2021 Yukon Exploration Investment Summit, Part 2

0:08 Well, good morning, everyone. My name is Taylor Tone. I'm the host and CEO of BTB Business Television. For those who don't know me, we have a show that's been on the air for just over 23 years. I've got the banner right behind me, no promo. And I think all 3 of these gentlemen I've had the privilege of interviewing over the years. We've traveled up to the Yukon for a number of years. I was actually just saying to the CEOs how I still remember probably about 18 years ago, our camera crews flying over some trees in the Yukon and it was a project owned at the time by a company called Stratagold and that, those trees are now the Victoria Gold Mine up in Canada's north And it's astounding to me the growth that I've personally seen up in this area.

1:06 And we've had the privilege of filming some companies all the way through to from the very early days of thinking that there might be something there to actually drilling and proving and then throughout all the way through to production. So it's pretty exciting. BTV broadcasts on BNN Bloomberg in Canada. And we're very excited because we just got picked up by Fox Business News coming into the fall season. So that'll air Sundays at 5 p.m. I have to get the plug, I'm told, on Eastern Standard Time, right after football. And we do have a special Yukon Mining focused episode as well, and that will air in September. It's scheduled for the 2nd to 3rd week so watch out for those dates as well.

1:58 So what we're going to do is we've got about a 1 hour time slot before they cut us all off and it will be recorded so you can share the link afterwards as well. We'll spend about 40 to 45 minutes with these lovely CEOs, they're going to tell us their story momentarily And then we're going to have an opportunity to have some live Q&A. So feel free, there's a panel on the side for questions. If you have any questions, if you want to target them directly to a company or specifically to a CEO, Feel free to do that and we'll try our very best to get through all the questions before the end of our hour. So let's get started. What I'd like to do is have each of the gentlemen introduce themselves and we'll start with the CEO.

2:48 You know, I'm gonna be easy. I'm gonna start at the top of my screen and that's Peter Tellman. He's the CEO of Klondike Gold. These folks are actively drilling their 586 square kilometer, it's a big one, Klondike District Project near Dawson City in the Yukon Territory. So Peter, share a little bit about the company and walk us through the opportunity here.

3:15 Well, briefly, Klondike Gold owns the entirety of the Klondike Gold Rush District that is world famous, arguably it's the most iconic gold rush in the world. Gold was discovered there in 1896. Since then, there have been 20 million ounces of gold mined from creek gravels on surface with no known source. And from really the 80s on to 2015, when I took over Klondike Gold as CEO, the prevailing geological wisdom was that it had all been eroded away. There was nothing there, nothing to see, move along, forget about it. And so from 2015, we more or less had to start from scratch, do basic geoscience, which really hadn't ever been done. We've made a number of different discoveries, determined that there's an enormous amount of gold in the Klondike.

4:06 We've basically gone uphill from Bonanza Creek and uphill from Eldorado Creek, which are the 2 biggest plaster producing creeks in the Klondike, and made significant discoveries. Right now we are drilling for a maiden mineral resource, first one ever coming soon and we hope to have that ready and published in 2022. Awesome, so that's so actively actively drilling to prove that all up right now. It's been busy. It's been a busy few years. Yes. And there's a lot of, we've just finished, we're still, we just added on a drill program, but we are drilling now and we'll continue drilling into September.

4:46 Whatever we've drilled will inform the resource. We have most or all of the assays from this year still to come, plus a bunch of other interesting things through the fall. All right, so everyone keep your eyes on that. And then next, thank you, Peter. Next we have Greg Johnson. I've known Greg for a long time. I was trying to think about the first company I remember visiting you with, and there was Nova Gold, I think, way back in the day. Like we're talking over a decade ago. Last metal press cycle,

5:16 Yeah. So I've known Greg for a long, long time. They recently announced that Metallic Minerals, significant progress at their alluvial gold operations in the famous Klondike Gold District in the Yukon. Greg, let's hear a bit more about Metallic Minerals and about what you folks are doing over there. Yeah, well, appreciate that. Thanks, Taylor. So Metallic Minerals is a relatively new company. We started putting it together in the bear market back in 2016. Myself and a number of other former Nova Gold alumni came together and we set our target really initially at Keno Hill in the Yukon, which is really our flagship Silver project. We are a Silver-focused exploration development company.

6:02 And the opportunity in Keno was it was this iconic high-grade producing Silver District found shortly after the Klondike Gold Rush produced over 220Moz of high-grade Silver and our neighbour, Alexco, has brought it back into production here just in the last year. So it's an exciting development for the Yukon. Our focus is on those underexplored parts of the Keno Hill District, on trend with those known productive structures, kind of what we would call headframe exploration. We've had great success in 2020 last year. We're following that up with a multi-drill program. We're targeting about 10,000 meters. Just finished the first ever deep IP survey out in the East Keno part of the district, looking at some new deposit styles, some new geologic settings that hadn't been previously recognized.

