On March 25, 2025, the Province of British Columbia (BC; “the Province”) implemented the Mineral Claims Consultation Framework (MCCF), substantially changing BC’s mineral claims process. The change was met with concern by the Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia (AME) and members of the mineral exploration industry. Prior to the MCCF, any person with a Free Miner’s Certificate (FMC) could directly stake claims online. The MCCF replaced this ‘free-entry’ staking system with an application process designed to meet the legal requirements imposed by the 2023 Gitxaała v. British Columbia (Chief Gold Commissioner) BC Supreme Court decision (Gitxaala v. British Columbia [Chief Gold Commissioner], 2023), which found that the Province has a duty to consult with First Nations prior to issuing any mineral claims. Industry concerns surrounding the new system included capacity, intellectual property protection, and, in particular, timeline delays.
AME retained the services of Purple Rock Inc. to provide independent data collection, monitoring, and analysis of the MCCF’s performance and impact on industry; this report contains the results of that analysis.
Purple Rock tracked key performance indicators such as the number of applications submitted, number of claims approved, and the time for decisions to be issued; compiled historical data on claim staking trends dating back to March 2020; and compared staking behaviour since the MCCF was implemented to a baseline defined by the period from June 2022 to November 2024. This period is representative of staking behaviour following the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and prior to the announcement of the MCCF implementation.
The number and size of claim applications staked in BC immediately following the implementation of the MCCF were much lower than the post-COVID baseline. Although the number of claim applications staked has since rebounded, the MCCF has not yet met the Province’s stated target timelines for application processing. The data collected over the past year indicate that there is a steadily growing backlog of applications, and that approval times continue to increase. If immediate action is not taken to improve processing times, these delays could have major negative impacts on BC’s mineral exploration industry.