Last week, I had the opportunity to present at the 2012 Mine Accounting & Reporting Update conference held in Toronto. The conference covered a variety of topics of interest to mining and exploration issuers, including the issue of website and third party disclosure about which we wrote in early May.
At the conference, OSC Staff expanded on their views on this issue, including with reference to our own blog post on the subject. With respect to compliance with National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, OSC Staff are of the view that if you publicly disclose it, post it, or link to it, then you "own it" and are responsible for ensuring that the disclosure complies with NI 43-101.
In respect of certain circumstances, such as an issuer's own fact sheets, presentation slides or other "written disclosure" (as defined in NI 43-101), last week's presentation by OSC Staff provided a useful reminder for issuers. However, on the subject of website and third party disclosure, the presentation provided confirmation that OSC Staff are continuing to look beyond the disclosure produced by an issuer itself and will consider all disclosure and information the issuer has endorsed (in posting the information or linking to it) when reviewing the issuer's compliance with NI 43-101. In particular, as noted in our earlier post, issuers should be particularly mindful with respect to analysts' reports (governed also by National Policy 51-201 Disclosure Standards) and quoting or linking to media coverage of any kind.
During the conference, OSC staff also expanded on the use of preliminary economic assessments, an issue that I will canvass in a forthcoming post.
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