6:54 The team's pretty excited about, to come into an old district like this and start to come up with Things that hadn't been seen before is pretty exciting, especially where those have implications of great scale

7:06 We've identified a dozen Kilometric scale soil anomalies that we got the first drill holes into last year We're following that up with both RC and core drilling this year. The program started early in the summer. So we're starting to see numbers just starting to trickle in. We'll probably have some initial results there soon. So that's an exciting program. It's the biggest drill campaign we've had to date at Kato Hill. And of course, with Alexco going back into production, it means all the infrastructure is already in place on this project. So it really gives us an opportunity to focus on exploration, which is what we do well, and hopefully make some big discoveries that

7:42 can eventually be quickly brought into production. We have a couple of other assets. You mentioned the alluvial portfolio that's up near Peter's neck of the woods. Our focus is different than Peter's. In this case, these are leases that we own the alluvial rights. We're licensing these to experienced plaster operators. We've had 2 operators come in and do quite an extensive sonic drill program this year. They're doing the bulk sample testing now. So we're expecting here next month to see potentially the 1st Royalties

8:13 for production on that. So that's an exciting development for Metallic. And then the last thing I'll just mention is our recent La Plata acquisition, also a high-grade, past Silver and Gold producer in the southwestern US. And we launched our first ever drill campaign on this. This is a target that was previously drilled by Rio Tinto and Freeport. It's a pore-free system with an intact, epithermal high-grade main district around it. So we're excited to be working on that, very similar in many ways to the targets we're looking at Keno Hill. So it's in terms of the year, It's been a challenging year for investors with the metal prices and the ups and downs, but I think fundamentally the industry

8:52 is going full bore. Many companies have been able to raise money, including ourselves. We're well funded well into 2022. And this is going to be an exciting year for us in terms of delivery news over the next couple of months and into early next year. Excellent and and just for the viewers here too, how close are you in proximity the Keene Hill project to Alexco in production there? I mean they're inter-fingered. Our grounds directly adjoin theirs, theirs adjoin ours. They're primarily on the western half of the district and we primarily cover the southern and eastern half of the district. Okay, awesome. Thank you so much Greg. And last but not least we have Brandon McDonald who I just actually saw your clip that we're going to be airing on BNN.

9:38 You have some recent news clip with us. So that's exciting. And that's because they got lots of exciting things going on, you guys. They just recently listed in the US on the OTCQB and they're actively exploring. The rigs are turning right now. You guys seem to be continuing to intersect high-grade zinc, lead and silver on your property. So Brandon, share a little bit more about this exciting project, not gold, but something that we all need to know about. So let's hear a little bit from you. You know, Fireweed,

10:13 a purpose-built company around this asset, We acquired the core of it off Hutt Bay in 2016, went public in 2017 with an IPO, and since then have expanded the project from what was originally about 54 square kilometers up to 940 square kilometers now. And it was all sort of focused on this thinking that the 2 original deposits we bought, Tom and Jason,

10:38 seemed to be along the same major or related major structures in this region. So the acquisition of ground to the west added another deposit known as the boundary zone, which was sold to us by tech. But what we really saw broader opportunity, which is this major crustal structure running through this area that was a basin-bounding fault 400 million years ago, seems to be a conduit for the fluids that produce these zinc-lead silver deposits. So

11:10 it's an opportunity, a lot like what other companies are doing now, thinking about things, districts holistically, and thinking about major district structures. And rather than working from a soil survey into a drill, it's a drill program. It might be almost like thinking bottom up instead of like, okay, where might these deposits be formed? What is the genesis of them? How then would I go look for them? So rather than being just data driven,

11:44 it's also like theory driven. So this has been exciting for us. We made a major discovery last year, what we call Boundary West, which is a new deposit just west of the boundary zone. Had our first drill results out of that just a couple of weeks ago and we're expecting some more soon. And along this major structure, we see another 5 or 6 potential deposits there that have either some combination of gravity, geochemistry, or something like that signatures. So what the ambition here is as a company is to take these string of deposits, and which already the resource on them, which includes only Tom and Jason, makes it one of the largest undeveloped Zip-led silver projects in the world. But really take that and look to how do we build a not long mine life, but ultra long mine life, like generational asset that can mine responsibly and in a way that really builds this district into a meaningful global zinc producer.

12:43 Yeah, and we're gonna touch on that, and thanks, Brendan. We're gonna touch on that ESG aspect because it's really becoming more and more prevalent environmental, social and governance issues that investors are really concerned about when they're looking at a company to potentially invest in. Before I go there, though, I have to ask you, this Tom and Jason names for a project, it's like I just named them after my boys, Travis and Jacob. It wasn't somebody's children's name, I have to ask. I saw it in

13:16 the script actually. We're not 100% sure about Tom, but Jason, there's a financier in Vancouver by the name of Hank Ferris, who I think lots of people in this industry will know. He was the money behind the joint venture that found Jason. And Jason is the name of his son. So Jason Ferris is the namesake for the deposit. So Boundary Zone was named because it was the boundary of the property. Nobody had a child named boundary. So that means,

13:50 for grabs if someone wants to name their kid that, but yeah. So it's Tom, we don't know. We were not sure. It's a HUD. There's another HUD bay kid in there. Yeah, you know, and Tom is, you know, that was found by prospectors in 1951, we're working for HUD Bay, and Tom is a

14:12 surname that you see in Ross River. Oh, the theory has been perhaps that it might have been related to that, might have been one of the names of the prospectors, we just don't know. There's no records for the naming of it. Okay, I just had to ask, you know, because I remember I was reading your actual script for this episode we talked about, and I saw the Tom and Jason, I got to ask Brandon. Anyway, thank you. So we did start, you did start a little bit talking about ESG and, you know, it may be an advantage for tier 1 mining jurisdictions like Canada. There's the greater transparency, there's higher regulatory standards. You know, everyone sort of needs to do their part now, but it's not just about, you know, broad brushstroke doing your part on ESG.

