Special Circumstances for the Exclusion of Time and Extension of Time in performing or filing assessment work

Under the Mining Act, claim holders are required to perform assessment work on their mining claims in order to keep the claims in good standing (unless exceptions apply that allow them to make payments in lieu of doing the work). They are also required to file reports to the Ministry describing that work.

In some circumstances, claim holders are unable to perform assessment work, or to report on that work. The Mining Act allows them to apply for an order extending the deadline for reporting on this work (an “extension order”). Alternatively, they can apply for an order that excludes a period of time (an “exclusion order”), which relieves the claim holder from the requirement to perform work for the excluded period.

Recently, the Mining Act was amended to give the Minister of Energy, Northern Development and Mines the ability to issue an exclusion of time or extension of time, without the claim holder needing to apply.  This allows the Minister to act proactively if there are unusual circumstances that affect multiple claim holders simultaneously. These amendments received royal assent on December 9, 2020.

The Ministry has a policy related to exclusions of time and another policy related to extensions of time, but both of these policies need to be updated in order to reflect recent amendments. Although there is no significant impact to the environment, we are posting these policies to allow the public an opportunity to comment on the revisions.

The proposed updated policies explain the circumstances where the Minister would consider issuing an exclusion of time or an extension of time without an application. There have also been some other minor, editorial changes in order to make the exclusion and extension policies more consistent with each other in structure, and to correct some style and grammatical issues. Some sections have been re-ordered to allow a more logical flow.

The Extension of Time Policy has been updated to include Subsection 138(2) of the Act that empowers the Recorder to grant an order for an extension of time on the Recorder’s own initiative, if MLAS was down for a period of time and claim holders were prevented from accessing the system, and appropriate notice of the downtime was not given.

The “supporting material” section includes drafts of the proposed updated policies.  In addition, for ease of reference, we have provided “blackline” versions that show the proposed changes from the existing versions of the policies, except for the section re-ordering.