A Fireside Chat with Two Yukon Explorers

0:04 Hello everyone and thank you for tuning in for today's live event, a fireside chat with 2 Yukon Explorers. Joining us on the call we have Jordi Mark, CEO of Blue Jay Gold, and Andrew Carne, VP of Corporate Development at Cascadia Minerals. One is advancing a near-term high-grade copper gold deposit, the other is reviving a high-grade, past-producing gold-silver system. A few quick housekeeping notes before we begin. As this is a live event, please feel free to submit your questions in the chat. Time permitting, we'll do our best to get to them all. And for any we don't reach, our team will pass them along to the respective companies. When we wrap up today, you will be seeing a meet and request pop up. If you'd like to learn more about 1 or both companies, simply select who you'd like to connect with and we'll pass that along as well.

0:51 And as always, this event is being recorded and the replay will be made available shortly after we conclude. With all that out of the way, let's dive in. So you're both chasing high grade in the Yukon but from different angles, one of that's in a known Copper-Gold deposit. The other, a past producing Gold-Silver system, like I said. I'll start with you, Jordy. What is it about the Yukon specifically that keeps you working there?

1:14 Yes, thanks, Kyle. Thanks for having us today. The Yukon, for us, its underlying premise is geological potential. And that comes to the forefront of where you want to be as an explorer. I would also describe it as still at the forefront

1:33 of exploration. You're still at a frontier. You have lots of opportunity. You know, Yukon has so much potential, but when you look at the history of exploration, it hasn't had the duration of exploration on individual projects, I would say over the last many decades, that you get into conventional areas elsewhere. So we think there's a lot of opportunity to come back in and look at projects with potential for new discovery and expansion of resources. And Andrew, same question for you. What is it about the Yukon specifically that keeps you working there? Yeah, I mean, I think Jordi kind of hit all the high points there, but it really is that opportunity. That geologic potential is phenomenal, but a lot of it really hasn't seen exploration, at least not with modern systematic exploration methods. You know, everyone thinks of the Yukon as this remote place. It's far from infrastructure. It's got all these challenges. And there's certainly parts of it that are more distant. But there's a lot of places like R2 projects that are actually

2:32 quite close to infrastructure. It's not this arduous capital cost piece that everyone has in their heads. So I think by bringing some of these projects back to light where we've got the phenomenal geology, all the exploration potential around it, but it is actually anchored by kind of close to world-class infrastructure you have that opportunity to move something forward in a way that just isn't possible in a lot of other kind of near-term jurisdictions. Now I have a few questions prepared for both you Andrew and Jordi for your company specific ones now that I'm looking at them I'm thinking maybe it's best if you do a 30 2nd overview of your company and the project, just for people that may be tuned in for the other company and are just hearing your story for the first time. So Andrew, a high level overview of Cascadia and then I'll get into a couple of questions for you. Sure. I'll give the quick pitch here.

3:21 We are advancing our 100% owned Carmax Copper Gold project. That's our flagship asset. It's located just northwest of the town of Carmax in central Yukon, about 35km southwest of the past producing Minto mine. We are road accessible. The project has an existing resource, about 650Mlbs of Copper, 300,000oz of Gold, but importantly it's at just over a 1% Copper equivalent grade. So we've got this nice high-grade resource. PEA was done in 2023. We know it's economic already at much, much lower metal prices.

3:51 But the real exciting opportunity here is this thing's kind of been languishing for over 20 years. It's historically been thought of as an oxide copper, little kind of heap leach operation. But now we're going into this with a new lens looking at it instead of saying, well, wait a second, what if we go after all the sulfide mineralization underneath the oxide, which is completely wide open to expansion? So it's kind of really looking at this thing with a new lens and the new opportunity, I think, to make some very, very sizable discoveries and move this thing forward quite aggressively. So we've got that PEA, we're doing resource growth right now. Our goal in the next 2 years is to do 2 very aggressive drill programs, work towards doubling that resource and then go into pre-feas in 2028. So touching on drilling, you just released the first results of the 2026 program from CarMax, including that 106m intercept at zone 2000S that stepped out north of the existing resource model. What are these early holes telling you about how much bigger this deposit could get?

