Canada recently completed a major review of its mining reporting standards which culminated with the release, just over one year ago, on February 2, 1999, of the final report of the Mining Standards Task Force (“MSTF”). The final report made 66 specific recommendations relating to the raising of mining standards in Canada. These recommendations were aimed at maintaining Canada as a lead jurisdiction in mineral exploration, development and production finance. Although the MSTF Report has made a number of key recommendations, it falls to various Canadian self-regulatory and regulatory organisations to implement the MSTF recommendations.

Following the release of the MSTF report a number of initiatives have been commenced or completed and regulatory initiatives are continuing on several other important issues affecting the Canadian mineral exploration and mine development industry. These initiatives are set out in Section 1 below.

The major focus of this paper will be to compare the Australian VALMIN Code to the proposed National Instrument 43-101 in Canada. An analysis of the more important provisions of VALMIN and NI 43-101 are set out in Appendix 1.