REGINA – Optimism continues to be in abundance with respect to Saskatchewan’s mining sector.
The province and industry leaders met reporters last Thursday at the Saskatchewan Subsurface Geological Lab in Regina, to highlight the strong performance of the sector in 2025, and highlight what they say is a bright future in 2026 and beyond.
Minister of Energy and Resources Chris Beaudry pointed to several positives in 2025 including the following:
He pointed to the province’s “world-class potash and uranium industries” as a driving force. He said overall Saskatchewan's mineral sales last year exceeded $12.8 billion, a 19 per cent gain on the value of sales recorded in 2024. It “represents one of the highest years we have on record,” he said.
The value of potash sales for 2025 hit $9.3 billion for an 18 per cent gain over 2024, while uranium saw $3.2 billion dollars in sales, a 24 per cent increase for the highest value it has ever reached.
“This also means the value of uranium sales again surpassed a 2030 Saskatchewan growth plan target to achieve 2.2 billion dollars in annual uranium sales. The 2025 figure surpasses that goal by more than 30 per cent,” said Beaudry.
Beaudry said the two industries have “been foundations of our provincial economy for decades” and that Saskatchewan people continue to reap the benefits.
“Our strong and reputable industry partners like Mosaic, Cameco, Orano, Nutrien, KNS and BHP have invested tens of billions of dollars in our great province over the last two decades. Those investments help us to ensure economic growth and a better standard of living for all the people of Saskatchewan.”
Beaudry said in 202 Saskatchewan once again led Canada in mineral resource development spending with our industry investing over $6.7 billion, accounting for 25 per cent of the country's total. Saskatchewan also accounted for over 16 per cent of national spending on mineral exploration, surpassing the 15 per cent critical mineral strategy goal, and Beaudry said Saskatchewan exploration spending is expected to grow to $483 million this year, an increase of 23 per cent.
To keep the growth going, he pointed to the government having further expanded the Targeted Mineral Exploration Incentive last year to include more early-stage investment.
“Last year this key program supported 34 exploration projects which companies invest with companies investing an estimated 70 million dollars on those projects. Since the program was launched in 2018, the TMEI supported 131 exploration projects resulting in an estimated 245 million dollars in project expenditures.”
Beaudry also pointed to Saskatchewan being home to 27 of Canada's 34 critical minerals, and pointed to the expected full commercial production start for three critical minerals this year: “lithium, copper and zinc.”
He pointed to Eldorado Gold, formerly Foran Mining, expects to begin commercial production of copper and zinc at its McIlvenna Bay project. He also said Prairie Lithium is finishing the construction of its project and are projecting to begin the first commercial production of lithium in the province in 2026.
Beaudry also pointed to Saskatchewan being the largest producer in Canada of helium, a “key critical mineral which is essential for use in medical imaging, space exploration, defence applications and manufacturing fiber optics and semiconductors.”
He said Saskatchewan currently supplies three per cent of the world's helium and “we're aiming to hit 10 per cent by 2030.”
Strong job growth predicted, but filling the jobs a challenge
What it all means is strong economic performance for the whole mining sector and numerous job opportunities in the province.
Pam Schwann, President of Saskatchewan Mining Association, says the future looks bright in terms of jobs in the sector, but she does have concerns about a potential labour crunch.
“At the moment, we're going to need 15,000 more workers in the next 10 years,” Schwann said.
Those include “critical careers” which have a high specificity to the mining sector, like mining engineers, power engineers, mechanical engineers and the like, but Schwann said they “need to do a lot more work” on the “prevalent careers”, which include the technicians and the trades. She said that is where the crunch is going to be.
“When you look at other sectors, whether it's agricultural, you know, or even all the building that's going to have to happen, we're going to compete with them,” Schwann said.
“We can pay higher wages, but that doesn't solve the problem. We need to make a bigger pie, and we need to attract those students and inform the parents, guidance counsellors, that this is a great career, you know, and one that uses technology a lot… (in) every aspect of a job right now in the sector is using technology. So we need to do some work on modifying perceptions that were accurate 20 years ago. But it's come a long way, baby, as they say, and it's a great industry, safe industry, and a very well-paying sector.”
Trident bullish on gold potential in province
One of the companies showcased in the announcement was Trident Resources Corp. Their CEO Jon Weisblatt said that Trident Resources is “actively advancing gold and copper exploration in northern Saskatchewan with a clear focus on building a long-term presence in the province.”
He said Trident holds more than 145,000 hectares of gold and copper mineral claims in Saskatchewan, making them the “largest pure plate gold and copper exploration company in the province.”
“We've expanded this land position by more than 40 per cent over the past 12 months, reflecting our confidence in the geological potential we're seeing across the region. In addition to that land position, we've established a growing resource base. Trident currently has approximately 2 million ounces of gold defined across four open, pittable deposits.”
He spoke of the company advancing an "emerging, post-producing, high-grade underground asset" at Contact Lake, part of the La Ronge gold belt. Looking ahead from 2025 through the end of 2026, Wiesblatt said Trident plans to invest approximately $25 to $30 million dollars into Saskatchewan, including up to 50,000 meters of drilling in the La Ronge gold belt.
“This represents one of the most significant exploration programs in the region since the Cameco exploration campaigns of the 80s and the 90s,” he said.
One thing Weisblatt pointed out was that much of the province's gold potential, especially in the north, “remains under-explored relative to other Canadian jurisdictions.”
He said the La Ronge gold belt hosts "favourable geology comparable to productive greenstone belts elsewhere in Canada, including Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia, and continued exploration is needed to better define and advance this opportunity.”In speaking to reporters,
In speaking to reporters, Weisblatt was enthused about what they found in the drilling in the Contact Lake project, speaking particularly about the results from CL26036, or Hole 36 for short.
“Hole 36 is for sure one of the, if not the highest grade intercept ever produced in this province,” said Weisblatt.
“Cameco never made these results public, so in a public company, this is the highest grade result that the province has ever seen in gold, and also one of the highest grade gold intercepts.”
The company reported it returned a high-grade intercept of 15.11 g/t gold (Au) over 51.83m from 256.0m in the BK3 Zone. Weisblatt called that sort of result “extraordinary.”
“You'd be hard pressed to find results like that in the Golden Triangle, in the Abitibi, or the Ring of Fire in Ontario. So yeah, my expectations were exceeded.”
He noted even more results are coming, with 15 more holes coming from Contact Lake, plus another 11 holes coming from drilling done at Preview.
“There's a lot of catalysts for shareholders. It's going to be an extraordinary few weeks and months.”
Weisblatt also spoke about some of the marketing Trident has done. He said is aimed at getting the word out about the gold potential in Saskatchewan — something many investors still don't know a lot about.
“I've now been on the road for 10 straight months. I've been in Europe, I've been in the United States, and across Canada. I met with some of the largest institutional investors that invest in these types of companies on Planet Earth. And there is a great deal of education that needs to happen about Saskatchewan and gold province. Nobody knows about it, which suggests to me that we are actually on to something.”
He said the programs that Trident has launched are to “educate the investor, it's to educate them about the gold possibility and potential in the province, and to get more eyeballs on the story.”
