Since 1997, The Fraser Institute has conducted an annual survey of metal mining companies to assess how mineral endowments and public policy factors such as taxation and regulation affect exploration investment. Survey results represent the opinions of exploration managers in mining companies operating around the world. As the popularity of the survey has grown, we have expanded it to include more jurisdictions. We now ask companies to give us their opinions about the investment attractiveness of 45 jurisdictions including the Canadian provinces and territories (except Prince Edward Island), selected US states (this year Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, South Dakota, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming), Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Columbia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe. We look forward to including other jurisdictions of interest to respondents to further reflect the globalization of mining in the years to come.

The index of the Economic Freedom of North America is an attempt to gauge the extent of the restrictions on economic freedom imposed by governments in North America. This study employs two indexes. The first is the subnational index, which measures the impact of provincial and municipal governments in Canada and state and local governments in the United States. The second index, called the all-government index, includes the impact of all levels of government - federal, provincial/state, and municipal/local - in Canada and the United States. All 10 provinces and 50 states are included in both indexes.