N

ational Instrument 43-101 is clear in requiring that anyone acting as a qualified person (QP) has “experience relevant to the subject matter of the mineral project.” But judging by the number of professionals approving disclosure well outside their sphere of expertise—and being sanctioned for doing that under securities legislation—it becomes pretty clear that the requirement means different things to different people. 

One of those different people is our straw man, who has a raft of questions about the kind of experience that counts as “relevant” when approving mineral project disclosure. 

I have five years of experience in the mining industry. That should count as relevant experience right there, no? 

Five years in the industry might be enough, but to approve a technical disclosure—the role of the QP—that experience must have been concentrated in the area of practice you are approving. The “relevant experience” test has two parts: the first is to have five years in mineral exploration, mine development, mine operation or project assessment. The second part is to have direct experience relevant to the subject matter of the disclosure you’re approving—you need to have seen similar situations and done similar tasks in the past. 

Wait, I have five years’ experience, but it wasn’t just in mine operations; some of it was in exploration. Do I need five years that are all in one of those categories? 

No. Those five years could have been spent in any or all of the four phases of exploration and mining. What you shouldn’t try to do is include experience from other industries in those five years, unless you can genuinely make a case for that experience as being relevant to the subject matter. For example, a civil engineer approving disclosure about infrastructure could reasonably include experience with site preparation if that’s the kind of activity being disclosed. 

So, for that second part, how do I know what experience is relevant to the subject matter? 

Work function is the most important element in relevant experience. Someone approving a set of drill results should have experience supervising drills. If it’s a resource estimate to be disclosed, the QP should have done the estimation before. Results of beneficiation testing should be approved by a metallurgist. It’s fundamental to professional standards that you work independently only in those spheres where you have already developed competence. 

The Australians talk about relevant experience in the style of mineralization or type of deposit. 

Fair go, as the Aussies are given to say. For a geoscientist overseeing information about drill results or resource estimates, the geological environment—vein types, massive sulfides, 

porphyry deposits and so on—governs a lot about how the work is done. You should be familiar with similar mineralization. However, keep in mind that NI 43-101 is more expansive than most of the reporting codes, governing disclosure about mine development and operations. The metallurgist should have experience with the kind of feed the mine will produce and the kinds of processes the project will use. The engineer designing the tailings impoundment doesn’t need to care much for where the ore comes from, but needs to be familiar with terrain, soil types and hydrology. It’s mostly common sense about the information the QP is handling: a geologist needs experience with the geological setting, a mining engineer with the mining scenario, a metallurgist with the process work and so on. 

And it has to be in the same commodity, right? 

No, it definitely does not, and in some cases that notion leads to a clearly wrong outcome. Different commodities exist in the same geological setting, so there is no reason to slice and dice by commodity for work that exercises the same scientific muscle. Also, for many aspects of the design and costing in technical studies, the commodity has no bearing on the work. Once again, it’s common sense. 

At the other extreme, nobody should trust the practitioner who decides experience in a commodity ports to unrelated geological settings—time spent working on lithium pegmatites does not translate well to lithium brine projects. 

What about that “facing your peers” principle? 

It’s a good one. The confidence that you could talk knowledgeably and reasonably to any expert in the subject matter you’re approving is one of the best tests there is. 

James Whyte, P.Geo., retired in 2023 from his role as a senior geologist at the Ontario Securities Commission. He is writing in his private capacity.