Pan American Silver Corp. (PAAS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Pan American Silver Responsible Investor Conference Call, a Conversation on ESG. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn the conference over to Siren Fisekci, Vice President, Investor Relations for opening remarks. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator and welcome, everyone to our ESG call. A slide presentation to support today's discussion is available through the webcast and on our website under events and presentation. Joining the call from Pan American are Michael Steinmann, President and Chief Executive Officer; Gillian Winckler, Chair of the Board of Directors; Steve Busby, Chief Operating Officer; Rob Doyle, Chief Financial Officer; Brent Bergeron, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Sustainability; Matthew Andrews, Vice President, Environment; Monica Moretto, Vice President, Social Sustainability, Diversity and Inclusion; Christopher Lemon, General Counsel; and Sean McAleer, Senior Vice President and Managing Director of Guatemala. Today's presentation is intended to provide an update on our ESG approach and performance. Our call will cover a range of topics, including an overview of our company, vision and strategy, our sustainability governance and management approach, an update on our ESG goals and performance. Our recently announced sustainability-linked credit facility and a deep dive into how we are managing and performing on key ESG topics. At the conclusion of the presentation, we will have time for questions and answers. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that today's call and presentation slides contain certain statements and information that constitute forward-looking statements and information. Please review the cautionary statements included in our presentation as well as the risk factors described in our most recent Form 40-F and Annual Information Form. I will now turn the call over to Pan American Silver's President and CEO, Michael Steinmann to lead us into this ESG update. Michael?

Thank you, Siren. Pan American silver provides enhanced exposure to silver through a large base of silver reserves and resources and major catalysts to grow our silver production. We own and operate silver and gold mines located in Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and Canada. We also own the Escobal mine in Guatemala that is currently not operating. We have a 27-year history of responsible mining in the Americas earning an industry-leading reputation, sustainability performance, operational excellence and prudent financial management. Our success can be attributed in part to the fact that sustainability is embedded in our vision, values and business strategy. Safe production, the environmentally sound development and operation of assets and the development of positive long-term relationships with employees, shareholders, communities and local governments are fundamental to our strategy. Our approach to sustainability focuses on operating in an ethical and responsible manner, managing potential risks and providing transparent disclosure on our performance and calls. We are implementing industry best practices, such as the mining association of Canada's Towards Sustainable Mining or TSM protocols, the voluntary principles for security and human rights and the World's Gold Council Conflict-Free Standard. I will turn the presentation over to Gillian Winckler, Pan American Silver Chair of the Board of Directors. Gillian will provide additional details on the company's approach to governance and sustainability.

Thank you, Michael. I'm delighted to talk to you all for a few minutes regarding our ESG from my perspective. As Chair of the Board, it is my role, together with my fellow directors, to make sure that we have good governance in all the fronts to ensure that the company is well managed, has the right people, focuses on the right areas to the robust strategy and ultimately delivers value to all stakeholders. It is also essential that we set the right tone from the top as values and culture are critical for success and need to be strong and present at all levels of the organization. As Michael noted, sustainability has always been embedded in Pan American and the company has steadily been refining and improving its ESG approach. I'd like to highlight 2 changes that demonstrate this increased focus. Firstly, like most companies, Pan American organization started the Board and cascade through to all sites. At Pan American, we have the user Board committees, namely health, safety, environment; human resources and compensation; audit; nominations and governance, all of which play their traditional roles and have to a greater or lesser degree, some ESG responsibility. We recently created a new committee called communities and sustainable development, which has a specific focus on ESG-related issues, policies, practices and disclosures. This committee chaired by Kathy Sendall, ensures we dedicate enough time to sustainability every time we meet. Kathy is one of our newer directors who has a wealth of experience and is bringing new perspectives to our Board, which are very welcome and adding value to all we do. Secondly, over the past few years, we have certainly refined our short-term incentive goals for management and included targets around inclusion and diversity as well as attaining A level ratings at all our operations based on Towards Sustainable Mining criteria. Our annual incentive plan now includes ESG-related objectives that account for 35% of the total bonus. This allocation, together with 40% on operating performance, 25% on growth ensures we have a holistic approach and look after all areas of business. I recently spoke to senior management in Pan American and shared my views on what matters for the company going forward. I'd like to share what I said with you. For me, it all boils down to 3 Ps: People, Planet and Profit. People are the foundation for success. We need good people, and we need to look after them. The planet, it's under severe stress. We are an extractive industry, we need to look after it. And profit, we are a business, we need to make profits in order to be sustainable, and also without them, we would not be able to look after people or the plant. All 3 are equally important. I consider myself fortunate to be the Chair of Pan American as the company has a wonderful culture and takes a holistic approach to business. Of course, we have areas to improve on. That is something that we are keenly aware of. We constantly seek to improve. And with Michael, my fellow directors and all Pan American employees, we will strive to build on the company's reputation and deliver value to all stakeholders in a transparent and sustainable way. Thank you for your time. I'd now like to hand back to Michael.

