AKE (ASX) James Bay Update

Originally posted by triage: ↑

Hi Seas

You no doubt are right about typical leaving it to the last moment distribution of minutes. However in this case the efforts of the Executive Secretary and the release of COMEX meeting minutes are worse than that. The last set of minutes released were for Meeting 413, with the (initial) meeting held on 27 April. In those minutes it is recorded that the meeting adopted as presented the minutes for the previous meeting, Meeting 412. So, yes, it would seem that the minutes of a COMEX meeting are presented to the next meeting so that they can be adopted: it suggests a one month turnaround. But since the April meeting there have been three more meetings - the next meeting is Meeting 417 - and so they are still sitting on the minutes for three more recent meetings.

So the good news is that the COMEX committee functions on a one month turnaround cycle but the bad news is there is a lag of three or so months before COMEX releases its decisions and minutes. Using the Rose project, the COMEX recommended its approval in their meeting of 20 September 2022 but it was not given official approval until 2 November 2022. That is more than two full months of bureaucrats fart arsing around after the actual recommendation was made - can you imagine the Reserve Bank sitting on its decisions for a couple of months while they get the paperwork in order. And currently it looks like COMEX is dealing with maybe two lithium projects - the other looks to be a Chinese project at Moblan - and a couple of gold projects (plus a few other projects). Can you imagine the logjam if COMEX has ten or fifteen lithium projects all seeking permitting at the same time. The Quebec government can talk the talk all they want but taking five or six years to process a permitting application is not workable.

Findinggems - yes, you remembered right: the last update recorded for the James Bay project was dated 23 June.

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Yeah, sorry, obviously 20 September to 2 November is just over one month from COMEX recommending the approval of the Rose project to its actual approval, not "two full months". Poor proof reading. So, if James Bay was recommended for approval at the 26 July meeting of COMEX we might expect something around the end of this month, perhaps into early September. (But my point remains that if COMEX recommends an approval there should be no substantial reason for the approval not to be given almost immediately after that - any delay on that is just bureaucratic dithering).