15:02 Now you've got to also be transparent with it and have it on your website and make sure that you're talking about it openly. So maybe, you know, I'll go back to you, Peter, because you guys are actively drilling.

15:15 Share with us, and in particular, we're getting questions from BTV and it's millennial investors that are very, very interested in this as well. Share with us what your company's focus, what Klondike's focus is regarding ESG and what sort of mandates have you guys put in place for that?

15:36 Well, and again, as a junior explorer, it's hard with a company that basically has 5 permanent employees. You know, The protocol that the ESG, anyway, sorry, there's some echo there, but the protocols for that, that big companies want and the major funds want really aren't, We don't have all the documentation for it. I was on a PDAC panel talking about ESG earlier on the year. And basically one of the points I made on that was I actually lived in the community in Dawson where we're based. So I spend more of my time there than I do here. I'm currently in Vancouver. All of our employees, we interact with the community and the First Nations daily on everything, buy our groceries there and live. And so from a from the social perspective, we are an intimate part of the community. We sponsor right now, actually, we're sponsoring a ball tournament for UConn.

16:43 And the concerns that I hear are daily ones that I get in conversations with locals while buying a bag of coffee, whatever.

16:54 And so from that perspective, initially when I took over in 2015, we're in the Klondike, there's since 1896, the entire region, the entirety of our nearly 600 square kilometers has been Disturbed in one way or another entirely. So every blade every tree was cut every blade of grass There wasn't anything by 1898

17:17 and then everything was dug up in one way or another. So it's been our mission since I took over to fix that and we do it we do it within our permits. I've gone to I've had talks with TH which is the Toronto Gwich'in which is a local community and said hey if I happen to be here with a piece of heavy equipment, and I see trenches or things that really disturb me, that are beyond what I'm allowed to do within our exploration permits, I'm going to go fix it. And they went, yes, please do that. And so as a result of that, I mean, the first initiative that we really did and tried to win the Environmental Remediation award in the Klondike, which is I think is a prestigious award. We did that immediately.

18:05 And since then, we've been going around fixing things. And so that's the environmental, we both fix it, remediate it, we have kind of ongoing projects looking at how to reintroduce fish into both Bonanza and El Dorado Creek. That

18:21 initiative which we have started, I will never see fish in Bonanza Creek because I don't own the entirety of the creek, the lower end is not there, but at least I've told this to TH, if fish ever get there to where we're operating then they'll have a home and so it'll be long past when I'm dead when something like that actually happens but at least it's a start and so we can so that's the environmental there's a social and then the governance The governance is actually the hardest thing and the most challenging for me, because again, we're such a small company, and trying to get all those protocols in place and documented, that's really what the governance bit is about. So we can present that to the public and to our funding partners.

19:12 And more or less, that's the one that I hate paperwork. So, you know, it's kind of a harder one to put in place, but I just point to what we've already done. Look at this record. Yeah. And we've fixed stuff. Well, when I first got there, there were 5 areas of the property that you could see were disturbed, massively disturbed from space.

19:36 And as an exploration joke... You could see them from space. You could see them from space. They're in the satellite pictures. And that really, really, really irks me that they should never have been dug like that. And OK, so we've gone and fixed them all, as an example. So there's a visual way to estimate that. I mean, it's a 1.6 kilometer long trench that was dug 30 or 40 or 50 foot deep. And it had 200 meter width disturbance and you think you can't see that from space man it looks awful so that's all that's now a moose pasture

20:13 anyway so there yeah It's every day I would say ESG is an effort that has to be done With purpose every day. It's really hard. You're pushing a wet noodle uphill, but every day I find something that really needs to be addressed and whatever needs to be addressed it takes days, months, years, possibly lifetimes to fix and so none of this is going to happen overnight.

20:41 No and I agree with you but you know you started off saying well we don't really do much but the fact is you are right and it's so small little bits that you are doing to help within the process here and and it sort of you know this is what I have found when I interview CEOs of mining companies in particular is it becomes part of their culture, right? And it needs to be, it really needs to be. Instead of just a box you're checking off, it actually needs to be what you guys are every day. It's part of your culture and part of your team's culture, right? So you go out and you look for these things that you can help that were maybe really terribly destroyed or disturbed prior to you and with rules and regulations that weren't in place, right? I'm gonna say, yeah, maybe I misspoke.

21:27 On a daily basis, it does not look like we do much, But 7 years into this, we've remediated, I don't know, I need the number, but it's well over 10 kilometers of stuff and regrown areas and blah, blah, blah, probably in the order of hectares. And it's just, it's an ongoing effort that needs to be addressed and we just keep plugging away at it. Awesome. Thanks so much, Peter. I'm going to ask the same question of you, Greg. What's Metallic doing in overall in the ESG sphere? Yeah, I mean, I think to echo some of Peter's comments, I mean, as an exploration development stage company, we're not building mines here. So we're not digging up the ground. There's not a lot of disturbance. We take care to use best practices on the disturbance we have to do. We're in a smaller community. It's not an area that's seen the disturbance that the Klondike, you know, has.

