Sustainable Development Together: Springpole Permitting Update

0:08 Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us here today on our webinar. I can see A very significant number of people having joined us again. We always love these formats to be able to interact with our shareholders. So thank you all very much for joining us. The topic of discussion today with 1st Mining gold is sustainable development together. And that's, I think, an approach that is particularly topical today, as you will have seen, we announced this morning, achieving a very significant milestone on our environmental assessment process. So we're very happy to have that now having been achieved.

0:58 I'm Dan Boulton, I'm the CEO of FirstMine and Gold and I'm joined by Steve Lines who's our VP environment and community relations. Good morning, everybody. So we're going to make a few forward looking statements as we go through this presentation. And as we see here, we've got the Springpole project, just to ground everyone with the location of the project, sitting about halfway between Red Lake and Pickle Lake in Northwestern Ontario. I would say one of the reasons we're so excited about Springpole is that this is one of the largest undeveloped open-pit Gold projects in Canada with a really globally significant development project. And I think as we've talked about for years, moving through this environmental assessment process is one of the most significant de-riskers of this project.

1:56 And I think We recognized that going back a little bit more than a year, and really came to realize that we needed to make some significant additions to our team of people who have that experience. We're very, very happy to have Steve and then the rest of Steve's team join us late last year. So Steve's been with us now for almost a year. And you all have heard me talk about and reference Steve, you know, in pretty much every one of these, every one of these webcasts that we've done. We just thought it'd be a perfect opportunity with this approval of the terms of reference to actually hear from Steve about the permitting process and the progress that we're making here. We'll talk a little bit about the process going forward.

2:48 But we're very happy to have Steve join us here on the webinar today. So we don't need to talk too much about, again, about our pre-feasibility study results, but just setting the stage as to why this is all important. This is all important because spring pole is a really

3:09 You know globally significant strategic and robust deposit that We absolutely believe that we are going to get through the environmental assessment process. We continue to do a lot of great work on continuing to scope the project. And I think we are making it better with every step that we take here. So And it's, as we all know, been following the project, the Springpole deposits, it's under the northern shallow bay of Springpole Lake. And the development plan involves building a couple of coffer dams and dewatering this part of the lake for an open-pit mine. And honestly, we still, to this day, have this as what I think a lot of investors perceive as the biggest risk of the project. And this was honestly, Steve, I remember one of the first conversations that we had where I said, well, have you kind of looked at the development plan here and it involves a couple of cofferdams.

4:11 And I still remember your reaction to this, Which was, yeah, and? Because I think it would be helpful, we talk about these couple of examples in our presentation, but we talk about these largely because of your experience, Steve. Yeah, and for me, the first time looking at it, it was all very familiar. Before coming to 1st mining, I'd spent the last 6 years working on the Hard Rock project out in Geraldton, and before that, you know, I'd spent 3 years living in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, and before that, 3 years living up in the Arctic in Nunavut. And, you know, so these projects are very familiar, you know, they're commonplace, you know, in Northern Canada, and essentially, you know, the more common form of mining just because there is so much water, you know, out on the Canadian landmass, particularly the further north you go. You know, if you've ever had the opportunity to visit, you know, Northern Ontario or the territories themselves, you know, certainly, you know, aside from the beauty of the landscape, one of the things that

5:36 is obviously striking is the number of lakes. And when you get that far north, you're really looking at, essentially the landmass is 50% water. So the likelihood of having an ore body underneath the lake is very high. So all these other projects like Meadowbank, Gatcho Quay, Diavik, and there's even the J-pipe at Akati, these are all similar projects. Although, I would say that those other ones are actually quite a bit more complex than Springpole. I mean, looking at Springpole, it's 2 relatively short coffer dams we were in the communities last week. And it was, you know, as you saw, very comparable to, you know, one of the causeways that connected one of the communities,

6:27 you know, to the land. And so, you know, these things are done all the time. There's a lot of experience to build off of, which is great. I had the good fortune of being part of the Gatchoquai team at De Beers. So I went through that environmental assessment process. And I mean, that's a far more complex project. I think if I remember correctly, there's about 19 different dams and dikes, 3 open pits under a lake. And That's far more complicated than what we're talking about at Springpole, the same with Meadowbank. Before my industry days, I was a regulator, so I worked for the Nunavut Water Board and the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

7:14 So I was part of the technical staff that supported the decision-making process for Meadowbank. That project is much larger and longer in water dikes than what we're dealing with at Springpole. For me, Springpole, there was nothing new there. It's all been done before and we have a really good history to build off of and we know it can be done safely and in a manner that protects the environment, which is the goal of the EA process. No, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's just having a bit of that perspective. You know, those of us who haven't been through it before with a few different projects, sometimes don't have the ability to answer the question with the degree of confidence that you do. It's just, I still remember going back to that first conversation, kind of being a bit blown away by, you know, relatively speaking, how you thought that was all pretty straightforward.

