the way mining has been historically done over the years, it seems like it's been at odds with every aspect of ES, ES and G all along the spectrum. So, you know, let's go ahead and analyze that in kind of an organized fashion. Let's start with environmental. And let's see, I'd like to see how your companies, you know, if you talk about an industry where you're digging big holes in the ground and altering scenic vistas forever, it seems to be at odds with the environmental aspect of ESG.

24:09 So I'd like to take a little bit of a different spin on this. If each of you could tell me that If you're at a cocktail party and you're talking to somebody outside the industry who is very looking for ESG investments and you say you're in mining, how do you address

24:28 that natural ambivalence toward mining and the environment? How do you as a company try to combat that perhaps public sentiment toward mining in general? Scott, let's go ahead and start with you and keep that same order. Sure. As a gold miner, it's a little different, but we also have a battery metal company, so it's easy to go that route.

24:54 There's a bumper sticker I saw years ago and it said if it can't be grown, it has to be mined. That's a nice, catchy little way to explain it at a cocktail party. But working in Canada, we're pretty stringent for our environmental standards here. But that being said, Our projects are mostly class ones right at this point. So we have, we have personally haven't had the experience of going all the way up to the mining stage, but for what we're going through, it's pretty stringent. We're just starting to go through a class 3 application for our battery metals company.

25:31 And And so we're learning a lot about the process there as well. Yeah, it's a bit easier for companies that are involved in the energy metals and the metals powering this new electrification revolution and alternative energy and the like and battery metals. But for gold and diamonds, it's a bit of a harder

25:56 burden or hurdle to leap over and justify that. Ken, what's your reaction? What has been your reaction by the public toward mining in general, and how do you approach it? Yeah, I mean, it's a fair question. I think, with respect, it's particularly safe

26:27 for this panel when we're looking at projects that are in northern Canada and in the 3 northern territories, my experiences in The Northwest territories in Nunavut and I. I'm. A firm believer that our industry is an ally in helping government to provide the services and the supports that are needed to create and maintain resilient and healthy communities in the North and the Northern Territories. We bring in. We bring in money, obviously, which is part of that. But with that comes the need for jobs and for training. And it's through our work that we can bring in the funding that's required to help government address some of the issues that are required for those communities. And one of the, and in other, sort of in, I guess, the main way that it can be framed is I think that our industry

27:08 is a leader when it comes to reconciliation with indigenous communities in the country. We're the largest employer, private sector employer of indigenous people in this country with good paying jobs in regions where the economies aren't as diversified as they are down south, and that's hugely important. You talk about the S G is being 3 different things, but they are all tied together. Another important component of that, and particularly, I'm pretty sure Yukon is the same way, but in both of the NWT and Nunavut, is land use decisions are made through a co-management land use system where indigenous communities are directly involved in. Land use decisions and permitting projects and making them go forward. They have a direct say in whether projects move forward or not, and it's very unique compared to anywhere else in Canada that that system isn't in place. These are modern. These modern comanagement systems are unique to the territories and should be celebrated.

28:05 They're sort of the kind of system that that Canada can hold up to the world and say we are. Managing our resources in a responsible way, and we're putting in processes that ensure that we are involving the local communities and in the territories predominantly those are indigenous communities.

28:23 David, how are you addressing the environmental aspects of ESG investing? Topical issue these days, for us it's sort of always been part of our fabric. At White Gold, Sean Ryan, he's lived in that Dawson District for 20 years now. He's part of the community, as are a lot of people on our team. We really share that belief that any project needs to benefit everyone equally to make it work. So that's sort of always been at the forefront of our ideologies. And just specific examples that I can give you of things that I've seen over the years is technology. Adapting new technology has been a great tool to promote additional environmental sensitivity.

29:10 Some specific examples I can give on our program as an exploration is drones to drills or drones technology allows us to cover tremendous amount of area for our visual work. We're using it for LIDAR, other geotechnical studies now. And now we're using a rechargeable battery device to do this work, which in the past might have been a helicopter or an airplane. So you sort of see a direct return in that regard. Some of our other techniques, we have what's known as a GT probe, and that's a hammer drill that'll go in and take a sample of bedrock. That's done in place of traditional crunching. You know, crunching still is very effective and when done and done properly and properly reclaimed, it's great. But if you have the opportunity to put a 6 inch hole into the bedrock as opposed to maybe, you know, scarring up the side of a ridge, then that's something else that I think is very, at least visually noticeable.

