The project is located within the western-most portion of the Intermontane Belt at the boundary between the Intermontane and Coast morphologic belts. The project hosts a large porphyry gold-copper deposit. Pyrite and chalcopyrite are the principal sulphide minerals in the deposit. They are uniformly distributed in disseminations, fracture fillings, veins and veinlets. Native gold occurs as inclusions in and along microfractures with copper-bearing minerals and pyrite. The Prosperity deposit is predominantly hosted in Cretaceous andesitic volcaniclastic and volcanic rocks which are transitional to a sequence of sparsely mineralized, volcanically-derived sedimentary rocks to the south. The andesitic volcaniclastics are comprised of coarse-grained crystal tuff and ash tuff, and thinly bedded tuff with lesser lapilli tuff. The upper eastern portion of the deposit is hosted by subvolcanic units of crowded feldspar porphyritic andesite and thick feldspar and hornblende porphyritic flows. In the western portion of the deposit, the multi-phase Fish Creek Stock has intruded into a thick sequence of andesite flows which overlay volcaniclastic rocks. The steeply south-dipping, oval quartz diorite stock, which is approximately 265 m wide by 800 m long, is surrounded by an east-west trending swarm of subparallel quartz-feldspar porphyritic dikes, which also dip steeply to the south. Together the stock and dikes comprise the Late Cretaceous Fish Lake Intrusive Complex that is spatially ........

The Prosperity open pit will be a nominal 525 m deep when complete.

The mining equipment will operate on a 15m high bench in overburden and hardrock. Wall slope design changes will be implemented by varying the berm widths and inter-berm slope angles.

Berms will be left on every bench in overburden and on alternate benches in hardrock. Berm width design will vary from 15 m to 10 m as the overall wall slope is increased from 45° to 50° in the Lower Zone.

The open pit will be mined in four phases commencing with the Phase 1 – Starter Pit. The pit will be partially pre-stripped during the preproduction development period. The starter pit will provide building materials for the tailings impoundment starter dam. The Phase 2 through Phase 4 pits are radial expansions of the mine about the Starter Pit creating a progressively deeper pit.

The mine will operate using electric cable shovels and rotary drills. Diesel electric trucks and a support equipment fleet will gradually be increased to match the production schedule that will peak in terms of total production in Year 7 through Year 9 at 200,000 tpd.

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