8:23 So you know, importantly, the other thing that a lot of people don't remember is that we have been in this process for quite a while now and before that even we'll talk a bit about the data collection that we've that we've been in some senses you know just had the good fortune to be the recipient of from a lot of the foresight that the predecessor companies that own the project had in terms of data collection But maybe Steve just a bit of a sense we can orient people in terms of where we are in the process right now Sure, and I think it's a timely discussion, just, you know, like you said, based on the press release today that, you know, yesterday we received the approval of the terms of reference for the provincial EA.

9:12 And you know, it's a similar type of document than what was approved by the federal government back in 2019, which really laid the groundwork for what we need to do for the federal EA. But what we needed to accomplish this year was pairing up the provincial EA process with the federal. So when you do these mining EAs in Ontario, it's important to try and coordinate both the federal and provincial processes. So you're really only producing 1 set of documents that serves the purpose of both of those approval processes. And that's what yesterday gives us. It gives us some procedural certainty for the remainder of the EA process.

9:58 It sets the expectations for the EA process and lays out, how we're going to coordinate with both the federal and the provincial government. So, that gate is now open and we're off to the races in the full EA process at this point in time, which is fantastic. It's, you know, and we haven't been waiting around for it. You know, there's a lot of work obviously that you can do and do behind the scenes while you're waiting for terms of reference to be issued. And, you know, That goes back to the beginning of this year where we consolidated

10:36 all of the technical evaluations that are required for the EA to be carried out by Wood PLC. They're one of the largest engineering and environmental assessment consulting firms in the country have undertaken pretty much all of the mining EAs in Ontario. We've got some great resources on the aquatic side and water, which is important to Springpole.

11:02 We've been working away at that assessment work for quite a few months now. So I think we're in really good position to deliver on a draft EA early next year.

11:18 And from there, it's all about consultation with the local indigenous communities, with the government regulators, and really try and identify what the comments are, what key concerns are, and work to address those. No very similar process to what was followed out in Geraldton for the Hard Rock project. Yeah, and we'll talk a little bit about the process going forward here, but I think given the recency of this announcement and approval of the terms of reference, I just want to take the opportunity to say

12:01 thank you to you and your team. Thank you to the team at wood. And particularly thank you to the teams at the ministry. And a huge thank you to the teams working with and from our indigenous communities. Who turned this around at a time when they had a number of other really, really important priorities, particularly around the health and safety of their communities around the COVID pandemic. You know, we really had great cooperation. We're just, we're really thankful for the work that our communities are putting in and particularly the Spring Pool Environment Committee. We'll talk a bit about that, but really thankful for the work that they've been doing in helping us move this project forward. They've been, the collaboration has been really great. So just want to take the opportunity to say thank you for that. Yeah, absolutely.

12:57 It's for sure a big team effort there. Yeah, And when we talk about teams, I mean, I think it's just important, Steve, that maybe you can do a little bit of justice. We heard a bit about your background as we were talking

13:12 about the projects that you worked on, but maybe just give a bit of a sense of who the rest of the team is that you've built that's working with you here. Yeah. And so I think this kind of goes back to, you know, a shared vision, you know, that we had in heading into 2021. And, you know, how do we set ourselves up for success in an EA process, which, you know, it's comprehensive. It's, you know, there's a lot of heavy lifting to do along the way. And it requires a lot of expertise. And, you know, one of the things that I, you know, took away from the Hard Rock project experience was

13:51 the need to build out an owner's team internal to the company to help

14:02 expedite some of the work internally. It's not just your external consultant team at Wood or whoever that's producing the EA. There's an incredible amount of interaction between the consultant and the company. I always sort of view it that the consultants are the technical experts, they do the assessments, but the Springfield project is, our project is the shareholder's project and We need to be on top of things constantly. And so, you know, with that, you know, I remembered, you know, in Hard Rock,

14:40 you know, fielding a lot of questions from the regulators, from the communities, and I would always have to review, you know, every single, you know, sentence and word, and that's good, but, you know, it's time consuming, right? And so one of the goals here is to bring on, you know, additional team members, highly qualified professionals that have done this before. I think myself and us, we've had the good fortune that a lot of the people that I worked with on Hard Rock were eager to come over and work on Springpole with us, which is fantastic. And, you know, so Megan Burton-Schar, project manager, you know, worked with Megan for several years now, you know, going back to the early days of Hard Rock, you know, just really fantastic resources, nosy A's through and through. The same with Fiona. You know, Fiona was the technical lead, the project manager at Stantec, going back to the first days of Hard Rock. She's worked on multiple projects in Ontario.

