Provincial plans to speed up mineral exploration permitting are being welcomed by parts of British Columbia’s mining sector, but industry leaders say the larger question is whether governments will preserve the grassroots land access that turns a weekend stake into tomorrow’s operating mine.
At the Association for Mineral Exploration’s Roundup conference, Imperial Metals senior project geologist Derek Saxton said the company’s operating and near term assets sit on top of a much larger base of early stage ground.
“We have over 20 properties around the province,” Saxton said in an interview. He pointed to Mount Polley, Huckleberry, an exploration property he called Ruddock Creek, and Imperial’s 30 per cent stake in the Red Chris mine, adding that “the rest of the properties are grassroots, early stage properties that we do exploration on.”
The funnel problem
That funnel matters, he said, because the province’s major projects are still developing.
“They have to be found initially somewhere,” Saxton said, describing grassroots work as early stage exploration where “we haven’t really found a major deposit yet, but we have some data that suggests something could be there.”
Todd Stone, president and CEO of AME, delivered a similar message in his annual Roundup address, framing grassroots exploration as an economic security issue and warning that restrictions on land access will choke off the pipeline of future mines.
“That’s why mineral exploration isn’t a ‘nice to have’. It’s essential to the achievement of our ambitions as a nation,” Stone said.
For AME, the immediate concern is the amount of open terrain prospectors can reach. “Nothing else matters if our explorers face a smaller and smaller land base to explore,” Stone said.
Record spending vs. declining staking
The debate comes as the B.C. government moves to impose fixed timelines for exploration permitting beginning April 1, promising most applications will be processed within 40 to 140 days depending on complexity, backed by $3 million in added capacity. Premier David Eby told the conference the province posted record mineral exploration spending of $750.9 million in 2025, a 36 per cent increase over the prior year.
Industry representatives, however, say the early stage system is still strained. Eby’s remarks cited ministry information indicating mineral claim staking fell 29 per cent last year, and the area of claims staked dropped 60 per cent compared with the seven year average. The province’s Mineral Claims Consultation Framework has also missed its service targets, averaging 127 days, the article reported.
Stone has argued the uncertainty is being felt most by prospectors and junior companies. AME has called for amendments to B.C.’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act and the Interpretation Act after a B.C. Court of Appeal decision last fall overturned the province’s mineral claims regime, warning the current framework is unworkable for early stage work.
The global copper crunch
The stakes extend beyond the province’s exploration community. Anglo American chief technical officer Tom McCulley told the same gathering that copper demand is rising with electrification, grid expansion and artificial intelligence data centres, and he urged governments and companies to pair faster development with public trust.
“In developed economies, there are about 230 kilograms of installed copper per person. Globally, that number is just 70 kilograms of installed copper per person,” McCulley said. He added that global installed copper stocks would need to rise from about 500 million tonnes to more than two billion tonnes in coming decades if living standards and electrification climb together.
The logic of discovery
B.C. has been leaning into that argument as it tries to attract investment. The province recently issued permits for Centerra Gold Inc. to expand the Mt. Milligan copper gold mine near Fort St. James, extending operations to 2035 and supporting 574 jobs, with projected capital spending of up to $400 million, according to provincial reporting cited in the conference coverage.
For companies like Imperial, Saxton said, the logic is simple. Without the grassroots work that defines targets and narrows prospects, there is nothing for engineers, communities and regulators to evaluate later.
“You call them grassroots projects,” he said. “They have to be found initially somewhere.”
Resource Works News
Correction (Feb. 25, 2026): An earlier version of this article referred to Ruddock Creek as Red Creek. The article has been updated.