Thank you, Gill. ESG performance and reporting have long been at the core of our approach to long-term sustainability. We have been producing sustainability reports for over 10 years. These reports detail our management approach to performance with respect to material sustainability issues within the context of our overall sustainability and business strategies. These reports are prepared in accordance with the global reporting initiative, or GRI standards. As we have grown, we have matured in our approach to sustainability, performance, management and in disclosing our performance to stakeholders. In response to growing expectations for ESG disclosure, our 2020 sustainability report contains content and data that takes into consideration the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, better known as SASB and the Task Force on Climate Related Financial Disclosure or TCFD reporting framework. We also strengthened our reporting on the United Nations Sustainability development goals by identifying and reporting our performance on 8 goals where we believe the company can have the greatest impact. In 2020, we joined the United Nations Global Compact. In July of this year, we have released our first global combat communication on progress. We're also committed to tax transparency. We comply with the Canadian Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, which requires public reporting of payments exceeding CAD100,000 to governments. In Peru, Argentina and Guatemala, we publicly disclosed payments in accordance with the extractive industry transparency initiative. Internal and external audits are also components of the company's risk management. At the mine level, regular, social, environmental and health and safety audits are conducted by teams of subject matter experts from across the company. Local authorities performed external inspections to check environmental performance at our sites. For our tailings facilities, annual dam safety inspections are conducted by an external engineer of record. Independent tailings storage facility safety reviews are conducted every 5 years by an independent reviewer. Pan American has the resources and projects to provide metals critical to the decarbonization of our economies, and our aim is to develop those metals in a responsible, sustainable manner. I would now like to turn the meeting over to Brent to discuss our sustainability performance results and 2021 targets. Brent?