4:49 It's going great, to be completely honest. We had high hopes for this project. It's the first significant drill program in 20 years. We're doing 15,000m of drilling in a minimum this year, and the last time a program of that scale was done was in 2007. So, you know, we thought there's going to be some low-hanging fruit that we're going to go after. And I think we've been pretty blown away by the continuity of grade that we're seeing at depth and the opportunity to make this thing bigger. That hole that you highlight is very, very significant because there's kind of 3 zones that make up this resource. And we've got the 147 zone in the North and the 2000 S zone about 600 meters to the South of it. And historically they always thought, you know, there's a fault or something truncating mineralization between the 2 and that it wasn't continuous. Well, we've been stepping North from that 2000S zone and we are actually finding continuity mineralization.

5:36 So it's this phenomenal opportunity here to just kind of play connect the dots a little bit between 2 zones, just with a new modern interpretation that so far has been panning out really well for us.

5:47 Last question for you, then we move on to Jordy here. Now, this is the largest program Carmex has seen since 2007, and a lot of historical drilling only chased oxide near the surface. Why is the sulphide story the one that excites you And what could it mean for the project's economics down the road? The history of this one, it was actually taken to permitting in the 1990s as just a pure oxide copper heap leach operation. The challenges around that is, A, the oxide is quite limited in size, so there's not actually that much material there and there's certainly not more oxide to be found, but it was also complex from a metallurgical process. You know, getting community buy-in on the heap leach is challenging, there's concerns about acid leaches in the headwaters of the Yukon River, and also you could only either get the copper out of it or the gold because you've got to swing the pH shift to be able to get both out of it. So you're kind of sacrificing a lot of the value there by not recovering the gold.

6:38 Generations of owners kind of looked at, well, there's ways we can do a VAT leap, swing this back and forth, all that complexity, until finally the owners prior to us stepped back and said, well, wait a second. We've got the Minto Mine to the north that operated as a conventional flotation milling operation, grind it up, float it, and then we get the sulfides out. And so that's phenomenal because you get 92% recovery of copper from that sulfide mineralization and the Gold comes along with it as well to a really nice high-grade Copper Gold concentrate.

7:05 That turned the project on its head and said, wait a second, the oxide isn't the focus anymore. Now it's the sulphide that is the focus. It's got a great recovery profile. It's exactly the same sort of thing that was processed before at Minto, so we've got a case study right nearby, and more importantly, it's wide open. So it's kind of taken the top off this thing and given us a whole host of targets to go after with new drilling. Great, thank you. Now let's bring Jordy back into the discussion. For people new to the Blue Jay Gold story, tell us what we need to know and then we can get into a couple of questions. Thanks, Carl. Blue Jay, it's a new story. It was just recently listed, 4th of June, so only a couple of weeks out really. Straight out of the gate, drilling, drilling with 2 rigs. And the project we're really interested in, in the Yukon is the Stella project. So, it's a form of production in the 80s.

7:55 It's approaching about 1 million ounces, about 8g Gold equivalent. But for us, and as Andrew said, infrastructure is around in the Yukon, and for us, we're just basically a bit over an hour's drive south of Whitehorse, road accessible, so we don't need helicopters to get to site, and we can execute around the existing road infrastructure. So we're very excited to be able to put this large land package into place. And it's 170 square kilometres, so that's adding Manhattan and Zurich together in terms of a large project.

8:29 And we see the current Gold resources as part of a much larger interplay in terms of geology. So coming back, looking at a system that was in operation more than 40 years ago, we see this opportunity to be able to elevate historical exploration with modern approaches. So we're quite excited about getting out drilling, drilling on resource expansion targets, but also elevating the more regional picture over the long term. So it's very exciting to have a new story with grade, looking up to 16,000 meters of drilling this year. So 2 rigs turning at Stellar and in the past you've described it as a project that hands you a map already partially drawn. How does inheriting 120,000 metres of historical drilling change the way you plan a season?

