Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/661612
18 www.resourceworld.com A P R I L / M A Y 2 0 1 6 basic objectives: reduce administrative and compliance costs for listed companies; expand investor participation and boost liquidity; and grow and diversify its list- ings base. Some ideas are now in effect and some will take longer to implement. However, Kaiser sees some of these improvements as ineffective. For example, the Venture Exchange's idea "to create more positive awareness of Canada's public venture market and to showcase TSXV- listed companies to fund managers, retail investors, investment advisors, investment bankers and research analysts." Kaiser retorts, "This is a really bad idea because it reflects the TMX Group's ambition to get into the investor relations business." Kaiser has various other concerns related to the TMX Group's new plans that are too lengthy and detailed for this arti- cle. They can be viewed on John Kaiser's website under the heading TSXV Town Hall Cheat Sheet – January 20, 2016. Looking at the junior mining sector long term, Kaiser is worried that if the sec- tor is not healthy, young people will not want to work in the earth sciences and related employment. Since young people and their education form the basis for the future, what can be done to develop a healthy junior mining sector that can gen- erate jobs now and in the future? Dr. Kurt Kyser at the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering at Queen's University, said, "When the junior mining sector has had serious survival issues similar to those of the present, the negative impact on the training of highly qualified personnel in the Earth sciences was substantial, and there were serious ripple effects on other industries as well." He said there becomes an almost instan- taneous dearth of positions for young people in junior companies. "This then eventually impacts major companies who often recruit experienced people from the juniors for senior positions," said Kyser. "In addition, about half of students who earn degrees in Earth Science capital- ize on their training and experience for employment into subsidiary fields such as investment banking, business and law. As a result, these fields are also negatively affected by the loss of the junior mining sector because young people are no longer attracted to the Earth sciences." Kyser remarked that the negative effects of this feed-back cycle are devastating to the Canadian economy in ways that are not initially obvious, but are nevertheless imminent. Bearing in mind that some 375,000 peo- ple across Canada work in the mining and mineral processing industries, it is crucial to have a junior stock trading platform that is helpful to both listed companies and investors. After all, mining contributed $57 billion to Canada's Gross Domestic Product in 2014. And that doesn't include employ- ment benefits and revenue generated by Canadian companies in other countries. n