About

Kestrel Bulletin is a weekly publication of dated, scoreable probabilistic forecasts of Ontario mining-permit outcomes, produced by Kestrel Economics, a research-and-analysis firm registered in Ontario.

What this publication does

Each issue forecasts the live cohort of Ontario mineral-exploration permits on the Environmental Registry of Ontario. For every pending permit:

a probability across the two terminal outcomes (Issued with terms, or Not approved -- refused or withdrawn),
an 80% credible interval on the time to a decision, with a 50% inner band,
the chance the permit does not resolve within the modelled horizon, and
for a permit still clean, the chance it lands on a consultation-hold or a temporary-hold before it is decided.

The forecasts are frozen at publication, dated, and stored against the live regulatory record, so the calls can be scored later. The growing record is the track record, which is free and stays free.

What it deliberately does not do

This is not a generalist mining newsletter, and not an analyst dashboard. It does not forecast commodity prices, project economics, or political outcomes, and it says nothing about a company beyond the permit-level facts. The scope is one permit class (Ontario mineral-exploration permits under the Mining Act, O. Reg. 308/12), one regulatory era. It offers no view on an Indigenous consultation itself, and no prediction of regulatory-regime change. A permit frozen on a temporary hold is reported as a status, with no decision date; guessing one would be false precision. The full boundary is on the methodology page.

What is free, and what a subscription adds

The proof is free, on purpose. Free to everyone: the comparable-benchmark page, the cohort counts, a worked featured permit each issue, the complete track record, and the full methodology. That is everything needed to trust and cite the method. A subscription is meant to add the per-permit depth: every permit's timing fan and outcome split, its registry-and-forecast timeline and change log, and the named, sortable cohort.

Honest status: the subscriber system is not wired up yet, and the per-permit surfaces are still being built, so the whole issue renders free today. What draws a reader back, for now, is the track record visibly deepening, issue over issue.

Independence, confidentiality, and use from either side

Kestrel Economics is independent. The Bulletin is an analytical input, not legal or investment advice. A subscriber's private watchlist is kept separate from this free public commentary, so subscribing does not disadvantage anyone whose permit Kestrel forecasts publicly. The forecast reads from either side of a matter: a proponent weighing a timeline, or a First Nation or intervenor assessing the same file.

A subscription anchors solo and small-practice access, with jurisdiction-wide and enterprise access by enquiry. Checkout waits on the subscriber-system build. In the meantime, write to hello@kestreleconomics.com to join the early list, send feedback on a published forecast, or ask anything about the method. Per-file alerts and watchlists are planned; the per-issue digest of forecast movers is the present-day precursor.

How an issue is built

Registry facts are pulled from the Environmental Registry of Ontario on the issue's vintage date. Each issue's forecast is frozen for publication. Once an issue ships, its forecasts are never edited. A new vintage is a new issue.

Why probabilistic, not directional

A directional call ("this permit will be issued") cannot be falsified in the way that matters: a wrong call can be talked away after the fact, and a right one carries no calibration information. A probability statement is testable. Over enough decisions, the published probabilities either track outcomes or they do not, and the public record shows which.

Who writes it

Kestrel Economics is the sole proprietorship of David Jacques. The methodology, the model, the database that feeds it, and the publication itself are all in-house.

Contact

hello@kestreleconomics.com for the early subscriber list, feedback, or methodology questions. For general firm enquiries: kestreleconomics.com.