22:26 Our camp is right in Keno City. So we are hiring local people. All of our businesses that we're buying fuel and groceries from are either First Nation or local community businesses. So, you know, really trying to facilitate the sustainable part is, you know, building up skills in these local communities,

22:48 hiring local people, trying to build that up. We engage with NND as our local First Nation, you know, we engage with them, we give them regular updates on our progress. We hire, you know, a lot of local folks to go out on even our earlier stage projects and we look for opportunities for employment or education. So those are the things as an exploration development stage company that we can kind of do

23:15 on the ESG front that can make a difference. We do, as you said, Taylor, it's a bit of a mindset. So we prioritize this, we think it's the right way to do business is with a framework of we wanna minimize disturbance, we wanna do things in best practices. We wanna be thinking about, if we do it this way versus that way, can we

23:37 have less impact? And so that's the approach that we bring every day. But certainly, these are relatively sparsely populated areas that we're working in. Resources are the economic development potential in these areas. So how can we work with these communities to bring our potentially value-adding projects, not only at the exploration stage, but eventually if these make it to become producing mines, so that they contribute in a positive way to the local communities and to the local

24:08 economy. And I think that's kind of our focus for, you know, how do we, what's our take on ESG and how do we apply it at the stage of company that we are today. Yeah, no, I mean, thank you for that. And it's true, it's a very, very different MO, if you will, than if you're already in production. That's a whole other subset.

24:29 But I do think, and I am seeing that it is becoming definitely as you mentioned Greg a mindset, part of companies corporate culture and if you do take this project through to production and don't sell it and as a lot of folks do to a major but if you do take it through then that mindset will help you in that next phase and so on. So let's hear from you, Brandon, on what Fireweed Zinc is doing in the ESG realm.

24:58 Yeah, you know, I'll reiterate what both Peter and Greg said, that I think you have to start with the internal best practices on making sure that you minimize your footprint, that you engage local companies, particularly indigenous-owned companies. And then from there, you keep that engagement going. Particularly as we're a company that's progressing from exploration into development, is starting the discussions very early about what a potential mine might look like and what concerns the community may have with that so that you can engineer around those concerns rather than getting deep into your permit and find out that you're reengineering it, right? So I think one of the things that Peter really highlighted is the challenge for a small company and then fireweights maybe slightly larger it sounds like than Klondike but but the challenge is that a lot of you know these

25:57 ESG standards for something not particularly standardized So you have to choose what you're going to do. It's a big, you know, it's a big overhead. And as a small company, you kind of wonder like, well, is this a difference maker for me getting this reporting done? Do I need these extra layers of governance, for example, when I'm this small, you know, when everyone has access to each other you know so that that's the challenge is understanding as a company when you make that transition from ESG

26:30 as a culture to ESG as a formalized process. And obviously maintaining it still as a culture when you do that. But I think it's critical.

26:42 The biggest investors in the world all now have mandates around that. The corporates that we talk to certainly, whether I'm in London or Perth or Tokyo or whatever, the first questions are about how are relationships with the community, how is your project perceived?

27:02 And a lot of that's going to have to do with how you've managed that and how you've engaged them, right? So I think it can't be an afterthought anymore. You have to come in with a, how do we make sure we do this continuously and properly to make sure you don't get behind on it because there may be no catching up if you're behind. Do you have any initiatives going on from an ESG standpoint with the community in your region, Brandon? Yeah, you know, I mean we work very hard to, I think about almost 50% or maybe just over 50% of our work goes through Indigenous-owned or joint venture companies. You know, we want to make sure that, you know, we're looking at skills within the community and thinking about that long-term, about not just what skills we want now, but what skills we do want, and how do we work towards having the community being engaged in the higher value work rather than the sort of, the lower-end job positions that traditionally, I think companies have focused on hiring locally with, let's say, well, why aren't we looking for, you know, training up accountants and geologists and, you know, human resource managers and stuff like that out of these communities.

28:22 And I think that takes a long-term focus. And I think Peter, Greg and myself have all been working in Yukon for a while, but you always get these sort of people who come in and leave and they're looking to promote and they're not thinking about long-term. They're just trying to get the drill results out. I think that the players that have a real belief in the Yukon and a long-term commitment to it are looking at those things about how do we make sure that the skills are here for us? Yeah, excellent. Thank you guys. Real popular topic. So I thought, let's just get that. Let's lead with that question. But really let's move, let's shift gears a little bit here because exploration is exciting. It's high risk, it's a high reward business.

29:10 Peter's smiling, he's like shaking his head. Maybe you guys can talk about, you know, the upside that, you know, investors in particular can enjoy if you find the right project. I guess that's what keeps you guys going every single day and continuing to go back and raise funds and continue to drill because I think all of you have some in your past have some you know big successes and and I've tasted that so you're all looking for that. Let's talk about that upside, let's talk about exploration and I'll start with you Peter. Exploration is the best right? So I've made 3 discoveries in my career this one is the fourth I was offered Klondike gold on a platter basically to take this project on and again when we started it was like oh Jesus this plot of land in the Yukon and has gold on it that everybody thinks there's no gold in the bedrock there.

