2026 no.1 · Published · Forecasts as of · Ontario mineral-exploration permits
Ontario's Environmental Registry lists pending applications for mineral-exploration permits. The registry treats them all alike: each is simply "pending". They are not alike. The quickest file in the queue should be decided within weeks. The slowest working file may not see a decision before . And of the have no clock running at all.
This issue lines every working permit up from fastest to slowest, and then shows what separates the two ends. First, what the past week actually delivered.
The Ministry decided exploration-permit files in the seven days before the snapshot. The quickest went from application to permit in days.
A decided file leaves the queue; a new one joins near the top of the ladder below. Decisions like these are what the track record will be scored against from this issue on.
Each of the working files below gets one row: a bar spanning the dates its decision is likely to land (an 80% credible interval), with a tick at the most likely date. of the should be decided within a year.
Each bar is an 80% credible interval on the decision date; the tick is the most likely date, and rows are sorted by it. An arrow means the range runs past the -month edge of the chart. Lighter bars are the files whose public comment period is still open; their forecasts are provisional until it closes. Hover any bar for the permit, or click through to its full file. How often ranges like these have contained the actual decision date is tracked on the track record page.
The gap between the top and bottom of the ladder is not noise. A handful of things about a file move its expected decision date by weeks or months, and the same things repeat across the queue. Each dot below is one working permit; each row is one factor, with the tick at the middle of that factor's pull across the queue.
How to read this. Case-handling factors that would identify a reviewing office or officer are kept internal and are not shown.
One family of factors is named on every file but carries no number: . These describe the Indigenous-consultation side of a permit, and they are not yet in the forecast. of the working files are currently paused while the Ministry consults affected Indigenous communities; for those, the range shown covers when the file is likely to move again and reach a decision, and says nothing about the consultation itself.
The ladder's two ends, worked in full.
of the pending files are stalled: the registry still calls them pending, but nothing has moved for a long time. The typical stalled file has been sitting for years; of them have waited more than two. The longest has waited years. For these, no decision date is offered anywhere in this issue; a date on a file like that would be false precision. What can be said about each one (its history, its claims, what would have to change) is on its own page, reachable from the table.