15:49 We know how each other thinks and what the expectations are and how to get a high-quality EA done, which is great. I think lastly, the other 2 key members, key team members that we've brought on board this year are local Northern Ontario resources. So when Mark Deans, we've just hired him as the community relations manager. He's based up north, is able to be in Sioux Lookout

16:25 on a regular basis. And Mark Ridgeway, our environmental coordinator, he's a Sioux Lookout born and raised. And These are really important local resources to have. It's something that for some of these remote projects, it can be a bit difficult sometimes to find those great people. And we've been fortunate to find Mark and Mark and very happy to have them. Yeah, I know we got to spend a bunch of last week with them as well as we were into the communities. We'll talk a bit about that. But no, absolutely delighted with the team that's been built. And just, you know, I think you mentioned this already. We've talked about this for a while in our investor presentations, but you know, with the team and kind of consolidating the experience between the team, the experience that you and the team had at Hard Rock and the team at Wood and all of the projects that they've worked on pretty much completed the environmental assessments for almost every big open pit mine in Ontario in the last 20 years.

17:34 Yeah, for sure. And they're a great team of experts. And I think really

17:43 their strong suit is on the water and aquatic side as well. We've got some fantastic resources like Mark Ruthven, who has really been the lead on all fish habitat offsetting plans, works with the Mining Association of Canada, very well known by Environment Canada, and just has that depth of experience to build confidence in the work that we're doing, which is great. Maybe talk a little bit about what we've achieved in 2021 and that'll segue a little bit into what's next.

18:27 Sure. So we had a number of key scopes of work this year to, you know, get ourselves well set up for entering the EA process. And first that started off with finalizing the terms of reference documents. So that was submitted to the government several months ago. And today that, or sorry, yesterday, the document was approved, which is fantastic.

18:54 I mean, really the other very important area was taking a real deep dive into the environmental data set that had been collected over the last decade. You know, really this is an area where, you know, I think Spring Poll is in a different category from a lot of other projects that have come before. It's rare to see that amount of data on a project that's just entering an environmental assessment. And if I compare back to Hargrove again, it's going into a draft EA, we had about a year or so, maybe 2 of baseline environmental data.

19:43 So here it's a huge benefit to have that kind of a solid foundation to do your assessments on. But we did wanna check that

19:55 we had dotted all the I's and crossed the T's. We didn't wanna miss a field season and an opportunity to address any gaps that might exist. We did a comprehensive review earlier this year and executed a very robust field program throughout the entirety of 2021, pretty much across all areas of the environment. So that really just bolstered the data that we already had, which was fantastic. I think the other area, critical to success is making sure that our communities are set up, that they have the capacity in place that they need to participate

20:38 effectively in the process and to provide us with the feedback that we need to understand and hear so that we can shape a project and make sure that we're mitigating effects and looking at the right thing. So we've established the Spring Pool Environment Committee and provided capacity support to the other communities that we're working closely with.

21:05 We have also established the 1st mining EA portal. So all of our information is publicly available. It's all transparent, everything that's been collected to date and all of the information that we collect going forward and produce through the assessment is also gonna be posted there. We've looked at different alternatives, for about 13 different project components. That's a standard part of environmental assessment and a real big focus of the process here in Ontario. So we undertook that work this year and again, share that information for review and comment by all stakeholders and the indigenous communities as well. So right now with the TOR approval, we're focused on finalizing a draft environmental assessment that will circulate and post on the environmental assessment portal early next year.

22:01 And That I think segues very nicely into what I think a lot of that work that we've done this year, while it's not readily visible to the outside world in large part because the public documents that we've put together really reflect the development scenario that we analyzed for a pre-feasibility study. But there've been some really important changes that I think reflect to a degree, you know, our willingness to continue to look for better solutions environmentally here. And that was, that came down to a lot of the people on the call will recall that we'd started or the pre-feasibility study, we'd scoped, you know, wanted to know the answer as to whether we could build this project without a conventional tailing stamp. And I think we demonstrated that that's something that's certainly possible.