30:08 What, 20 million ounces, how do you ignore that? Anyway, so yes, that was just, that was the first bit. And I spent 4 months reviewing the project and went, you know what, the previous exploration hadn't addressed obvious target models and they came to the conclusion that it had all been eroded away. That's geologically untenable. So it's worth the shot to go have a look. And you know from an investment perspective we're all here to make money on these things. And for me this is it wouldn't be a job for life nothing is anymore. I'm happy doing what I like to do, which is explore and find things. And for me, the Klondike was a great opportunity to go drill.

30:55 Well, to see if there's anything there first and then try to unravel the, quote, mystery of the missing gold in the Klondike. And a couple of years later, just as an example, drilling the one hole, which that was now 2 years ago, it was 1000 grams gold, thousand grams silver over a meter. It was the time, the second, well, It ended up being the third best hole in Canada drilled that year, but it was one of the top 10 in the world. Yukon has that potential just generally, it doesn't matter what project or metal it is. Yukon is a corner of Canada that is virtually unexplored relatively. The geologic background behind it is broad brush and really poorly, I think, understood from a tectonic perspective.

31:46 And so all of us are trying to unravel these things and so it's a great geological puzzle, it's a mind game and we're using other people's money to do that and that means that you have to be prudent with it because if you go blow a whole lot of money and don't produce anything, they never give it back to you the next time you go and ask for it. And so, there's just, it's a great job. I personally love what I do. I really, truly enjoy it. I can't believe people pay me to do what I do. In return, I have to go find something for them. My career, I've been able to do that. In this particular instance, Klondike, again, we've gone from moose pasture with berries growing on it to by next year, within 6 months, we'll have a mineral resource and hopefully wrap that up with some PEA level study, at least that says, hey, this stuff, there's money in the ground and all that. Well, I also run a type chip. That's another reason why people like giving me money, so we haven't spent a whole lot to locate what I think is a significant, what will potentially be a significant resource on the ground.

32:56 Yeah, excellent, thank you. And what about you, Greg? You know, high risk, high reward business. Maybe you can, and you've been around in a few different companies that has some pretty significant discoveries as well. Share a bit about that. And also the upside investors can enjoy if they, you know, get in with the right company here. Go ahead. Yeah, you bet. No, I've been fortunate to be involved in a number of major discoveries with NovaGold and Wellgreen and others. And so it is exciting. I think one of the things investors like about investing in exploration development stage companies is that excitement. If you look at the value curve on a relative basis, the discovery through resource growth phase is one of the fastest creation of wealth periods that you can see in a project. And oftentimes, the valuations until the resources really get settled on how big they are can, on a per share basis, be as high as you'll see again until these things go into feasibility.

33:58 So we tend to see investors who are looking for a little more risk, but with the idea that they're going to get a higher return to invest in these companies. And the returns can be spectacular. We've got some recent examples in the industry of companies that have gone from no 1 even heard of that company to multi-billion dollar valuations. Here in this cycle, certainly there was a number in the last cycle as well. So, I mean, I think all 3 companies are really focused on opportunities where we see the ability to apply our skills that we've built over our careers to making new discoveries, growing those resources, and then ultimately de-risking them. Our focus is on projects where we see scale measured in kilometers, raids that are some of the highest grade for silver in the world. And so we know we're in the right neighborhood. We know we're in kind of elephant country.

34:54 And so that means the probability of finding more is much, much higher than if we were in a remote greenfields kind of type situation because mines have already been discovered and deposits have already been built and we're going to find more. That's the way our mining industry works. The best place to find a mine is generally in and next to another mine or another deposit. I think the excitement here is that if you can identify high-quality companies and you particularly want to look at not only the deposit and the style and the model, but the team and their background and making sure as well that they're in a good jurisdiction like the Yukon, which is a mining focused jurisdiction. And then, you know, probably with a balanced, you know, not just 1, but probably a basket approach. Hopefully a few of those are gonna make those home runs, create that value and give investors the exposure they're looking for in terms of something that can have multiples to their investment. I mean, our objective is to take our exploration skills and experience, focus in the right place, try to take an investor's $1 investment and hopefully turn that into 3, 4 or $5 in a few years time with some hard work and some good luck too.

36:06 Well, I've seen 10X on some great, great discoveries to guys and you all have too. Yeah, I know it's definitely that's the one of the phases in a mining company period where there's the biggest opportunity. Anything you wanted to add to that, Brandon, before we move on? No, I think I would just reiterate that as a CEO, you have to constantly remind yourself that your investors are paying you to take risks on their behalf. Yeah. Right. So actually, this is not the right job for someone who is risk averse or who is uncomfortable with a high degree of uncertainty, because exploration has a very high degree of uncertainty and is risky by its nature, right?

36:51 So you want to go into a producing mining company or whatever and optimize operations. That's a very different skill set than a person who does exploration. Exploration like I said, it's about taking the best data you can, doing the best analysis you can, and then making a gut decision on what the right move is. And I think that it is, as Greg pointed out, potentially the biggest value creator, right? So that's the daily reminder of like, okay, look, because if you're thinking maybe this isn't the right move, this is too risky, it can be, there is such thing as too risky for an exploration company. But like I said, that daily reminder of like, take a deep breath and like, this is what you're being asked to do, right? And that's in good faith and with your best ability to take these chances.

