Innovation Fall 2026

S ixteen of Canada's federally identified critical resources, which is driving new mining technology. “BC is obviously really competitive,” says James Scott, P.Geo., founder of Welcot Consulting Ltd. “We've got the industry; we've got the skills.” The push toward electrification also forces companies to re-examine where those resources come from and how quickly they can be developed. “I think a lot of it has been driven by the fact that we've had this push for electrification with electric cars,” says Dr. Russell Hartlaub, P.Geo., a professor at BCIT's School of Construction and the Environment. “And so, in the spotlight are things like lithium and graphite.” More electric vehicles require batteries, charging infrastructure and transmission lines, all of which rely heavily on mined materials.For BC to remain competitive, companies have to be competitive and innovative. Innovation underground: block caving Newmont's Red Chris copper-gold mine in northwestern BC is addressing the challenges by adopting a different mining technique. Located in the Golden minerals are in BC. This geological bounty places BC at the centre of the international competition for

Triangle, a mineral-rich mining district near the Alaska border, Newmont is shifting toward block caving, a mining method that allows companies to access deep underground ore bodies that would no longer be practical to mine through conventional open-pit expansion. The company explains that in block caving, miners excavate an undercut beneath the orebody and create a network of drawpoints below it. Once a small percentage of the deposit is blasted, gravity takes over – the orebody progressively fractures and collapses into funnels known as drawbells, where the broken rock is collected and transported to surface for processing. Put simply, block caving is a controlled, engineered collapse. The method is particularly attractive for large, low-grade porphyry copper deposits because it can achieve very high overall extraction. It also enables mining companies to access ore located thousands of metres below surface without constructing increasingly larger surface excavations or bringing as much waste rock to the surface as open-pit mining, all while reducing the mine’s surface footprint.

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Fall 2026

Innovation