22:56 But as we dug deeper into it at the beginning of this year, we really came to realize that it's probably not optimal. That in order to manage some of the sulfide nature of this deposit and a portion of the tails, which would have quite a bit of sulfur in them, that having a sort of hybrid tailing solution with a small conventional tailings dam beside the filtered and dry stack tailings and waste co-disposal is something that provided a better opportunity for a long-term closure of the plant. And those are things, Steve, that I would say, just one example of a number of the opportunities that we've gone through and alternatives that we've looked at as we've kind of come through the deep dive of getting the environmental assessment pulled together this year?

23:50 Yeah, I mean, you know, this part of the process, right, it's, you know, taking a very close look, you know, at the project layout, the project designs, the technologies, and, you know, providing, you know, the backup for that through the decision-making process of an environmental assessment. And there's a couple

24:15 key ones that we've looked at at a high level. One is the location for where the treated water discharge line would go, you know, and so that was, you know, modified in consultation with the provincial government. So I think everybody was on the same page with that.

24:34 And then when we look at our mine waste management, you know, it's just a better setup, I think to be able to manage, you know, potentially acid generating material versus non-acid generating material. So That's the concept that we're advancing through the EA. There'll be more work as we make our way through a draft EA process in 2022, but by and large, overall, the project that was put forward in the pre-feasibility study remains the same today.

25:11 And I think when you look at what some of those key areas were, it gives you a sense of the breadth of the scope of the work that we have been doing. And again, the fact that I think all the reports that we've collected here are available on our EA portal, and that can be accessed through our website. I think we have a real commitment to full transparency here. And I think that's something that's been certainly appreciated by our communities we're working with. Yeah, I just need to touch on a couple of the areas. These EAs are comprehensive. There are thousands of pages, multiple binders, and we have experts at Wood that do the assessments for each one of these areas.

25:59 And Like I said before, we have a very solid environmental baseline dataset upon which to develop the assessments. All of it is geared towards taking a conservative approach and understanding what the potential effects are from building and operating a mine site. And from there, you know, we add mitigation measures to reduce or eliminate those effects across all of these areas and, you know, produce the document to show that. And after that, it's really about monitoring each one of these areas. So the programs that we have in place today, as the project advances, through approval, construction operation, will stay in place that we can report back on.

26:49 These important areas to the communities. And just briefly on the on the topic of communities. We did have the good fortune last week to be invited, into our communities to give community presentations last week and our team. With community meetings and a

27:13 meeting with elders in Cat Lake, which was a real privilege for me, having not had that opportunity before, and then to community meetings in lack soul and another in Slate Falls. Yeah, no, just, I think. You might my real takeaway is that there's. There's lots of room for, an alignment of interest between us and the communities in terms of building infrastructure, in terms of the real opportunities that the project can represent for the communities. But At the same time, I was really struck by the level of understanding and sophistication that our communities have around mining. There are people in all of these communities that have worked in mines. And so some of the questions that

28:02 you get, including one question, we had the good fortune in Slate Falls to have a group of school kids come and watch our community presentation. And some of the questions we got from them were fantastic. So, you know, I think again, this is, this is, these are our rights holders in the area and very, very important partners of ours moving the project forward. Yeah, for sure. And so even, you know, with those 3 communities, there, Cat Lake and Slate Falls and Lac Seul, those are the 3 communities that form part of that Spring Pole Environment Committee. And I think going back to the point about making sure there's capacity in the communities to participate, that establishment of that committee, you know, this early on

28:53 in an EA process is, you know, I think a benefit to everybody. And it's really great to see, like you said, Dan, the work that they've been doing over the course of this year. Yeah. And I mean, I think just in terms of the context, too, that that committee has retained technical advisors. Those technical advisors have reviewed all of our baseline data and already a lot of that work that gives us a better understanding of what some of the real priorities are and concerns are that we can address as we're formulating the draft EA, not having to wait until there's a 10,000-page document to drop in their laps to start reading. So just that level of collaboration has been great. So Steve, maybe just kind of walk us through from here is really sort of the last key point here, then we'll go to a couple of questions. But the process from here, I think we've tried to go into a little bit more granularity to take advantage of your experience in going through EAs.

29:59 But just kind of walk through kind of where we go from here. Sure, and so I think you know if we pick it up sort of you know about a third of the way down our you know our list of milestones here we've received the terms of reference approval yesterday. And beyond that, we've completed the 2021 supplemental field work. And so all of that now opens the door to be able to move forward and submit a coordinated draft environmental assessment or on the federal side, that's referred to as environmental impact statement, where it says EIS. So that builds on the work that we've been doing this year.