30:07 And I think just to touch on this point a little further, not all mining is equal, and Canada has very high standards, as was mentioned. So mining in Canada is a different animal than mining in a lot of places around the world. I think I make sure that's very clearly identified with people that might want to throw it all into one bucket. And when you do it right, and you're sensitive to the people around you, your community, and everyone's sharing the same goal that, you know, it's not a bad thing. You know, mining is net beneficial to the stakeholders when done right. That's a great point, David, and that I don't think the general public out there is really aware of how modern mining has evolved and reclamation, reclamation bonding, et cetera. The dedication there is to not only working with local populations, but also restoring the environment post mining.

31:00 That leads into, we get to the other aspects, social and governance. And I think these work so hand in hand, particularly in the Canadian North, when you have governments so involved with local relations or permitting and everything else that we can address this together. Scott, how has your company approached that? In mining, it's easy to see that the right thing is also the smart thing to do in regards of local relations. But not everybody has seen that historically. Today, I think it is recognized that you have to get along with the communities in which you're working. But how does that work with local governments as well? Because sometimes the local governments are having missteps in local and community relations and permitting. Have you run into anything of that sort?

31:54 Well, we've been working in the Yukon for about 10 years. Our first project was out by Wellesley Lake. And one of the first things that we did was we approached the First Nation, White River First Nation, and we started an engagement process early. We ended up being the first company in the Yukon to do a first, a class 1 agreement with the First Nation. And we kind of, we built that into the way we work. And we found that engaging with not only First Nations and local governments, but also with making sure that you work with people in the community as well. And it's good business because I guess we have the luxury of working out of Dawson. We work with similar groups to David.

32:41 This summer we were working with Ground Truth and they're a local outfit and you're giving back to the environment, the community, and it's worked really well for us. Ken, you addressed some of this in your last statements as well. Can you talk a bit more about that and not just the importance of working with the local community, but how does that relate with the local government and some of the advantages, I guess, of working in Canada's north, which is much more, I guess, evolved than a lot of other regions around the world. Yeah, I mean, maybe taking as an example our NowYap project in Nunavut, I mean, one of the real positives of working in Nunavut is it's a settled land claim. And the entire territory was formed as a result of a land claim, a modern land claim negotiated between Canada and Inuit in the Canadian Eastern Arctic.

33:40 And so the playing field is set under that agreement and we know what the regulatory process is like. For our project itself, as I mentioned, it's unique, and it's so close to the community. It's actually the Kimberlite, the diamond deposit, is located within the municipality of Naujaat. So we work from town, and it's only about 8 kilometers from the community. There aren't many roads in Nunavut as we know, and a road would benefit our project tremendously. But it also would be a benefit to the community. There's an ATV trail that goes out near our deposit that the local hunters and trappers used to get out on the land for traditional land use activities and harvesting. There's carving stone and just natural aggregate fill deposits out along that way. So We did some initial work looking at how a road might work to get out to our deposit and in the end it ended up flipping and the community has leadership said, we want to be the lead on this.

34:39 We'd like to have this trail built because we see these other uses and it works very well for us because as a junior company, very difficult for us to go to the market and raise money to build a piece of infrastructure without news or results related to it. That takes time and this isn't our business. But what we can do is pay a toll to use existing infrastructure if it works in that way. And we've been working on a conversation with the Hamlet and going together then to approach other levels of government for funding for this piece of infrastructure to get built. And I just learned last week that an application made through Canton or as password of the first initial hurdle in the most recent round and moving together. And so it's all about just looking at what are common goals.

35:25 As I said, I don't think with what we do, there's no point in doing what we do if there are not gonna be benefits to local communities. If their lives are not gonna be improved by what we're doing, then we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. And this is sort of a wholesale change, but it is something I think our industry has been doing for a long time. And we are leaders in it. And we should champion, I think, a little bit better than we do some of the benefits that we bring to the communities where we work. Great points. There are obvious synergies, but they need to be made obvious. You need to educate the local communities on what their synergies will be. David, with all the projects that White Gold has throughout the Yukon, I can imagine it's a full-time job in your company, in community relations and government relations permitting and the like, what are the challenges that you faced and how have you overcome them?