9:16 You know, that's a great question. It's a fantastic archive to be able to have. In a sense, 120,000 metres of historical drilling, when you look at that done over episodes, over a 40, 45-year exploration history, all piecemeal because what we see today wasn't consolidated until its current form until the 2000s. It's kind of like a,

9:42 you know, puzzle set And when you're exploring it 45 years ago, you get to see one piece. And then 5 years later, you add another piece. But when we get to look at it, we get to put all the pictures, all the pieces together that were formed over the last 45 years. So we're able to put a better mosaic story together in terms of understanding what the potential exploration is, what the geology is. It's very exciting then to be able to contextualise that history, the geology, and apply modern exploration approaches to be able to better target new systems. So it's actually quite handy. And then when you're actually exploring, you now have an immediate archive you can come and reference to, and you can be interactive in terms of your exploration.

10:30 So it's actually very handy to be able to have an archive with you to elevate not only that, I

10:37 mean Andrew might have different numbers but you know if you're trying to drill 120,000 meters of core today that's going to take you a number of years but a whole heap of cash you know you're looking north of 50 million dollars. So it's an archive it has a lot of value and you can continue to come back and refer to it.

10:54 So utilizing these modern tools, what has surprised you most about what the data is revealing? You know, we're already starting to determine and pick up new vectors for mineralisation, you know, well out from mineralisation that you see in the zone. So we're able to pick out those vectors before you actually get there, which enables you to start to build a predictive model for exploration, which enables you to come into the historical core archive and think, oh, they may have actually come up short on these holes. Let's go and examine this. Or let's go have a look at the whole large high grade epithermal system that hosted former operations in 86 to 88. This is a large field, let's put this together. Now we can start to see fluid pathways that weren't identified before because, often what we're looking at can't be observed by the human eye, but hyperspectral data can start to see that. And they didn't have the access to that information or that technology back in the 80s. So being able to build

12:02 systems together, I mean it's a little bit like the history of WannaCipio, start to pick up and do the methodical work to look for vectors for mineralization, but also give you a sense of where the hydrodynamics are historically to be able to then target zone. So very exciting times to be able to start to do that already after only, we'll call it less than 2 months.

12:28 Sticking with you, Geordie, there has been a question asked in the chat. So I just want to take a moment to remind people if they came in a little late, please feel free to submit questions. But Duane is asking for both companies. Starting with you, Jordi, can you name any of your large investors who are not insiders? And he does a few name drops here, such as Michael Gentile, Rick Ruhl, Brian London, Frank Giustra, Eric Sprott. Sure. Rick Ruhl was actually in the founders round into BlueJ and subsequent rounds after that. Also, the Sprott group out of California as well, good shareholders coming into multiple rounds. So I'll give you those couple of names. Great. Thank you. And same question to you, Andrew. Yeah. Michael Gentile has been a big supporter of ours since we launched Cascadia in just 3 years ago, August 2023.

13:16 He's at about 7%, I think, right now, and he's been kind of a key participant in all of our rounds of financing to date. We've also got Agnico Eagle we brought in as a large strategic investor in April of this year and then McKenzie Funds out of Toronto as well. Perfect. Some big names. Sticking with you, Andrew, you each have a big, fully funded program underway this season, roughly 15,000m at CarMax and up to 16,000m at Stellar. For you, Jordy, what does a successful 2026 look like for each of you and what would you most want to have achieved by

13:48 the time the rigs stop? For us, I think it's really just demonstrating that this deposit is open. That was our goal for this year, to show the ability to grow it through a meaningful drill campaign. I think we've already achieved that. I think we're going to continue to achieve further success as we step out further on these deposits. We also want to test a few peripheral targets and I think that's kind of the next piece to still unfold this year. We have some indications of parallel structures that have seen very limited historical drilling. We are going to get out and test those this year, as well as some targets elsewhere on the property that have some really interesting high-grade historical results but haven't seen modern drilling. So I think we've kind of ticked the box on, can we make the deposits themselves bigger? That's going great already this year. And now the next box that we want to tick is, is there a parallel structure or another zone on the property that we can really show growth at as well? But that's kind of the icing on the cake. We're already having so much success just growing the immediate deposits itself that I think that's been wildly successful.

