MOST VALUABLE MINERAL

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 252, 16 June 1932, Page 6

MOST VALUABLE MINERAL

CANADIAN GOVERMENT OFFER SUBSTANTIAL REWARD FOR RADIUM DISCOVERY. NEEDED FOR CURATIVE PURPOSES. The search for radium, most valuable of minerals, will continue in British Columbia this year as a result of new mineral legislation passed at the last session of the Canadian Legislature. Under the terms of this legislation, a syndicate which started to explore radio active ore on Vancouver Island and Quadra Island and then stopped its operations, will resume work. The Canadian Government still offers a reward of £1000 to any person discovering radium, as an extra inducement to prospecting. At the same time, the Hon. W. A. McKenzie, Minister of Mines, explained that the Governments new radium policy, widely representated in some quarters as too favourable to mining corporations, was designed to conserve for the public the fullest possible share of any profits arising from a radium discovery and also to make certain that radium was used for curative purposes in as large a way as also of public health, was to encourpossible. He said that the old Radium Aet, under which the Government could take 50 per cent. of any radium discovery and also collect a royalty on it, had definitely discouraged the search for radium and stopped the operations then under way. The chief desire of the Government in the interest of general activity and age a radium discovery. The new Act, he said, would do so and at the same time give the Government the most sweeping powers to conserve radium for the public use. It had power to pass any regulations governing radium mining and to declare a blanket reserve on radium-bearing lands should they be discovered to conserve them for the public. In this way complete public pro.tection was provided and prospecting would be stimulated by the removal of the provision by which the Crown could take 50 per cent. interest of all discoveries. It was entitled to only a 10 per cent. interest under the new law, but it would collect the ordinary mineral tax and income taxes on radium profits.