 Today, I have the pleasure of speaking with Don from Avalon Advanced Materials. How are you today? Great. Thanks. Good to be back, Tracy. Well, I have so many questions for you today. So right out of the gate, Don, can you talk to us about the OR Act? We've had Jack Lichten's opinion, but what we really want is your opinion. Well, the OR Act I see is a great start. There's no doubt that if we're going to see these rarer supply chains established in North America, government has to help by providing incentives to business and entrepreneurs to make that whole supply chain happen. Ten years ago, we tried and didn't quite get there, but it's not as simple as just starting a new mining operation and everything will happen easily after that. And I think it's encouraging that they recognize that now, that they do need to provide these incentives and maybe we'll actually start to see them. Don, of course, Jack was telling us that the OR Act was the most disruptive announcement he's seen in the industry to date, but of course, let's not discount the COVID-19 pandemic. It's our observation that this has only increased the interest in critical materials. So can you speak to how Avalon's business model has not only been basically one step ahead for resolving our sustainability issues in North America, but been a leader and how you plan on moving forward, please? Well, there's no doubt that the whole COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness in the public on the vulnerability of our supply chains here in North America to relying on a sole source of supply, especially when it comes from a country like China. So it's reminded people that we've got to start doing this and it's got government thinking about it a lot. And I think now that we have created that awareness and there's now more urgency to do something about it in the context of COVID-19 too because of the economic problems that are now emerging and we need to restart the economy and what a beautiful way to do it than incentivizing the creation of some of these new supply chains. So it reduces the risk of a repeat down the road. We hope to be one of the leaders in that. Well, speaking of being a leader, you have a lot of Avalon fans out there and I mean I saw your stock movement again on Friday and of course the volume. Let's talk about your projects that you've got going on, how they're progressing and what your priorities are. So yeah, increasingly we're seeing real opportunities with our separation wrap as lithium project. As you know, we've had that project a long time over 20 years now and it's been a matter of being ready to serve new markets when they emerge for the forms of lithium that we have there. And we're seeing lots of opportunity now to do that. There's a whole lot of innovation happening in the glass ceramic space too that prefers a form of lithium such as we have there in our high purity mineral petalite and of course the demand from the battery sector is continuing to grow as well. We want to see that supply chain created here in North America and we think we can make that happen here in Ontario especially now we've got the resource and the interests from government to see it happen. So we're going to take advantage and hopefully this year we'll get that project moving forward with the bulk sampling stage we hope to get started last year. Okay, well speaking of innovation, many clean tech materials have very costly inefficient extraction processes but Avalon, I've got this in quotes, is working on implementing some new technologies to extract valuable elements from waste materials that can offer potential for near-term revenue streams. Can you talk to us about this please Don? Yeah, that's an area we've been interested in for a while actually and new processing technologies offering more and more possibilities for doing that and there are a lot of historic mine waste that were mined for one traditional commodity in the past that might have had half a dozen others that had no market six years ago or 50 years ago that do now. And so that's the opportunity and actually I'm seeing more and more companies out there are starting to look at the same opportunity including some of the majors and thinking about whether they can extract more value out of the tailings of waste streams from current operations that may contain other critical minerals. So we see that as a great opportunity and it's all about coming up with more efficient extraction processes because typically the concentrations of the elements of interest will be low in those waste materials but if you come up with an efficient low-cost process it's a huge opportunity and we're working on a few ideas there now. I'll speak about opportunities all of you investors out there that are looking for undervalued companies. I don't even know where to begin with you Don, you've certainly been a leader in the industry and you have some very sophisticated projects. So I think what we really want to ask you right now is what would be a fair market valuation for Avalon stock? Yeah it's a good question and I get asked that a lot obviously and if our Lithium project starts to be the kind of a lead play in our story then I think it's not unrealistic to start to move towards a kind of market valuation that was reflected in the business model in our 2018 updated PEA which showed an NPV at an 8% discount rate of over 150 million so I don't see why we shouldn't start moving towards say valuation consistent with that as we show the market that we're well in our way to achieving the levels of production and cash flow that that model indicated were possible there. Well of course I have to ask you what's the latest on the Netshalacho project? Investor Intel audience members I've actually gone to the Northwest territories and been on this project site so it's a particular favorite of mine. Yeah so basically Cheetah are ready to go with the work program that we worked out with them on the North T deposit with the small-scale initial production. It's been delayed because everything's kind of locked down there because of the pandemic but they think they'll be able to get going this summer with the site work there to start extracting that sample and start doing that processing work to produce the concentrates and working on the next step on leaching the concentrates with the cooperation of the Saskatchewan Research Council to create that next mixed rare earth product and see where we go from there. Well thank you so much for that update for me Don I really appreciate it and of course we have this fall we have the presidential election we also have the the issues happening in Hong Kong presently we have the COVID-19 we have the trade wars happening this all drawing more attention to critical materials get any comments on how you perceive this playing out here in the fall or you know as obvious from this conversation I guess everyone needs to pull up their sleeves and really be looking at the critical materials Don comments on this please. Well there's no doubt that there is increasing trade tensions between China and the US and if that continues to grow to outright hostility then for sure there's a real risk here of China weaponizing their control of the supply chains on rare earths and other critical minerals and that's just going to create more media headlines on the need to take action prices will go up and we'll probably see a similar circumstance that we saw 10 years ago let's hope so. Yes and so on that on that point what should Avalon advance material shareholders anticipate perhaps this fall because undoubtedly COVID-19 has impacted the goals that you had prior to the pandemic. Well I think that the awareness is going to continue to grow as long as we're able to kind of get back on the ground and start doing some physical work to prove our products and get some markets established then I think where our story is going to continue to grow and attract more and more investor interest. Have you been able to put a strategy in play for that already or are you still waiting to see how the isolation plan you know plans play out. We're ready to go when when we're allowed to basically and hopefully that will be within a month or so when so that in July we can get on the ground and start doing some work the path looks clear now in terms of a barriers to entry there are companies that are willing to offer us capital to help get it going so we're not worried about that and it's all systems go as soon as the locked out is lifted. Well Don thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate the update. My pleasure Tracy.