No mining land in Canada be it naturally staked claim or lease, or patent under any provincial law or territorial right or decree, by tradition is normally sold outright of the mining rights by its holder. Instead, it is commonly optioned to an optionee for eventual purchase by the optionee of a 100% right to mine and smelt the metals thereof, subject to the performance of the optionee, and subject to royalties and payments made over time on production by the mentioned optionee, to the optionor and the state both.
This is done in part because the right to mine and hold the mining property in good standing is in turn subject by the province also to performance of the rights holder or legal land occupier, and the right thereof to engage in production is subject to certain acts being carried out in the way of work expended, and that it is required by the province that annual taxes and production royalties be paid in order to maintain that right of production. Since the province requires these acts to be carried out, and taxes be paid it is incumbent on the landholder or rights owner to make sure that the acquiring company pay these royalties and carry out these acts accordingly over time, by some legal agreement, else, failing that, the land should return to the responsibility of the original optionor, or it may be lost entirely of both parties.
In addition, it is a common consideration that if the work in order to prove a mine is not carried out in some expedient way in a limited time period, it is also not wise to allow the land to thus remain fallow in the hands of the thus defaulting party, or the maximum enjoyment of potential profit shall not be realized in good time. Tbus, it is oft required by an optionor that the mineral potential of the land be duly explored to the maximum potential of that land as can be reasonably be expected by some authority competent in that field.
If one wishes that a firm and absolute price be put on mineral land which is not yet fully explored, nor where its true and undeniable potential revealed to the veriest idiot, then a maximum and not immediately provable price will be therefore put on it, without the benefit of both party's firm knowledge of the exactitude of such a price existing that a profit can be proved to be realized on the ore extracted thereof. It would seem expedient then, to both parties who wish to remain honest, that the sum of the worth of the property be best and safest paid out as it is revealed by exploration and establishment of a reserve. All the worth of a property where wealth that is potential cannot be revealed, as it might be, to and by, a property developer who wishes to build upon it in a manner of real estate for housing. Estimation of buried wealth that is potential can only be guessed at, but nonetheless it does exist, and since it is demonstrated in other areas of equal or worse geology, it must be compensated eventually, else why the rush to acquire it at one early, perhaps lower price at all?
If wealth must be proved by expensive development and exploration in order to mine, then the holder of that wealth, whether the wealth be proved or not, should be able to eventually enjoy a percentage of that wealth as it is undeniably revealed or profited thereon, as it is his contention that evidence of its potential exists to be estimated today.
Ergo, no outright fair sale of a mineral right is possible at this point in the evolution of the science of establishment of the worth of that right.
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