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While North American Tungsten plans to focus its proposed Mactung mine in the Yukon -- the ore body at the site straddles the NWT/Yukon border - it will draw its employee base from workers in both territories, putting the emphasis on Northern hires. - photo courtesy of North American Tungsten

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - While North American Tungsten won't be developing its proposed Mactung mine on the NWT side of the NWT/Yukon border, the territory still has a chance to benefit where it counts the most, CEO Stephen Leahy said.

"The important thing is not the (property) taxes, it's not the jurisdiction, it's really the jobs," said Leahy.

And when it comes to hiring for Mactung, workers from the Yukon and from the NWT will both have a chance to profit.

"We are Northern hirers," said Leahy, adding the company doesn't distinguish between the territories when looking for workers in the North.

When it comes to finding employees in the North, "Borders are not really designed for us," he added.

Hiring North is "better for the community (and) it's better for us," he said, pointing to the company's Cantung mine in the NWT as an example.

At Cantung about 40 per cent of the hires are from the North, said Leahy.

But, while the Yukon/NWT border won't count when it comes to hiring for Mactung, it has played a part in deciding where the company would mine.

The Mactung site is located in the area around Mt. Allan on the Yukon/NWT border and the ore body straddles both sides. Last year, while working on the mine's feasibility study, North American decided to move the mill and tailing ponds entirely to the Yukon side of the border, pointing, in part, to the NWT's complex regulatory process.

With other logistical factors playing into the move, Leahy added it's unlikely the company will seek to start work any time soon on the NWT side, which only has five or six per cent of open pit resources.

"The regulatory issues are such that a dual jurisdiction, for a small company like ours, would be overwhelming. It would be just absolutely overwhelming," he said.

North American recently completed its feasibility study technical report for the Mactung property under the Yukon system, which, unlike the NWT regulatory system, has set time deadlines for each step in the process.

The mine is forecast to run underground operations at 2,000 tonnes per day, with an estimate mine life of 11 years - and a potential 18 additional years of open pit mining.

"For Northerners this is one of the larger projects for sure and certainly has a long longevity to the project," said Leahy.

Yet, while Mactung will move to Yukon with some benefits left to the NWT, other projects have fallen by the wayside under the weight of the territory's regulatory process.

Mines on the border, after all, are a special case, said Mike Vaydik, general manger of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

He pointed to the lack of uranium exploration in the Thelon Basin as an example, which was expected to see about three years of exploration and has seen almost none.

"Normally what moves is the capital. People just lose interest and they go somewhere else and spend their money and that's what happening in several of our regions in the North," said Vaydik. "When you look at our so-called process next to the ... process in the Yukon, (theirs) is predictable and has time constraints and ours isn't predictable or consistent and it doesn't have time constraints," added Vaydik.

And when it comes to investors known timelines are very important.

"If you're going to spend half a billion dollars to build a mine, you pretty well need to know when you're going to spend it," said Vaydik.