30:48 We're aiming to submit the draft set of documents in the first quarter of 2022. And then from there, that essentially kicks off a very thorough consultation process with the communities and the government agencies. So we expect that After the documents are reviewed, that'll take several weeks for people to review and provide us with their comments. And so 2022 is really geared towards the receipt to those comments, understanding them and responding to them. So typically when you receive the feedback from any party in the EA, you know, the responses will tend to be in the nature of providing clarification

31:47 or, you know, committing to do something as part of the final EA. So that's really going to give us a really good sense of where the reviewers identify a particular issue or potentially would like to see something assessed in a particular way. And we're able to identify that early on. And the point being that we're understanding that before we move forward and file a final EA. And so what in 2023,

32:23 we'll move forward and file, and submit that final EA to the province and to the federal government with the goal of the vast majority of the issues and the comments and the questions having already been addressed. And that really tends to set things up for a smoother ride through the final EA and the formal decision-making and approval process that the province and the feds have to go through. It's not good to have surprises at the 11th hour. You really wanna make sure that things are resolved and addressed, you know, and that you're on the right path as you go into that final EA. So that's our goal for next year.

33:11 Following that,

33:13 you know, we're targeting to have an approval of the EA towards the end of 2023. And the EA approval, it really provides that certainty going forward into permitting.

33:30 Once you have your EA approval, it does give a high level of certainty that the permits are going to be forthcoming in a reasonably timely manner. So there are various permits, of course, that we need after the environmental assessment, and we'll be working on those through 2024. But I think that that kind of gives the sense of, you know, some of the questions that we've we have coming up here. It gives a sense that there really are milestones along the way. This is not a black box process where we submit a document and you hope at the end of 2023 someone's going to say yes. There is a lot of iteration as you go through that I think should be able to give investors a sense of progress through this process.

34:25 Absolutely. Even just submitting the draft EA is a big step forward through the process. Typically, you don't advance and submit a final EA without having, you know, a very good level of certainty on, you know, what the next steps and outcome is going to be. You start to talk about

34:50 conditions of approval. Right, so the Hard Rock project, I think had about 50 or 60 different conditions of environmental assessment approval. And talking about those things and refining them is really what the final EA process is about. You don't want to get to a final EA process and be talking about issues. You want to be talking about the project moving forward and the conditions under which that happens. And so it's all about building certainty and as you go through draft and final EAs. Yeah, no, absolutely. And I think just in terms of the overall game plan and how the technical sort of engineering work dovetails in here, obviously, there's a lot of really important decisions being made on project scope as we go through the draft EA process in the next year. But I think we've done a lot of work and we'll talk about this in another

35:52 webinar, hopefully before the end of the year, just in terms of a bunch of the work that has been ongoing at Springpole this year, part of it de-risking, better understanding the project, but also looking at some really interesting opportunities for us to, for example, significantly reduce the carbon emissions footprint of the project. So we'll talk about some of those, but those kind of drive toward, after you've submitted that final EA, you've had a lot of that back and forth already. That's really where you have locked down that scope of the feasibility study and get into a more detailed level of engineering on ultimately that project scope that you're going to take through the balance of that EA and permitting process.

36:42 So that leads to feasibility study really kind of middle of 2023. And that enables, with that fresh numbers and advancing through that process with a line of sight on the end of that process, enables things like project financing discussions, for example. So really does kind of help us set the time frames for, ultimately, that development or construction decision, which other projects you've seen that happen sort of post-EA while you're going through the permitting process, with ultimately financing being conditional on receipt of those final permits. So I think that gives, hopefully, a better sense and a bit of a deep dive into the process and kind of where we go from here.

37:33 Steve, thank you for that and kind of taking us through that and a bit of a finer level of detail than I'm ever really able to give. We really do benefit from your experience here. But why don't we take this opportunity to move to a few questions? So we've got a few a few that have popped up here. John, great to hear from you as always, but John asked the question, could Steve elaborate on the relationship between what goes on with the Indigenous communities and what's been done from the provincial Canadian government permitting side of the permitting? And I think we've answered some of this. It would seem that approval of the Indigenous communities has to be approved before any final EA approval. And it certainly, you know, you would have the experience from Hard Rock around the, around kind of how those processes move in parallel. And that tends to be, I think, how they work. But maybe just give us a little bit of insight on that, Steve.

38:35 I think as John's pointing out, they're very much interrelated. In Ontario, the province essentially delegates to 1st Mining or any other proponent, you know, what they call the procedural aspects of the duty to consult. And so, you know, that means it's 1st Mining's responsibility, you know, to go out and share information about the project and receive the feedback and understand how the, you know, development might impact, you know, the rights of indigenous people in the area. It also means that it's our responsibility to fund the reasonable costs of the capacity that the indigenous communities require to participate in the process.