36:25 You know, we're pretty fortunate with our package. It's pretty tightly concentrated in the Dawson district. And this is an area that's seen mining, effectively, primarily plaster mining for over 100 years now. So it's really part of the fabric of the community and what we ensured that we've done right from the very beginning was to engage the local communities, you know, in our process, as part of our process, as a partner, the same as we did with the government. And we've been very fortunate to have a great working relationship with them. And, you know, that, but that is, it's something that's natural, but it's something I think that all junior companies need to incorporate into their planning. Furthermore, we've been fortunate to have the support of the territorial government who also recognize that as a key initiative and has worked alongside us in that process.

37:21 And through those efforts and through their very sort of open support for mining initiatives, we've been able to sort of greatly progress our projects as desired all the way along. So we have resources dedicated to that. We stand on top of that. We make sure everyone is on the same page at all given time. So it's been a very great process so far for us. We're very fortunate. You know, one of the things that I wanted to address in this panel, and I think we're running a little bit short in time to have her go around a specific question on it, but I think we have addressed it. And that's what are the advantages and opportunities of Canada's North for mining, for mining exploration across the board.

38:12 And I think we've kind of outlined that, all 3 of you, in that it's not just obviously you're going where the geology dictates you should go. It's you're going where the metals and minerals will be found. But also, you're working in an environment that is so much more progressive in terms of community relations and permitting and respecting the environment that that just by following the rules will get you will do so much more to reduce the risk in mining, exploration, development and production, but there's just a mindset in the region of doing more than just the minimum. And that's all that's necessary in today's world for mining that you have to do more than the minimum. You have to reach out to the local community. You have to explore the synergies of the local communities.

39:05 And despite the fact that the system in Canada's north is completely set up to do that, it is important and incumbent on the companies to go the extra mile. And it seems like in my experience, they all do. The other thing, of course, is the importance of rule of law. There are great deposits around the world, but I know in Gold Newsletter, I steer clear of a number of those because Not only do I not like the risk, but investing across the board, investors are looking for safe, secure regimes, environments, and areas to invest in. And Canada's North obviously qualifies on that. What I'd like to do is spend our remaining time in examining each of your companies and what the catalysts are coming up. That's news flow is of course the mother's milk of junior mining.

40:01 And you need to keep investors engaged, need to have news, and you need to, these achievements and developments to keep your share price going, rising, and your company growing. Scott, you have some news that you've been waiting on. I know that the labs have been backed up from drilling, but you must be really anticipating getting your results from from your last drill program out. Yeah, no, for sure. We, It's been a funny year. We were pretty late getting started. We got really lucky with the weather, so we were able to work well into October, but that kind of put us at the end of the line for the laboratories. So we've had results, and they're starting to roll in now, finally, which is pretty exciting.

40:47 But it's kind of funny because we haven't really been, I haven't been calling the lab, getting them to speed up. We're kind of, we're in a funny marker right now. So there's no point in really in kind of rushing it. So it hasn't bothered us too much aside from waiting. It's kind of like having your Christmas presents out but you can't open them yet. But yeah, we're definitely looking forward to those results and that'll definitely help plan out next year and what we're gonna do going back. But I guess in terms of our 60 mile project, the structural geology is really important. So those are kind of the things that we're gonna be focusing on next year. With 20 kilometers of strike length, we wanna get a better idea of where we're going to target next year.

41:34 Yeah, and 60 Mile is exciting because it was the source of such great placer gold production, and it is the classic conundrum in a lot of exploration is where did all that gold come from? You have a large project at 60 mile. It has a storied history in Yukon gold exploration. So I'm very excited about that. Especially with 3, you have 3 placer operations on site. So it kind of, if you look back at the environmental aspects, a lot of that's kind of been gone through with these placer operators as well. So it makes it a lot easier. You have the road access. Yeah. And one of the key things that I like to point out to people about flow is you have a very low market cap. So any bit of good news can have a really an outsized reaction in the market. So looking forward to those drill results coming out and hopefully there'll be a better market to welcome them when they do come out. But I would expect it's I would expect that those results are in the near future and I would hope that a better market is also in the near future.

42:38 Ken, one-stop shop for diamond exploration these days it seems to be, at least on the exploration end. When I look at North Arrow's project portfolio, it's really quite extensive. And I know that you have some, from a technical aspect, great people at the helm in picking out these projects. What kind of catalysts are we looking for coming up over the weeks and months ahead? Well, thanks for that. Yeah, we like to think that our group is well positioned. And we've, as I said earlier, you know, diamonds have been a bit tough, but we stuck to our guns. We have over half a dozen diamond projects that we have been picking away at, making discoveries on. But before the pandemic, we'd found at least a new Kimberlite on our projects every year for the preceding 5 years.

