A junior miner's story lives or dies inside its NI 43-101 technical report. Here's how the Canadian disclosure standard is structured, what the Qualified Person sign-off means, and the resource-and-cost details investors often scrutinize before the promotion gets ahead of the geology.
NI 43-101 is National Instrument 43-101, Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, a rule of the Canadian Securities Administrators. Any issuer that discloses scientific or technical information about a material mineral property to Canadian investors must support that disclosure with a technical report prepared to this standard and filed on SEDAR+. The report follows a defined table of contents — property description, geology, drilling, sampling and data verification, mineral processing, resource and reserve estimates, and (for advanced projects) economic analysis — so that very different projects can be compared on a like-for-like basis.
Crucially, NI 43-101 incorporates the CIM Definition Standards for the terminology below. Those definitions, not marketing language, govern what a company is allowed to call a "resource" or a "reserve." Reading the report is largely a matter of checking that the words in the press release match the categories in the filing.
Every technical report is signed by one or more Qualified Persons (QPs). A QP is an engineer or geoscientist with a relevant university degree, at least five years of experience relevant to the deposit type and the work being done, and membership in good standing of a recognized professional association. The QP takes personal responsibility for the technical content and certifies it.
Mineral resources are graded by geological confidence, not by size. More drilling, tighter spacing, and better data verification move material up the ladder.
| Category | Confidence | Roughly what it means |
|---|---|---|
| Inferred | Lowest | Estimated from limited sampling; geology and grade are implied, not verified. |
| Indicated | Moderate | Enough detail to assume continuity of grade and geology with reasonable confidence. |
| Measured | Highest | Dense, verified data; grade and tonnage are well established. |
The hard rule: an Inferred resource may only be used in a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA). It can never form the basis of the economic analysis in a pre-feasibility or feasibility study. A study that quietly leans on Inferred ounces to make its economics work is misusing the category — one of the most important checks a reader can make.
Economic studies climb a ladder of rising confidence and narrowing cost tolerance. Each stage costs more to produce and constrains the numbers more tightly.
| Stage | Can use Inferred? | Typical cost accuracy | Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|
| PEA (Preliminary Economic Assessment) | Yes | ~±30–50% | Conceptual "is this worth studying" scoping. |
| PFS (Pre-Feasibility Study) | No | ~±20–25% | Establishes at least a Probable reserve and a mine plan. |
| FS (Feasibility Study) | No | ~±10–15% | Detailed basis for a production and financing decision. |
Reserves vs resources. A reserve is the economically mineable part of a Measured or Indicated resource, demonstrated by at least a PFS with "modifying factors" applied — mining, metallurgical, economic, marketing, legal, environmental, social, and governmental. Proven reserves derive from Measured resources; Probable from Indicated. A resource is a broader geological estimate that has not yet cleared that bar. Headlines often blur the two; the filing keeps them separate for a reason.
The cut-off grade is the minimum grade at which a block of rock is worth mining and processing. It is also the single easiest number to use to inflate a resource. Lowering the cut-off pulls more, lower-grade material inside the pit shell, which increases reported tonnage while dragging the average grade down. Raising it does the reverse.
Neither move is inherently wrong — the "right" cut-off depends on metal price and cost assumptions — but the reader should ask whether a headline tonnage jump came from new drilling or simply from a friendlier cut-off. The data shows the difference: compare the cut-off grade and metal-price assumptions between the old and new reports, not just the top-line ounces.
All-In Sustaining Cost (AISC) is a World Gold Council–style measure that captures cash operating costs plus sustaining capital, corporate overhead, and reclamation — roughly what it costs to keep an existing operation running per ounce or pound produced. It is not a standardized accounting figure, but investors often treat it as a survival gauge: the wider the gap between the prevailing metal price and AISC, the more margin cushions the operation through a downturn.
For a development-stage junior, the study's projected AISC is an assumption, not a fact. It is one input among many, and it is only as good as the recovery, throughput, and capital assumptions feeding it.
Dual-listed miners and S-K 1300. A company also listed in the United States files under the SEC's S-K 1300 (Subpart 1300 of Regulation S-K), effective for fiscal years beginning on or after January 1, 2021, which replaced the old Industry Guide 7. S-K 1300 is broadly aligned with NI 43-101 — it uses a Qualified Person concept and comparable resource and reserve categories — so cross-checking the two filings for the same project can surface inconsistencies a single document would hide.
Quintarthai parses NI 43-101 and S-K 1300 technical reports and surfaces the structured details — QP and independence, resource classification, study stage, cut-off grade, and projected AISC — inside the mining deep-dive and the equity screener, sourced from public filings (SEDAR+ / EDGAR / SEDI). It is an educational research surface: the figures are shown as reported, as one input among many, not as a recommendation.
AEM.