39:31 And that's something that we're doing. When we interact and consult with the communities, we have to keep a record of the concerns and the questions that we receive and how things are resolved. So that's really sort of the core of our responsibility. And at the end of the day, we hand that over to the province and ultimately, you know, they decide, you know, about approval and conditions of approval and so on. You know, in parallel to that, we're, we take, you know, direction from the government as to which communities are potentially most impacted by the project. And so for Spring Pool, we're working with 8 different indigenous communities.

40:30 Some are closer to the project than others. Some are upstream, some are downstream. And so we take guidance from the government as to which ones are potentially more impacted. And on that basis, in parallel to the EA process, you know, we enter into discussions around consultation agreements, you know, which we've been working on this year. And then from there, you know, the next step is to explore potential benefit agreements, you know, with, again, with the local indigenous communities. And those discussions, they typically proceed in parallel to the EA. And I think that's very natural that people want to understand what are the potential impacts and then what are the potential benefits of the project and the goal.

41:26 At the end of the day is, you know, as you're sort of entering the tail end of an environmental assessment is that, you know, agreements are in place with the, you know, the communities that are potentially most impacted. It doesn't always go that way. Sometimes communities and turn to agreements much earlier, you know, and so this is, you know, again, some of the milestones that we're looking at throughout the EA process, and sometimes other communities by the time an EA is done haven't yet entered into a benefit agreement. And so, you know, for Hard Rock, it was a bit of a spectrum there, and that EA approval for Hard Rock was completed and received prior to a benefit agreement having been signed with 3 communities.

42:24 I think the importance here, I think significant benefit opportunities for the communities to participate in this project. Yeah, and Steve, you'd cut out briefly, but I think the key point that you're making is that the key thing to remember is that we think that there are significant opportunities for alignment of interest with us and the communities, be it directly benefiting from the project, employment opportunities, contracting opportunities, opportunities around the infrastructure that the project's gonna build, be that roads, be that power line. There's a lot of those opportunities that we're at early stages of discussing, but I think it's certainly, there's a lot of room and scope for cooperation in the project. And I think, you know, good understanding, experience and willingness to discuss as we move forward with our communities.

43:24 I'm gonna keep going with the next question that David has asked here, which is looking at the schedule. It seems that Springpole probably will not significantly affect the stock price until the end of 2023 with EA approval. And David, listen, I think that for some people is a pretty commonly held view. I would say, as we've talked about here with the milestones that we have its spring pole moving forward. And through this process. We need to be able to, We I think we're going to be able to demonstrate progress on this. I think if you look at a number of other projects that are advancing through development and construction, there are a number of them that are trading at significantly higher, be it dollars per ounce, be it price to net asset value multiples than we are with SpringPool.

44:25 But I think at some point, towards the end of this draft EA process and submission of the final EA, I think the market should have the visibility on our ability to get to the finish line. And I think when we hit that point, I don't think you need the piece of paper. I don't think it is as binary as some people think it is in terms of demonstrating progress. So I'm optimistic that as we go through this process next year at some point, you know, we demonstrate that there is a real capability that we're going to be able to get this project through the EA process. And I think even things like today, when people see the team that we have and they understand the background, I think it should give people that confidence. Now, there will always be a bump, hopefully, when you get to that point.

45:14 But Our hope here is that we start earning some of that value re-rating around Springpole far earlier than, you know, receipt of the EA approval. So that's what we're continuing to drive on, but it's all about taking risk, continuing to take risk out of the project and deliver certainty around timeframes and around approvals. And I think Steve's asked a question here. Obviously, permitting is a long and slow process. What positive specifics, draw results, et cetera, are in the works to attract new shareholders during this long haul? And Steve, I think that's a great question. We have another board meeting later this morning where a lot of these are exactly the types of things that we have talked about at the board over the course of the last number of months and years in fact, because everyone kind of sees a permitting process as all risk, no return. So the biggest things that we are working on now, a bit of a deep dive session like this, but on our exploration potential.

46:24 And the exploration potential is not just around Spring Pool, where we've added another, not quite, but almost doubling to our mineral tenure and Started getting boots on the ground to understand what that exploration potential is I think that's 1 angle but you know people still forget that we have a number of other projects, both our partnership projects where we as shareholders have exposure to another 125,000m of drilling that's going on between Goldland and the Goliath Gold Complex at Pickle Crow and at Hope Brook where our projects are doing great things to move move the projects forward You know, we've got our partners spending in total probably You know between 30 and 40 million dollars on those projects over the next 12 to 18 months. So lots of exposure to upside there.