43:31 So 2020 was tough though, with our projects being located where they were. We didn't have really much field work done at all. We just couldn't access our properties, but we were able to sort of recalibrate a little bit. Mentioned now yet where we'll be collecting a bulk sample this summer. That was a deal that we really had almost fully put together this time last year to do the sample in 2020. With a partner company, we had to kind of regroup when the pandemic really hit, rejigged it a bit and announced it in June and allowing us to be in a position to start the program for this summer. And so that's a $5.6 million bulk sample. We'll be starting there in June. Results won't come till later in the year, but there's almost a built-in catalyst. And Our partner, Burgundy Diamonds, is listed on the ASX and not the Australian exchange.

44:19 This is their, they have a number of things on the go, but this is their main project, their flagship project. They're earning a 40% interest and their market cap on the Australian exchange right now is in the neighborhood of $80 million Canadian. Our market cap on the TSX is about 12 million. So there's a bit of a disconnect there. We have other work underway as well. I mentioned in the Lacta Gra region, we're doing some geophysics at Loki. So this is right across the lake from the Diavik mine. We've been chasing a source to an indicator train for a number of years, doing some geophysics, and if targets come out of that, we'll be looking to get drilling there. And on the gold side, I'll sneak in, we also have a bit of a sleeper project up in the Hope Bay Belt, something we've held onto for a long time, waiting originally for TMAC to get into production at the Doris mine. They obviously had some challenges and were recently purchased by Agnico Eagle and we're quite happy to have Agnico as a partner.

45:11 Our property is immediately a long trend from the Doris deposit, covers the same geology, has the same structural setting, the same style mineralization, and we're right on tidewater as well. So we're looking at ways to try and leverage that and get some work done. And then the other catalyst is just a change in sentiment for diamonds. As I mentioned, we're seeing investments being made throughout the diamond pipeline. And if there's an overall change in sentiment and investors are looking for some exposure to diamonds, North Arrow is the best position Canadian diamond explorer, without question. Yes. Thanks, Ken. I really appreciate that. That is exciting. Diamond exploration is really exciting, but I tell people they need to look at it. Find the best people in the industry because if you think you understand gold exploration, diamonds can be 3 times as more difficult to understand because there are so many other factors involved, but you need to focus on the best projects and the best people.

46:07 And the rewards can actually, can really be incredible. David, talking about one-stop shops for Yukon exploration, white gold is kind of it. As I mentioned at the outset, I have a long history with a lot of the projects involved. And remember the staking by Sean for a lot of the ones you have. A key challenge for white gold has been just so many projects that you have and I congratulate the company and focusing or having at least a dual focus on the resource that you have and your resource right now is of such size that you don't need that much more to get over a hurdle to attract major, really major interest more than just a joint venture partner.

46:53 And I don't know that that's really been highlighted or recognized rather by the investing public. Tell us a bit about your plans over the next weeks and months. For sure. Thanks. You're exactly right. So our gross resource is about 1.8 million ounces. It's 2.25 grams, primarily open pit. So something that I don't think is fully recognized by the market. That asset in size and grade profile is probably one of a very few on a short list that you can sort of find in a junior exploration company in Canada these days. So I think As we continue to see the markets evolve, there's going to be additional interest in that project. We've seen quite a bit of interest. And I think for a company like ours, it's at the point where it's ready to be moved to the next level. Our expertise is exploration. That's what we want to do. It's now ready to go to feasibility. So we're sort of evaluating a number of opportunities in that regard. And our focus in terms of growing that deposit hasn't been necessarily sort of delimitation type drilling. We've been looking for satellite deposits in and around the close vicinity. And we've been very successful at doing that in the last couple of years.

48:04 We made a new high-grade discovery 2km to the west, which was the Orion Surprise. We did some diamond drilling on that last year, had some tremendous success, Gold in all the holes, most of the holes, 10 plus gram type material. So we are, you know, sitting here kind of about a month or so out from getting into the season and just, you know, eagerly kind of chomping at the bit, very excited to get back out there. I think this year is going to be another, you know, very exciting season where we're going to be hitting on a couple of our top priorities. A couple of things couldn't get done last year with a bit of a smaller than normal season with COVID, but we're going to be able to get to that. I think there's a lot more opportunity, a lot of blue sky on that golden saddle.

