 Good afternoon, Ray. You must be absolutely exhausted. I cannot imagine. For 24,000 of your closest friends descending on Toronto next week for PDAC, what are you doing to get ready? I looked it up and it's not only the biggest annual convention in Toronto, it's the biggest annual convention in Canada. I thought the petroleum guys might have had one up on us, but they only get 5,000 people. I'm not surprised. I think I've been to every event in the world and speaking of events, I was reviewing your background to become the President of PDAC. It's a very auspicious title. You've got to have an incredible educational background and your background is formidable and it starts in New Zealand. How did you end up as the President of PDAC, Ray? That's a two-part question, Tracy. The first is, how did I get to leave New Zealand and come here? And secondly, once I was here, how did I get to become President? So to answer the first part, what motivated my journey from New Zealand was a redhead. She and I are delighted that our first newborn grandchild has red hair. And the second part is, why did I become President? Well, I think you noted one of the places I studied was at Queen's University in Kingston, and a group of us there got together and said, we, geology students, should go down to Toronto and there's something called the PDAC there. What's the PDAC? Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention. You've got to go. That's where you get your summer jobs. And everyone I met at the convention was courteous, kind and helpful. And I resolved that I wanted to be courteous, kind and helpful to those who followed me. And as a result, I'm a big supporter of PDAC's student and early career program, which is a very important part of PDAC's work, given that we need more people to come into this business. And it's not only something that happens at convention, it's the career and early career and student program goes throughout the year. One of the most notable events is in May, I think it's the student industry mineral exploration workshop where we take students from across Canada and tell them what it's really like to be an exploration geologist. Okay. Well, so midterm reflections, since you have become president, what would you say is your greatest challenge so far? And what would you say is your greatest achievement? Once you've been elected as president, there's a very well planned and rigorous procedure to follow before you eventually step into those big shoes by past presidents. And the first part of the procedure is that it required me to serve as second vice president, which is a position that also required me to assume ex officio the role of the chair of the governance and nominating committee. And then the next step is you serve as first vice president for two more years and finally become the president. And my biggest accomplishments actually occurred in those earlier years as second vice president because as the chair of the governance and nominating committee, I reviewed, revised, updated the PDAC's numerous policies and constating documents, as the lawyers call them. And then in the top part, I got the board to approve the changes that I've made. And I was honored in this task to work with many other people, staff and volunteers, but most notably Karen Reese, who is my successor as chair of the governance and nominating committee, and who will next year be my successor as PDAC president. And I was also part of the group that led by Alex Christopher, the previous president who created and implemented PDAC's strategic plan for 2023 to 2028. And so what I and my colleagues accomplished in the governance area, defining and refining how policies and procedures has provided a clear pathway to a company who are accomplishing PDAC's purposes. And you mentioned challenges and issues. Well, they continue to be and they're well addressed by those documents that I reviewed. They continue to be foreign members ensuring for them access to land, access to capital, and access to school Well, I certainly, it certainly sounds like you deserve the fullest president. Trends and innovations from your perspective, right? What are the emerging trends within the global mineral exploration and mining industry as you see it as the PDAC president? Well, probably Tracy, I've been overly influenced in this by talking to investors and US equities who have been just ecstatic about the amount of money that they have made on the magnificent seven technology companies. But it turns out that the most important of the trends and innovations relate to technology. Firstly, advances in technology are actually helping explorationists do their job. We now use drones for exploration. There's a growing availability of fast and cheap chemical and mineralogical analysis of exploration samples. I think of when I used to log core with a microscope and a pen, nowadays it'll be a geologist who'll be using an app on her phone to log that drill core. We've seen automation of engineering, monitoring health, and the introduction of machine learning and artificial intelligence applications improve efficiencies and safety, and in fact, targeting for us new discoveries, as well as tracking our environmental footprints. So that's one influence of technology on those trends and