47:22 And then we have our 100% owned projects, our Cameron project, which we've got some questions on, I've seen here as well. You know, We've got our projects in Quebec, which we continue to look at as very interesting opportunities in very, very good postal codes in Canada. So our goal really is, and again, I think in terms of driving some of that interest, exploration is going to be a big part of that. And we'll get a session in the calendar. Wasn't exactly fair to have it in. James Maxwell, our new VP Exploration, not exactly fair to have it in his third week on the job. So we'll give him a little time to get his feet under the desk, but he's already got some amazing ideas and bringing a lot of great technical acumen and drive and passion for exploration onto the team. So we're very excited to have a session like this where we can dive into that a little bit more.

48:24 Steve, I'll throw this one to you. Stewart's asked, what is our biggest risk with the permitting timeline? It's a good question. And it's something that we think about quite a bit, you know, internally as we go through and, you know, try and plan and mitigate for, you know, schedule delays, but, you know, I think the, you know, remote nature of some of the communities that we're working with can sometimes present some challenges. We had the good fortune of really getting into the communities over the last month. You know, we've done 5 different community visits, you know, and the communities are, you know, certainly active and participating on our file, which is great.

49:15 And we need to keep that up. You know, there's often conflicting priorities. There's things that come up, you know, in the communities we saw this summer, you know, the extent of the forest fires across Northwestern Ontario, you know, and these are all, you know, events and circumstance that can draw some attention away from advancing Spring Pool through the EA. I think so long as the resourcing is there, you know, for the communities that, you know, will be okay, but, you know, for sure, there's some, you know, logistical considerations there that we have to be mindful of as we work through the process.

50:04 No, absolutely. And I think, you know, I think a lot of that comes to the, to a degree, the approach that we're taking and, and I think a recognition of the need to make that resourcing a priority for us as well. So no, I think that's great. So we've got another question from Tase, who's joining us all the way from the Netherlands and always appreciate his insights and poignant questions. But he's asked, I'm gonna modify his question a little bit. I'm gonna say when Springpole becomes a 10 million ounce deposit, how does that fit into the current permitting documents or what kind of impact does that have? And I'll give kind of my 2 cents on it, is that I think where we're looking at are some of our exploration regionally.

50:56 Those likely become separate processes down the track. First, you have to define an economic ore body, you have to go through a development plan, you need to understand the baseline environmental work. So really, I think those become real additions to value and the prospectivity and ultimately things that you can demonstrate are going to lengthen the mine life and increase the annual production of Springpole up above that 350 or 400,000 ounces a year. But I think anything else regionally, unless we have the, I don't know if you call it good fortune or bad fortune of finding another major ore body underneath some of the infrastructure where we're looking at putting this stuff. And we've already done a lot of the drilling to, you know, what we call condemnation drilling to make sure that we're not going to put our process plant over, you know, year 15 to 25 of the mine life.

51:57 But ultimately, I think any of the regional opportunities, from a permitting perspective, end up looking like, you know, sort of separate processes. Steve, is that typically how this would move forward? Yeah, that's right. In the scope of the current project in EA, it's important that we build into that some flexibility for project changes along the way. And even things that come up post-approval, because you really want to try and avoid getting, I guess, kicked back into an EA process for what is typically a small to moderate change.

52:45 But something know, really increasing the ounces significantly, you know, expanding the life of mine that, yeah, typically there are additional processes when the time comes to deal with those. Yeah. And that's, again, I think it depends on the size and kind of the incremental nature of what's really changing. But I think that would probably be less of a concern around the existing infrastructure at Springpole, which I think when you get a project of this size and scale and this perspective region permitted, we talk about this all the time, but I think that is a critical strategic asset, particularly given what we see in terms of the exploration opportunity through this entire belt, which is really starting to be recognized by a lot of much bigger companies.

53:45 There's no question we're the first mover with the center of gravity in this belt. Just for context, what we're looking at building at Springpole is 5 times the combined processing capacity of the entire Red Lake camp. So I think what that means is our leverage to exploration success regionally, you know, you certainly have to understand and go through the permitting, discover another project, whether it's, you know, at our Swain Lake project or to the north at High Great Island, there's obviously going to be considerations around the environmental assessment of those processes. But once you have the environmental assessment approvals at Springfield, I think it, number 1, lowers those thresholds for exploration success to be meaningful for us versus anyone else it be certainly improves the time frames of you know future subsequent development and 3 I just think it you know It makes you kind of the anchor tenant in what is this big unexplored Greenstone belt. So all of those very exciting strategic opportunities.