48:50 With the company at Gartner, I do think we're a little bit of a super junior. We have blue sky opportunity, total greenfield stuff. We have recent new discoveries, which we're following up on. And then we have this advanced asset. And the value of the company is certainly not reflecting the sum of all these parts. We're fortunate to have a couple analysts that cover us that have a target of $3. We're unfortunately not trading anywhere near that right now, but the people that can take the time to understand the story, understand the opportunity between the existing value, respective value, they certainly see it there. So we're going to be spending some more time and effort in that regard. We had a couple of very exciting discoveries last year on our JP Ross property and on some other targets closer to the Golden Saddle, which definitely warrant some additional drilling.

49:38 And then I think we have 2 of our most highly anticipated targets up this year. One is our Betty, that's contiguous to Newmont's coffee deposit. We drilled that last in 2018, had some great results. We've done some additional structural work and everything's just lining up, falling right along that Coffee Creek fault system, lining up right with the soil geochemistry and the preliminary drilling. So We're pretty keen to do some more drilling there. Another one of our earlier stage projects, but 1 that Sean Ryan says everyone's always been asking him to drill first, is our Bonanza target. That one is right outside of Dawson on Bonanza Creek, which was the site of the initiation of the Gold Rush 100 years ago.

50:23 6 million ounces of Gold pulled right out of that creek. We've done a lot of structural work. We see how that structure is sort of continuing along right into our property. That's where Klondike Gold has had so much success drilling their project. And based on the structural and geochemical work we've done in the soils this year, we've lined up a couple of really interesting targets we're going to be doing some more work on. So perfect timing, you know, getting into the season now. This is, you know, exciting time to sort of get invested in UConn here, which I think we're very much looking forward to. Well, great. All 3 companies at great levels, great entry levels, thanks to the market. We'd like to see better prices, But from an investor's point of view, great time to begin getting involved with all 3 companies. It's come time in our panel now to open it up to some questions from the audience who have been involved in the chat session. So let's go ahead and get started on that.

51:21 OK. We've given the audience some time to submit some questions, and I'm happy to go through them now. We are a little bit short on time right now, but I do think we have enough time to go ahead and address a couple of the questions. Our first question from the audience is actually something I addressed in my comments a bit, but it gives us a great chance for our panelists to submit their views as well. The question is, can you speak to why mining in Canada is so different from mining in other places? What are the benefits? Let's go ahead on to Ken. So Ken, can you address to why mining in Canada is so different from mining in other places? Sure, yeah.

52:06 I guess I'm not totally sure that it is different. I mean, mining is a key part of the Canadian economy, and it's different that way, that it's very important in our past, but also in our future going forward. I think that one area of mining where we stand apart is that we have really the expertise here when it comes to mining, but also when it comes to exploration and technology for discovery. When it comes to financing exploration and financing mine development, we have a leading financial capacity here. And as we've been talking about on ESG, on regulation and environmental regulation and permitting, it's some of the highest standards in the world. And that's why mining should be happening in Canada, because we know that it's being done in a responsible manner and we continue to improve on that through regulation and legislation and some things like the co-management regulatory system that I touched on for the territories as being a real leader.

53:19 So I think that's kind of how I would frame that. And hopefully it was getting to sort of where the question was coming from. But that's where, bottom line is we're a leader in all avenues in the entire pipeline of discovering deposits, evaluating them, putting them into production and reclamation and the regulatory framework around that. David, obviously, exploration companies go where the metals and minerals are, and Canada is blessed with an extreme endowment of metals and minerals across the board. What other advantages are there for investing in Canada and exploring in Canada? I think the biggest advantage is known regulatory framework.

54:05 Like you said, people are gonna go over the mineral endowment is Canada has been blessed. We've seen a tremendous history over the last century plus, but it's Canada's North, which offers a very unique opportunity, right? We're still in Canada. We have the benefit of the same regulatory environment, certainty, which is critical to the investment community, but it's still relatively very underexplored. It's as underexplored as some of the most wild frontiers in the world. So as an investor, why would you sort of take that additional political risk, safety risk, etc. When you can stay in your own backyard, literally, with the same upside opportunity for exploration and development. And we've seen that. And now you see the majors starting to move in and the last number of acquisitions that we've seen evolving within Canada, GT4 in British Columbia, Agnico coming into OPEI.