37:52 Yeah, excellent. Well, let's switch gears a little bit here, guys, and talk about the government support for some of these programs and what you each have been able to tap into, either Yukon Geological Survey, Yukon Mineral and Exploration Programs, the YMA, which is Yukon Mining Alliance. Like, what has worked for you or what do you sort of tap into, Peter, we'll start with you. I don't really tap into it. It's just done. So, I mean, the Yukon government in general just is supportive of mining. They had through a Canadian government, Yukon government partnership that was announced several years ago, $360 million to upgrade roads to resources. Within the Klondike, all of our roads, our resource roads that are maintained by the government.

38:43 So we don't have remote access. We, you know, the Bonanza Road is plowed all year round blah blah It's it on top of that right now the Yukon government are upgrading the Klondike Highway, which comes basically from Whitehorse to Dawson Yeah, particularly the last segment of it, which is 150 kilometers long. They've gone dug it all up and are repaving it. It's not pavement but whatever. And so our accesses, they also paved the Dawson Highway or sorry the Dawson Airport a year ago. All of that, that's infrastructure related. One of the slides that I put in my investor presentation is that infrastructure for us is the probably the most valuable thing that we have.

39:31 All of that is built by the Yukon government. And so we're sitting directly on all the, a paved airport with 737s landing on a paved road that they like to, that they maintain on a paved highway, which gives us access for heavy equipment and everything else. I found also just dealing with the Yukon government, they are amenable to suggestion and are just generally helpful in terms of ways to approach things. So in my experience it's the best jurisdiction in Canada I've worked in in terms of that. And so I don't access in fact the mineral of the prospecting grants and the other things. I'm happy to leave that for other people. We, Klondike Gold, gets far more benefit already from the Yukon government without accessing things like that. Yeah, no, it's excellent. It's worth mentioning because we've got, you know, viewers today patching in from all over the world. And, you know, some are just maybe not aware of the government support and different programs that are available. And I've spoke with many CEOs in your region and they do tap in and they do get the support. So Greg, let's hear from you on how you guys utilize government support.

40:54 Yeah, I would echo, first of all, Canada is one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world. So already You're off to a good start. Yukon, I think I agree, is one of the best jurisdictions in Canada that I've worked with. You know, one of the benefits of a smaller population base is that this is a more responsive government. If you need to talk to the minister, or you need to talk with folks at the government, if there's something that's pressing, you can reach these people and use your cell phone. Right, so it's from that perspective, I think it's much easier to work and be able to express either concerns or to be able to ask for things that could be of assistance. I mean, in Keno Hill, we've got hydropower on site. We've got a highway to site.

41:43 They just recently upgraded the highway. We asked them for safety reasons to bring in, expand the cell coverage. We now have cell phone service at our drill rig. So these are all things that just make it easier for us to operate. And fundamentally, I think the way for people to think about a territory versus a province is a territory hasn't yet. We're still very reliant on the federal government. So they're trying to build their economy. Yes. And trying to encourage business in the Yukon. The number 1 thing is resource development is how that that economy is going to get built. And so they really are trying to respond. Recent permitting, Lexica got their permits in 2 years. Show me another first world jurisdiction where you can get a mine permit in under 3 years. There aren't that many, right? So this is a place that does understand mining.

42:32 The requirements for mining are well understood. They communicate those. I mean, every project has its challenges, but it's a great location. And the YMA, as you mentioned, is an organization. I think we're kind of unique in the Yukon that a lot of us know the CEOs and the other companies. We collaborate. In a way, we're not really today on this panel here. We're silver focused. Brandon's zinc and Peter is gold. We collaborate. We're not really competitors in the sense of perhaps you might be competing with someone to stake a claim. But once you've got your ground and once you're doing your work, there's a lot to benefit by collaboration between companies and with the government programs. We recently had the Yukon Geological Survey out.

43:17 They're looking at regional things that could be significant to our project. So I just, I think in general, investors should know if you're thinking about mining investment, Yukon is one of the places that should be on your radar. I don't really understand why Yukon companies in general are lower value than a comparable Ontario company. I don't think it's justified. In fact, I would argue it should probably be the other way around based on the geologic setting we have in the Yukon and the very significant support for mine. Yeah, no, thank you. Thanks, Greg. Brendan, what about you folks over at Fireweed Zinc and some government support and programs? What have you guys accessed? Well, you know, we, last year at PDAC, unfortunately during the chaos of the initial onset of COVID, the government did announce that they were committing 71 million dollars towards the Robert Campbell and Campbell Roads, which are our access roads, right? So that's, you know, a mixture of federal and territorial money directly going to supporting our project and our projects near us.

44:25 So that's critical. But I think there's more than just writing a check. There's that through YMA and through that promotion, yeah, the government supports that, but, you know, the Minister of Mines or Minister of Economic Development or the Premier might come to some of these events and talk. And it's really about recognizing that their words and their presence and their actions, you know, increases the visibility and appeal of a jurisdiction. You know, ultimately they understand that investor dollars are mobile and that, you know, any dollar invested in Ontario could be relocated to Yukon and vice versa, depending on investors relative perception of the appeal of these jurisdictions.

