 Welcome to day three of the world-famous mining show. I'm Peter Clossey here with Investor Intel. We've been doing a lot of interviews this week but today we have a very special guest, Randy Hoback, federal member of parliament for Fort Albert. Good to see you again Peter. Always nice to see you. Fort Albert is in Saskatchewan. Actually Prince Albert in Saskatchewan. Why do I always call it Fort Albert? I always get it wrong. You need to come to PA and we'll get it right and then you'll see the sign, you'll see Deepon Baker's house and you'll be happy. Saskatchewan was just ranked in the top ten mining jurisdictions globally and not just top ten, top three. Yes, actually number one in Canada and top three in the world so it's it's pretty exciting. Why is Saskatchewan ranked so high amongst mining jurisdictions? You know I think I think what's happening is is mining companies are recognized that they actually do a project in Saskatchewan. They can go through the entire process and actually gets the point of building a mine. So yeah there's regulatory things that they have to do, there's environment, duty to consult, all that. But you look at Saskatchewan, they've seen companies like DHP-Vilton just do the Janssen project, you see all the Paula Potash mines, you see the Uranium mines and you see that here's an example where they've actually explored, done the work and now they've actually physically running mines. Creating jobs, adding to the presidential economy. And then you also got in the northern part the First Nations are very excited about the mining sector. They don't view it as a negative thing, they view it as a positive thing and they participate and are actively participating in the mining sector in the Saskatchewan. When you think mining in Saskatchewan the first two properties that come to mind are Uranium and Potash. Yes. And there's a lot of both of them, Scar Lake, the Athabasca Basin. But Saskatchewan has more than just Uranium and Potash. In fact if you look at the show here at PDAC you're starting to see more companies doing different things in Saskatchewan. For example in the eastern side of the province you're seeing Cobalt, Nickel. Cobalt in Saskatchewan. Yes you bet. On the eastern side and actually some guys in the Athabasca Basin are saying we spent all this time looking for Uranium that we haven't looked at other types of minerals that could be there. Right. I understand in the Boulder field you're finding Vanadium and Cobalt with the Uranium. Yes. So you start looking at you know those two things back in the 60s and 70s nobody was looking at and now people are starting to shake off those maps and come back and say hey there's also this here there's that here. Right. And they're also starting to realize that when they were doing the original exploration they didn't they didn't really do that thorough outside of Uranium. They just looked at Uranium and just stopped at Uranium. Right. And the Uranium was so rich that okay that's great we're done. But I think they're finding all sorts of other opportunities in Nordic Saskatchewan. And as a federal member of Parliament you have access to the federal government. A lot of what the mining we do is provincially oriented. That's right. And we deal with the provincial land office and local offices. But this week the federal government made a large announcement about creating a new mining awareness program across Canada. Yep. CMPP I think it's called. Yes. You know it's great because we need to have a vision for the entire country and we have to stand up and be proud of our mining sector. You know I find it really interesting you come to this show and you see all these countries here wanting Canadian mining technology to take back to their country. Right. Yet that same technology goes through so many hurdles and so many barriers to be used here in Canada. It just drives me crazy. So it's nice to see this being created but it also has to go hand in hand with other areas to be streamlined in such a way that we can actually see things happen. You know Frank McKenna said it best right now. It seems like it's difficult to sell Canada to the world because you can't get big projects done. Well I think this is the first step to getting back to that point where we can actually do big projects and do great things here in Canada. Great. And we do thank the federal government for the flow through program. Yes. You know I give the Liberal Government credit five years bankability. You know a conservative I wish we would have done it ourselves. I hate the bite my lip on that one but that was something that was done right. But now they have to follow through in other areas to make sure that it actually has the effectiveness. It's no good giving flow through shares if you can't develop the resource. Right. So they've got to make sure we can still develop the resources. So up in northern Saskatchewan we have senior anium, cobalt. Vanadium is a hot metal right now. As goes China so goes vanadium. 99 percent of the world's consumption of vanadium goes into steel. China makes 50 percent of the world's steel. Does Canada have any plans to help enhance our advanced steel technologies that are science to help us develop these other metals into the steel? You know I'm not physically aware of anything at this point. It doesn't mean there isn't. It's just again there's so many opportunities in Saskatchewan to be aware of all those opportunities in the different niche markets that they may go into. Right. You just can't know it all. But you know the nice thing about if you come into Saskatchewan you go into Regina and talk to the mineral resource people there. If you say I want to look into something in particular they've got enough experience to say you know what maybe this is a good place for you to kind of search around and start snooping around in this area you might find something. So again you've got a full province that's backing the mining sector which is good to see. So good infrastructure, good mining education. Is there a school of mines in Saskatchewan? Well University of Saskatchewan, University of Regina don't depend on what you're doing. University of Regina tends to be more on the gas. University of Saskatchewan is more engineering in the mining sector so you've got Potash. You've got the companies like Hatch and groups like that with big offices in Saskatchewan because of again Potash. It's such a big we're such a global leader in Potash around the world. Right. So we've got that infrastructure already in place. And in your writing there's a large producing mine isn't there? Well it's not producing yet. Star Diamond project is a project that's been ongoing for about 10, 15 years. Now Rio Tinto has come in with some very specialized machinery to go into the Kimberlite and do some appropriate sampling to hopefully lead to a developed mine. And here's a classic example of Saskatchewan in my writing. We're excited to see in there. We're excited to have them actually extracting the resources and we're excited because we can see the benefits to everybody. The First Nations, the cities of Prince Albert, you know, Malifort, Nipah 1. So everybody, in fact they did some town hall meetings this last month. Two, three hundred people there. Not one protester. They're all there excited, just more or less. How do we get you going? What do we need? What can we, how can we help you? Well you and I were talking before this with Stephen Wallace from Searchlight and they have properties in North Saskatchewan. And he's really excited about being there. Yeah, I was actually talking to Stephen. And what's interesting, he's taken advantage of a, it's exploration, not a tax credit, exploration program that they have in his region where he's exploring. So I think it pays for about $50,000 with the drilling. Not a lot of money, but it's a strong symbol to those people that were there to support them and to back them. And it's actually, I think it's a good move from the province because there's an area that we know there's lots of resources, there's high unemployment, there's actually infrastructure getting in there. So why wouldn't we explore that area and extract what we can to the most potential? You must be very proud of the global rankings, Saskatchewan, number third best jurisdiction in the world for mining. Well we're going to aim for number one, that's who we are in Saskatchew. But you know, we encourage people to come out and visit us and talk to us. We have so much to offer. So that's, you know, that's my goal here today is to just remind people of Saskatchewan's there and it is amazing promise to live in, it's amazing promise to do business in. Thank you for your time Mr. Hoback, it's always good to see you. Thank you Peter. Take care.