54:52 The focus very much is going to be first and foremost in places where investors and the majors can comfortably operate. Great point, David. The exploration game is 1 where the odds are stacked against you to begin with. So why add even greater risk in terms of political risk when you have such a great environment and high potential environment, highly prospective environment already in Canada, but with rule of law. Scott, I think we may have, do we have your microphone? Is that working? Yeah, I can hear you. Okay. Put your spin on it, please. Sure. Well, For us, Canada is predictable. It's what we know. We work in 3 different jurisdictions across Canada, but each one has its own benefits.

55:38 We'd like to focus on areas that have had mining success in the past. Especially up North, you're working in a place with a mining culture, so it's part of the fabric. David touched on that earlier on, but it's a really important point, especially working out of Dawson, it's a mining town. And yeah, obviously up north, less people, more land, it's, yeah, you're going to get in less people's way. But it's obviously important to work with the different groups that you're working with, with the First Nations, the communities, and make sure that you exceed everyone's expectations. Well, Again, if you, there are boxes to check, but that's a good thing that there are boxes to check because once you do, there is some surety in the process, rule of law, and you don't have these bad surprises that you can get so many other places in the world.

56:31 Our next question, and this may be our last question with the time constraints we have, what are investors often surprised about in your ESG process? And I guess that's beyond the obvious response that they're surprised that you have an ESG process. And can you talk to that, Ken, let's start back with you. I think if you talk to investors about these processes, I mean, the whole point of them and sort of this evolution towards the concept is that it's adding value. When done properly and done well, then it sort of lifts the project up rather than being a burden. Probably the biggest surprise, and I think particularly for projects in the north, is the level at which companies, and even very small companies, have been following some of these concepts. Not necessarily under that moniker, but have been following a number of these concepts and procedures for quite a while.

57:33 And that starts when you first acquire a property and enter a community for the first time. And that's usually your exploration geologist. And those people are quite good at getting to know folks on the ground and starting that process of communication. So I think there can be some surprise there. And then also I think as we touched on earlier, just when it does come to employment opportunities and economic diversification, when we're looking at the more generally our projects in the more rural areas of the country where the economy isn't as diversified and our industry provides very good paying jobs and opportunities that they come with and how that can be very important as part of the whole process.

58:22 David, what are your views on that? What's the response you get from investors in regard to your ESG policies? And I guess also the local communities when you address that and you check those boxes as we were talking about? I think the investors are generally very impressed by the fact that we have such a thoughtful approach to ESG. And there's 2 reasons. One is it's the right thing to do, right? You know, we want to make sure all the stakeholders in our area involved with the company and peripherally are all going to benefit. That's just fundamental to sort of the value system of our company and our investors and our shareholders. But I think From an investment perspective, they're impressed because it's coming to your point of checking the boxes. It's like a chess match. We're not thinking 1 or 2 moves ahead and we find something, do we not? Then when we do have success, what do we have to start thinking of? We're thinking 10, 15 moves ahead to make sure that in the eventuality that there will be success, and obviously we're very hopeful that there will be, and we've seen a great amount of success so far, that we've already started to contemplate what needs to be done, and a lot of the groundwork for what needs to be done is done along the way. So we're going to avoid surprises, we're going to avoid hiccups, and that's going to allow the process to move much more smoothly and quickly to the eventual goals of either developing a minor or for having a major come in and take us out. And the majors really appreciate that thoughtfulness in the process. That's something they do and that's something they'll continue to need to do.

59:48 To see a junior having that thought, once in that country where the benefit of majors and shareholders, they've helped to ingrain that thought process because they ask us those questions and we need to make sure we have the answers for them in real time. It's been a great exercise and learning process, to have these types of partners in our company. Good points. The end game for most junior exploration companies, the end game at least that they hope for is a takeout by a major at some point. And a major is going to want to know that all of these issues have been settled appropriately. Again, the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do. Scott, what are your views on this? How are investors surprised or impressed with your approach to ESG?

1:00:33 Yeah, one of the biggest surprises is it's actually good business to work with your communities. We're a small company, so we don't want to import an entire operation into this far region where we're working in the north. It's better business to work with the people who are actually there, the people that know the land. I'm out of here. Bye bye. Bye bye. Bye bye.