45:13 So this, you know, getting out there, Making the jurisdiction better, of course, makes sense. But then also telling everyone about the jurisdiction is the next critical step, right? So I think that's been an excellent job. And Peter joked about using his phone to call the premier, but you know. No joke, no joke. Well, and I can't tell you any other area where I've talked to a CEO where they're able to do that in the mining space honestly yeah what's what's the odds you have a project in Ontario and you can just ring up Doug Ford and no no Doug yeah okay you know and it's great in Newfoundland another small yeah population base where you kind of have that knowledge and those relationships.

46:01 So I think that we know Premier Sandy Silver as Sandy and Minister Ranj Pillai and Minister John Stryker as Ranj and John. I think this makes a big difference And it's having them hear your concerns directly, rather than it being filtered through a low-level bureaucrat who writes a summary report, which is vetted by a high-level bureaucrat, which goes onto the minister's desk and he reads for 2 minutes, right? That critically changes the responsiveness of a jurisdiction. Yeah. You can't, there are so few people in Yukon, like there are more bears and moose in Yukon than there are people, that's true. And it's a small town. So you can't like Sandy Silver, Ranch Polize, so the Premier, Deputy Premier, whatever, I mean, you meet them at the grocery store.

46:55 You can't avoid them. And so it is a private, not private, but it is such a small. It's a community. Yeah, community is the word I'm looking for. And so, you know, we all share the same concerns, which is developing how best to make all this good for everyone in the territory. And we're all on the same page about it. Awesome, well listen guys we've talked about like the enormous upside and potential that your region has and exploration mining. Obviously though that doesn't come without its challenges So I'd like to hear from you guys each on, you know, what your current challenges are facing, you know, overall, your particular company, I know, but it's good to know. It's good for the investor to know there's a lot upside here. We've talked about this high grade that each of you have in your projects respectively, but Peter what would you say was is one of your your biggest challenges you guys are facing right now?

47:58 I could say last year that was the COVID and the implementation of COVID protocols and how to just get a full season in without getting whacked was the most stressful season I've ever had managing a program ever in my career. This year, on the flip side, everything is gone. We had all the stuff in place this year everything went absolutely perfectly there were no hiccups there were no major no equipment broke nothing broke down and it's been probably one of the easiest. In terms of challenge though, I mean, again, it's us against mother nature always. So we have to drill holes that hit, spend money wisely, drill to get the most done for it. Actually, the first geologist that taught me as a young student, he said, an exploration geologist is a geologist, anyway, an exploration geologist can do for a dime what any damn fool can do for a dollar.

49:04 And that really boils down the challenge of, here you're trying to find a mineral deposit for the fewest amount of dollars, other people, investors' dollars, they're not really yours, they're paying you to do this and you have to do it quickly and on budget and for just as little as possible. So that actually keeps me awake daily and that's the spur on probably all of our careers is just trying to do that. Like I said, this year has gone swimmingly well for us and we're, yeah, I'm just looking forward to the data rolling in coming soon. Awesome, thanks Peter. What about you Greg? What sort of, you know, current challenges are you guys facing as an exploration company?

49:53 Well, certainly as Peter said, the COVID situation, last year, there was a lot of uncertainty. Many of us didn't even know if we'd have a program and then suddenly, in the Kino district, I think there were 7 drill programs with different groups going on. And so that's led to a challenge with getting drills and experienced drillers of the industry right now. And we've got 3 companies in the metallic group. We have been struggling to get high quality drillers and drills at the level we would like. And that's going to be something, you know, we've just come out of a bear market that was, you know, an 8 plus year bear market. And so a lot of people that were in the industry before have left. Now all of a sudden people are funded, they're trying to do drill programs, they're balancing that off against COVID. And it's all, yeah.

50:38 But what we're seeing is that the experienced drillers aren't out there. So guys will have a drill, but they won't have a crew. And that's gonna be something that's gonna take some time to be able to get that depth again in the industry so that when we say we wanna go to 3 drills, we actually have 3 drills we can bring in. So that's gonna be a big challenge. And we're seeing that in the Yukon, but we're also seeing that as a North America wide thing. And I'm guessing it's probably a global situation. So that's probably one of the biggest challenges we've seen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, maybe your new friends here can help you with when they're done with their drilling. It's been handoffs. Someone finishes and then they're done. Absolutely.

51:25 Yeah. Well, I would imagine it is like I know you've got a drill program. Can you send your guys down here when you're done? I would do that. Brandon, what about you? Some challenges? I'll reiterate Greg's point that this year people was a challenge and we had 2 rigs on site and to be completely honest not every driller was great. So there was some midstream replacements of worse. And, but that's, that's just a shortage of people, right? Like that's, that's what's going to happen as the industry starts to take off that, whether it's drillers, or geologists, or heavy equipment operators or anything like that, it's not gonna be easy to find people.

52:11 So I think that the medium term risk for all companies is not just about having money, it's about actually being able to execute the program with people. Of course, capital availability is always a concern. Do we have the valuation we want? Do we have the capital we want? Particularly as a project matures from, as we are, from exploration to sort of pre-development and development, it starts to get pretty hungry, particularly as it's a big project. Everyone likes to have a big project, but it's hungry. It requires a lot of capital. So it's that managing, for an exploration stage project, like early exploration, I think Peter's point is spot on, that every dollar needs to go into drilling that possibly can or targeting and then drilling.

