Mining needs a huge re-branding effort and recent efforts have achieved little to win over younger generations, attendees heard at the third day of CIM 2022 in Vancouver.
Pierre Julien, outgoing president of the Canadian Institute of Mines, used his speech to call for a new way in which the industry presents itself to the public.
"The brand mining is dead, it's dead - CIM, SME, PDAC and major mining companies have spent millions trying to educate society about what we do, and it has failed," said Julien.
He went on to say that enrolment in educational programmes such as geological engineering, mining engineering and metallugical engineering has been continuously been going down every year for the past decade.
"The brand mining- that perception we have of it is dead. Yet we continue to facilitate it. Go to the website of major mining companies and you'll see a picture of a big hole or a person covered in coal."
"Mining is defined as the ‘practice of digging substances out of the earth' is that all we do?"
"We do a lot more than that, but we continue to tell society that we dig holes."
Julien said, however, that despite the challenge mining has the resources and expertise to mount a successful "re-branding" operation.
"I'm not sure how we get there, but we can."