14:45 And anything else we can do beyond that is just gonna be even better this year. Definitely. And Jordi, what would you most want to have achieved by the time the rigs stop? Yeah, target for this year really is to be able to

15:00 develop a more clear understanding, a predictive understanding of systems evolution. And this enables you to be able to target around existing resources, which we believe ultimately is still open and drilling will look to target on those. But also enables you then, because you're starting to understand the evolution of different areas, you're able to also then contextualize that along the entire project as an entirety, so 170 square kilometers. So for us, it's about understanding, targeting, understanding the evolution of these systems, which weren't really put into play, but also then stepping back and going, holy cow, we've got, what else do we have here based on this interpretation? So that's kind of the aim and geologically in terms of drilling, of course, you test out structural targets And and we'll see how that that goes over time. But certainly the main component is to look around Geology and improve and elevate your geological exploration

16:01 targeting approach. Great. Staying with you, Jordi. Operating in the territory means real work on permitting, land access and First Nations engagement. How are each of you approach on that side of the business and What have you learned along the way? Yeah, I think as part of exploration, that's everywhere. So part of the permanent engagement with regulators and stakeholders. You know, ultimately approach it in terms of early engagement, awareness and communication. Seek advice,

16:36 but progressive communication in terms of what you're aiming to do, getting feedback, that's the main thing. Just early and continued engagement with the stakeholders and regulators. So no surprises and just keep going forward. So, I mean, it's a process for regulators and just be open. It's not a particular new playbook. Yeah, exactly. Well said. Andrew, if there's any other further commentary to that, we can move on. If you are. Yeah. Just a couple of points, kind of more specific to our project. I mean, we've got a 10 year class for exploration permit. So from a exploration permitting perspective, you know, we're in really good shape. It's got pretty much anything in it that we could want to do over the next number of years of exploration, I think would carry us all the way through feasibility.

17:25 And then on the First Nation piece, we're in an interesting area. You've got the past producing Minto mine to the northwest of us. That's now being advanced in a partnership between a company called Selkirk Copper and the Selkirk First Nation. So we've actually got kind of in our backyard here one of the first, I think, equity interests from a Canadian First Nation in a mine. So very interesting to see how that's progressing. We are in an overlap zone with both Selkirk First Nation and Little Salmon CarMax First Nation, and we are working actively to build a relationship with both of those nations. You can see we did put some news out just a couple weeks ago about ongoing meetings with Little Salmon Chief and Council. So I think there's some really great opportunities to work with communities and make sure that they're part of projects and seeing the benefits as well. And I think Yukon is well positioned to keep advancing that sort of collaboration.

18:13 And sticking with you, Andrew, just Before the call, actually, you notified me that it's been a strong week for commodities, specifically gold, specifically today. Gold is strong and investor interest in juniors is picking back up, but capital is still selective. How are you thinking about funding your programs And what does it take to stand out with investors right now? I mean, we're very fortunate. We've got quite a bit of cash in the bank right now. You know, we expect to close this year out with at least 6 to 7 million left, which will get us most of the way through what we'd like to do next year. But we do want to continue to ramp up. So we're not in a position where we are going to need to do a raise this year unless the conditions are favourable and we want to do one at higher prices. So we're not in that crunch. We've got really good strategic partners backing us, which I think also brings strength and support to the story.

