By NICK STEWART
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) International Convention, Trade Show and Investors Exchange spotlighted exploration as one of the cornerstones at this year’s 75th event.
“Canada saw $1.4 billion worth of exploration last year, which was a record year,” says Rod Thomas, director, PDAC, and chair of the convention planning committee.
“This year, it’s estimated to be $1.7 billion, which is 20 per cent up from last year, so exploration is something we’re looking to emphasize throughout the conference.”
The event located, at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre March 4-7, included a trade show featuring 282 companies, and an investors’ exchange where 429 public companies can exhibit their projects and attract investment. A core shack of 46 companies cycled through 23 available booths, displaying maps and cross-sections of core samples from projects in various stages of exploration, participated.
Approximately 200 presenters spoke with technical sessions touching on finance, diamond exploration and mining, aboriginal participation, and challenges facing the industry in the 21st century.
Seven short courses covered such topics as the basics of diamond drilling, how to invest in the resources sector, mitigate risk when investing in companies working in various countries, and an overview of Arctic mineral deposits.
The convention also highlighted the convention’s diamond anniversary as a general decorative theme, and with a special luncheon and gala evening.
Thomas, a consulting geologist who also served as the planning chair last year, says 14,500 attended the 2006 convention. Pre-registrations exceeded that by about 20 per cent.
Thomas said the conference featured more than 40 delegations from countries such as Russia, Colombia, China, Peru, Paraguay and Indonesia. More than 100 international media outlets were also accredited, with Latin American media taking a special interest in the show, Thomas said.
Having been a geologist for 30 years, Thomas has seen the PDAC convention evolve alongside his own career.
“When I was a student in the 1970’s, the event was held at the Royal York Hotel, and it was a terrific time, though it eventually began bursting at the seams. We’re not too big for our current venue, but we’re certainly occupying greater and greater amounts of space.”
A 2005 survey of attendees found that four-fifths of the 800 respondents said networking to be one of their main reasons for attending, while half said it was their primary reason. Thomas says this focus on networking is unsurprising, given the international nature of the event and the vast number of participants. However, with so many events packed into the convention’s four-day schedule, attendees must plan beforehand or find themselves short on time.
“Some people complain it’s not an intimate affair any more, and quite frankly, it’s not,” Thomas said. “It has grown beyond that, but on the other hand, so long as you plan your attack, you’ll get to see what you want. I tell people that they meet someone they haven’t seen in a long time, they’d better talk to them then, because they’ll likely not see them again for the duration."