55:00 Number 1 goal is we have the scope of the project that we have. It's big and robust. We got to get it through the EA process. But I think as you as you think down through the future, it just really increases that true strategic nature of this project. So we're, we're coming around the corner to the end here, but John's got a question that I think is actually particularly germane with where we are, which is because of the fact that you're dealing with 2 levels of government, what assurance have they given you that reasonable timelines will be followed in the review and approval processes? And Steve, maybe that just goes back to, you know, again, some of the formal senses of timelines in the project and in the EA process?

55:50 Yeah, you know, certainly the EA processes are, you know, they're all individual. You know, if you look at Hard Rock, you know, that project was very complex. You know, it had a lot of moving pieces. You know, It was developed on a brownfield site. It had a ton of provincial infrastructure that needed to be moved, including the TransCanada Highway. There was 50 some odd residential properties that needed to be bought out and relocated. And so, when we think about timelines, I think we also have to think about the complexity of a project.

56:42 And so a hard rock in my mind was a fairly extreme example of complexity. For those that know it, there's the highway, there was a golf course, you had to move an OPP station, an MTO patrol yard, a hydro one substation, it just went on and on. And so for us here, we don't have that level of brownfield complexity to deal with. So I think we're able to turn our attention a little bit more to, you know, the federal process, right, as a standard, which has 365 days, you know, allotted, you know, call it clock time to run a process. And, you know, along the way, there's there's timeouts, right?

57:34 Where people ask us questions and we got to respond. But I found in the past that they've been fairly good at adhering to that. So long as we're doing our job, which is providing quality assessment work. So on the federal side you have that clock you know recently in Ontario they've gone through some updates to the environmental assessment process to provide a little bit more certainty, you know, akin to, you know, a 365 day type of clock. You know, in the province of Ontario now, you know, the current government has, you know, been very favorable, you know, of mining projects.

58:21 Minister Rickford's office was instrumental in getting the Hard Rock project approved when it was. And so I think that level of government understanding of our project, the recent experience here in Ontario with mining projects and the EA process being approved, I think will serve us well, and provide some greater certainty as to our ability to adhere to timelines. I think the other lesson learned is really with respect to partitioning EA from permitting.

59:07 You know, and a lot of what you get bogged down in sometimes is requests for, you know, level of detail that are typically required at the permitting stage. And I think a lot of work has been done recently in Ontario to shed some light on that and be able to keep those 2 things a little bit more separate than they perhaps were in the past. But the timelines, it's always a great question. It's something that we have to manage along the way, you know, it's not always It's not always easy. But you know, like I said the best way of doing it is, you know producing good work Yeah, and the other thing that's critical, Steve, as you talk about the timelines, is having our team resourced so that when the clock is stopped for information requests or other things that the regulators want to see from us, we can turn those around quickly.

1:00:03 That is, I think, where you face the largest prospect of delay is A, in not having enough solid baseline information or a thorough enough understanding of the baseline information relative to what the potential impacts are going to be? And B, I think it's when the regulator turns back 250 or 500 or 1,000 questions to the company, how quickly can we get through answering those and that really is a. Is a resourcing issue that I think you know we take great comfort with, with you know the background that you and our team and our broader team collectively have. At this stage of the process. And just to doubly echo your comments on Ontario, I would challenge anyone to stack up a jurisdiction that's done as much permitting of big gold projects in the last 5 years that Ontario has. And I think the testament to that is, you've got Hard Rock, you've got Cote, you've got Maginot all in construction right now.

1:01:15 And these are all big open-pit projects with a lot of water issues and considerations. And so, yeah, we are the benefit of having our predecessors there having been through that process. So, I think it paints a really, you know, it paints a bright picture. Still a ton of work to do, right? And it is permitting. There are risks. But I think, you know, hopefully today with the Q&A and with a little bit of a better deep dive, This will give a bunch of our shareholders a clearer sense of the path and I think, hopefully, a much better understanding that it's not a binary process. We're not waiting to the end of 2023 where the light switches on and all of a sudden, it's investable. I think we're gonna see that credibility come over the course of the time. So Steve, just wanna say thank you very much and appreciate you facing the firing line with our very engaged shareholders here and want to thank all of you for joining us on the call and on the webinar here. We always love this format and love interacting directly with our shareholders this way. Hope it's been useful. If you have any questions or want to follow up, you know where to find us, info at firstmininggold.com.

1:02:38 For more information on the environmental assessment, we've got a great EA portal you can access through our website at www.firstmininggold.com. So on behalf of Steve and our team here, I just want to say thanks very much for joining us and we'll look forward to doing another one of these webinars on another topic sometime shortly. Thanks again.