19:02 In terms of what I think investors want to see right now, I mean, grade and near-term production would be the 2 things that I think really resonate with people. You know, in all of these cycles, it's always, is this project actually going to make it across the line before we see the inevitable downshift in metal prices? Now, I think especially in copper, due to kind of the length we had before coming into this cycle, we're going to be in it for a while. And I think you're seeing that with copper was up at $6.43, I think, this morning, depending on which price you look at. But either way, the one I look at is one of the highest it's been in a very, very long time. So we're moving into this, I think, sustained interest in the copper cycle at a minimum. But I think gold's going to stay up there as well. The challenge, of course, is all these copper projects. They're huge. They have multi-billion dollar capex. They've got these crazy runways to actually get permitted, let alone get into production.

19:51 Well, we're sitting on a project that in the 2023 PEA had a capex of only 220 million Canadian. That's a size that you can actually move forward quickly. And that's driven by the high grade nature of it and the fact that you've already got existing road access to it and your 10K from power. So I think that's what really resonates with investors right now is looking at something going, well, wait a second. This is at surface, it's economic, there's a way to make it bigger. But more importantly, it could actually become a mine in the near term. Great. Thank you for that. Jordi, I'd love to hear your perspective on funding, given that you just IPO'd or came to market. How are you thinking about funding and what does it take to stand out to investors right now? Yes, that's a great question. We're well-funded, very similar to Andrew's company there, Cascadia.

20:41 Look, I think ultimately with investors, and the beautiful thing around exploration discovery, resource growth, is it creates value independent of market. So you find more ounces, you find more pounds of Copper, you add value. And that's So you can be sort of market sentiment agnostic in a sense. Underlying theme there is to be consistent. So you have a plan and execute to your plan. You know, the geology can change. It is what it is. You're dealing with a three-dimensional sort of architecture there. But if you're consistent and you continue to build through a plan, then you've got good shareholders that continue to engage with you. And that's the main thing in terms of being successful, when you're looking to grow existing resource base and move it towards a development decision.

21:35 So for us, great commodity price is brilliant today. I like the macro in terms of constructing how commodity prices in the US dollar sort of index sort of works. But in the end, create value for what you have, differentiate because you're in a tier 1 jurisdiction. And I think you're in a really good position. Last question for you, gentlemen, before we close off here today, I'll ask you 1st Jordi, but if we were to run this back and in 3 years, or if the 3 of us rather, were to sit down a year from now, what is 1 result or milestone from this program you would most want to talk about? If we're going with me, elevating for us in terms of outcomes to really put our large scale system knowledge into place.

22:27 You know, being able to resonate a theme, to be able to go, okay, we understand the regional systems that are controlling this or these deposits. This is where we look to expand beyond what we already have. That's for me is sort of where we want to get to, the Rosetta Stone thing, let's unwind the potential. That's really only possible in the last few years in terms of the introduction of a whole new range of technologies that enabled exploration to elevate historical attempts. So that's where I want to be ultimately, be a much clearer sort of viewpoint in terms of where geology, geological potential could be and how all the parts come together.

23:13 So that understanding that mosaic, that would be perfect. And Andrew, what is the one result or milestone from this program you would most want to be talking about? I think to demonstrate that we are succeeding in our goal of significantly expanding this resource. You know, We've said we want to try to double this thing in the next 2 years. I think we're on that trajectory, but I want to come out of this year with some drill results that kind of concretely demonstrate that, yes, that's possible. And secondly, we're well on our way towards it. So the program's very encouraging on that path so far. There's still a lot more drilling to be done this year. I think we're going to continue to demonstrate that, but that's ultimately the objective. Make this thing significantly bigger and then it's just going to absolutely knock the economics out of the park. And we think we can do that. I mean, At the end of this season, we'll have done 20,000m of drilling beyond what was in the resource. This deposit is only defined by 44,000m of drilling.

24:09 Having done effectively 50% more than the existing resource in the 1.5-years since we acquired this, that's what's going to make the difference on this project and really move it forward. Great. Great discussion, gentlemen. Thank you for taking the time out of your day. For people on the call, thank you for joining in. Just a reminder, when I close off here, there will be a meeting request button. Feel free to select 1 or both companies if you want to learn more about their stories. Thank you and until next time.