innovations. The other one is that technology is creating new demands for the minerals that we're looking for, notably critical minerals. For example, if you come to the PDAC and I hope you do at the end of this week, more than a thousand exhibitors, one of those exhibits will be something called the Arrow Project. It's a concept vehicle put together by Canada's automotive parts industry to illustrate that what we have here in Canada are all of the materials needed to create vehicles that are free of emissions, and you can go up to this vehicle and touch it. All right. You know I am the founder of the Critical Minerals Institute. I have to ask you for one more line on the critical minerals sector, if you wouldn't mind. What kind of influence are you seeing from investors that you've been talking about in the critical minerals sector? Well, one of the critical minerals issues that I think a lot of attention has not been paid to the downstream processing, so I'm delighted that the governments of Canada and other countries recognize that often the key to critical minerals isn't the geology of the deposit as it sits in the ground. For example, I'll hear a promoter say, look, I've got the best critical minerals property in the world, high grade, large, so I'm definitely in the critical minerals business. Well, maybe you're not because that statement reminds me or makes me think of a farmer, a farmer who says, hey, I've got a great field of barley and a great field of rye, so I'm in the whiskey business. The value added in the whiskey business is all the downstream processing, and it's pretty much that case in critical minerals as well. I really appreciate that. Thank you, Ray. And I think it's a perfect bridge to the topic of sustainability and future outlook. Considering the growing emphasis on sustainability and responsible mining practices, we know PDAC is a leadership. Can you talk to us about the future directions as you envision for the industry and PDAC's role within it, please? Wow, that's that's how future you're talking about Tracy. And well, I guess for a start, the convention is a great venue for companies to tell the world about their sustainable and responsible mining practices. And in particular, this year, we have integrated topics like industry, community, and indigenous cooperation. We even have one on how to deal with forest fires and how that ties in with indigenous cooperation and mineral exploration led by indigenous people. So that those are some of the special looks at sustainability at convention. But outside the convention, as you alluded to, we were pioneers of sustainable exploration and development, and we produced a product, online product, what if you printed out as about this much paper, it's called E3 Plus, and it was the first guide to mining companies or exploration companies to how to be responsible and exploration. And we've now updated E3 Plus, and we're relaunching it at the convention under its new brand name, DRE, Driving Responsible Exploration. And I suppose you could include as part of the PDAC's involvement in sustainability, our government advocacy work because our advocacy work has been one of the reasons why Canada's federal government has implemented the Critical Minerals Exploration Tax Credit, the Critical Minerals Infrastructure and Processing Fund, and the Clean Manufacturing Input Tax Credit. Advice for young professionals, right? What would you tell them going to PDAC? Would you say start in our technology section? I mean, it is a huge program. I think I turned one of your online pieces of information into 88 pages. Just trying to assess which booths I need to make time to go to. What advice do you have for the young professionals and for us older professionals? Probably the shortest I would say, look, in order to give you the kind of perspective you need to accommodate, for example, on a Tuesday I counted there's some 17 parallel technical sessions. So to help you understand which ones of those you should be attending, why don't you apply to be part of the 2025 Student Industry Mineral Exploration Workshop? So that's one answer. And another answer is we'll bring a friend to convention. You go to some of the presentations and your friend goes to others and you talk afterwards about what you've seen and learned from that. But I think the most important thing about bringing your friend to convention or telling them about what you learned at convention is, well, I've heard of students who side, if only I'd known that in mining exploration you get to see parts of the world that Instagram has never been. You get to ride, ride in helicopters through beautiful terrain and you learn how to care for yourself and the wilderness. I'm so pissed off with myself that last year I took a summer job in the city. Next year I want to do it out in the bush working in exploration. Ray, I can't thank you enough for your time. We want to wish you a lot of health, extra what is all the vitamins that you need to handle the energy and saying hello to 24,000 people. And thank you so much for allowing us to participate. I think we counted over four dozen publicly listed companies in the critical mineral sector just in our roster that we'll be attending and we look forward to seeing you and participating. PDAC 2024, thank you.