53:01 But then as you get into exploration, it's that managing your retail that cares only about drilling to understand that actually as you mature, there's a lot that goes on that's not drilling, a lot. And that in my budget, 4 times as much, but I'm only getting 20% more drilling done. It's not because my drilling is costing that much more. It's because there's so many other activities, pre-permitting and engineering activities to do, right? So I think, you know, all development and early sort of transition companies have to work on that, okay, do I have the valuation necessary to support this transition? Can I then get the capital? Can I then get the people? And then can I get my shareholders to understand what I'm doing, right? As I transitioned out of the lottery of the expiration stage to the grind and the de-risking development, right?

53:57 That's certainly what we view as the big challenge right now. Awesome. As the shame was plugged for the Yukon and Klondike gold our drillers We have so we have good drillers and in point of fact one of their nice pleasures this year was they were setting records for meterage So 1 drill pair drilled 2 drills worth of drill core through the entire season, they're still going we have so we have a bunch of drills going but we've been able to source people they are there are people available. It is a shuffle. So maybe, you know, you guys, you can talk to me later. I was gonna say, yeah. But you know, like, there are there is an experienced cadre of people working in Yukon available around. It is true that it's tough to share them around and it's kind of like musical chairs a bit, but they're there. So I just, you know, UConn is a great jurisdiction for professional quality people of all sorts.

55:03 Awesome. A couple of other questions I want to lob out there and probably not a chance for everyone to answer just so I can get them in. And then there is a question up here for Greg that we'll ask too. But if anyone wants to jump in, feel free. Is there, mining is not known as a technology driven or a technological industry at all. And I get it. But the fact is, if I look at the conversations I'm having today with CEOs of mining companies versus 20 years ago, there have been many advances in technology. So maybe, you know, share with us something that's been disruptive or game changing for you. Because all of you have been in the industry for a while, some longer than others, maybe share with the viewer, the investor that you do use technology and what's something that's been a little bit disruptive or game-changing for you?

56:00 I think about my first ever job in the industry, 1993, I was 16 years old, I was soil sampling on a project in Yukon and it was still... You were young. Right? Yeah, there was no GPS, It was just like, you know, you pull the rope between the stations and you're, you're citing everything with the compass. And, and, you know, it wasn't probably until almost a decade later that they, they pulled the error out of the GPS, the built-in error. And then suddenly now, you know, now our soil samplers have a tablet with them. They record details of every station they're at. Nobody's, it's one person per station and it's just so much faster, right?

56:48 And better quality data to boot. And then, you know, things like a magnetometer has not changed much. An EM loop has not changed much, but we now have access to so much computational power that was never available before. I can remember Sid Visser having a room full of computers 20 years ago that probably had the total power between them of my laptop, right? And you also, you know, inversions and machine learning and stuff like that, you know, particularly machine learning is just starting to, you know, really- It's coming into this industry, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, And I think that companies that aren't taking advantage of that, that are looking at, OK, well, how can machine learning help me? And it's tricky, because if you don't know how to do it, if your data isn't high quality, if you haven't sanitized and normalized the data across different sets. Yeah. It's not gonna give you anything.

57:50 Yeah, so it is alive and well in your industry, even though a lot of people consider it an older antiquated industry. I do want the message to be that technology is alive and well in this sector and it's quite prevalent to make things more efficient. Well, it's a data rich business. So it's, you know, there've been the issues in the past where getting that data into a format you can work with was challenging, but now that this stuff is being computerized, now that you've got all these layers, this is an area where that kind of big data approach can start to be applied. We've engaged across the Metallic group, a group called Gold Spot, and we've been doing a deep dive on their process, which is basically take all your data layers, start to distill them down, clean them down, and then eventually the outcome will be take your 46 different data layers and start to combine those in innovative ways to try to find new vectors maybe that are very subtle, but could have implications for controls to mineralization and things. And so this stuff is, it's early days, but this is coming and this is coming to companies that are at our stage where it could really mean a big discovery on something that's subtle, but with the right information and the right way could really make a big difference. Oh, We got a quick question for Greg here.

59:16 And then I'm just looking at the time. We got 1 minute left and I gotta do a close. Greg quickly, how's the exploration on the Keno East going and what's the progress or what's been done so far this year on Keno East? Keno East is this under explored parts of the Keno district on the eastern side. This is where we have the big targets that we discovered last year. So that's a big focus of our drilling. I can say it's going well. We're discovering some new things and we've just completed this deep geophysical survey. This is giving us some really exciting information. So there'll be a lot more to come. Okay. On Kenoist. Awesome. Well, that brings us to a close. I want to thank Brandon McDonald from Fireweed Zinc, Greg Johnson of Metallic Minerals and Peter Talman at Klondike Gold. I hope everyone garnered some useful information here today for these robust investment opportunities that are obviously in this high grade, prolific region of the Yukon.

1:00:15 This will be available on the Invest Yukon's YouTube channel. And I just want to thank everyone, BTB, Taylor Tone. We are back on Tuesday, August 31st at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time with another live panel and Q&A. Please register online at investyukon.ca. Whoo! That's 11 o'clock, guys. Thank you. You