Thank you, Michael. At Pan American, our corporate sustainability goals are set in collaboration with our operations team. On an annual basis, our operations conduct an extensive process of setting sustainability performance goals and this fosters an understanding and a commitment by our teams who carry out day-to-day business and site activities. Our overall performance against these goals is reported in our annual sustainability report. If we consider the challenges that we had in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our overall 2020 performance was still good as we met 14 of our 20 goals. During the pandemic, many of our social goals were aligned with our activities to support communities near our mine sites. For example, we improved access to healthcare by supplying health equipment, rapid test and medication to help units in our host communities. For example, in the province of Cajabamba in Peru, we also provided an oxygen plant to assist with the shortage of oxygen at health facilities. In other areas of Argentina, we supported access to quality at remote education through donations of laptops, printed materials and supplies to assist local teachers in communicating with their students. Closer to our corporate office, we've made a significant commitment going forward to the nature of trust of British Columbia for wetland projects. Through the North American Wetland Conservation Alliance 4:1 Matching program, the Nature Trust will receive $5 million over the next 3 years for its critical, ecological work right here in the province of BC. With respect to resolving significant social issues in 2021, we did resolve the community dispute related to water distribution near our La Arena mine in Peru, and we continue to be involved in 2 historical community disputes, one related to La Colorada mine in Mexico and the other one to Escobal in Guatemala. On the environmental front, we met all but one of our 2020 goals. We had no significant environmental incidents at our operations. And compared to our previous year's performance, we reduced water use, hazardous and non-hazardous non-rock related waste generation, greenhouse gas emissions and energy use. We also continue to actively implement the TSM framework at all of our mines and despite COVID-related delays and restrictions, all our operations successfully achieved a B level or higher in all protocols. In the area of people, we continue to emphasize the recruitment, retention and promotion of women at our company. Our 2020 objective was a 15% increase in the number of women hired and promoted, and we exceeded that goal as we reached 18%. All of our employees promote in the company in 2020, 16% of them were women. In the area of safety, unfortunately, we did not achieve our primary health and safety goal as we had 2 fatal accidents at our operations in 2020. Steve Busby, our COO, will be discussing safety later in this call describing the measures we are taking to improve performance in this critical area. We recognize the interest of our stakeholders in quantitative goals and targets that better convey our performance. Our annual corporate sustainability goals are largely established by our employees and supervisors which encourage a high level of understanding and commitment by those who carry out our day-to-day business activities. Our sustainability performance indicators allow us to measure and monitor monthly performance on key social and environmental activities at our operation. Health and safety indicators are also monitored. For 2021, we have created several numeric targets in the area of environment, including further reduction of water usage by 6% and of GHG emissions by 11%. On the social front, in addition to aiming at improving our socioeconomic development programs, we have also set the target to resolve all medium and high-risk grievances by the end of year. Zero fatalities, of course, continues to be our primary safety goal, while talent attraction remains at the forefront of our human capital development targets. In 2021, we further enhanced our ESG engagement and disclosure efforts. In addition to responding to a significant increase in request for ESG information and performance data, we also have the opportunity to engage even more with shareholders and potential investors who are looking to learn more about our sustainability approach and strategy. We plan to continue steps to strengthen such engagement as it provides us with a chance to talk about the challenges affecting our operations and the opportunities we have from an ESG perspective. And with this, I'd like to turn the presentation over to Rob to discuss our recently announced sustainability-linked credit facility. Rob?

Thank you, Brent. Strong ESG performance has always been a fundamental part of our business, and we welcome the growing interest in responsible investing. Through our conversations with ESG analysts and our ESG-related disclosures, our aim is to demonstrate how our approach allows us to manage risks, drive value and operate successfully over the long term. We are proud to see continuous improvements in the majority of our ESG scores and rankings, 2 of which will be used in our recently announced sustainability-linked revolving credit facility. As we reported last month, we entered into an agreement to amend and extend our $500 million credit facility, which now includes sustainability-linked pricing component. The full year credit facility provides for adjustments on drawn and undrawn balances based on third party sustainability performance ratings by S&P Global and MSCI which aligns the Company's ESG performance to its cost of capital, thereby demonstrating our commitment to ESG practices and responsibilities. This credit facility remains fully undrawn. We are very proud to be the first mining company in Canada to add a sustainability-linked pricing component to our revolving credit facility. I will now turn the presentation over to Steve to provide an overview of health and safety. Steve?

Thank you, Rob. Our focus is towards preventing workplace fatalities and disabling injuries by continuously improving our safety systems, training, processes and adopting technology. Particularly, we developed the Pan American Silver safety pledges and cardinal rules that set out 8 [ Salmos ] and 11 rules for focusing individuals on safety at our mine sites in an easy to understand format that are incorporated into our induction, training and safety talks for employees and contractors. In addition, we have developed the serious incident reduction initiative aimed at preventing accidents through frontline supervisor leadership training, enabling them to lead safe production, successfully collaborate with the workforce and improve safe work practices. We have also adopted a behavioral based safety program in Peru that seeks to empower personnel in taking a more active role in their own safety by building a culture that encourages them to make safe choices throughout their lives, both at work and at home. Our latest 2021 program expands upon our Towards Sustainable Mining initiative, incorporating an additional in-house protocol of geotechnical and ground control standards that specifically addresses one of the most important risks encountered in many of our operations. A significant focus for us in 2020 was managing the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic through developing and implementing protocols to protect the health and safety of our employees and contractors. All our operations, except for Timmins were placed in care and maintenance for various periods of time in 2020 to comply with and assist government's efforts in reducing the spread of COVID-19. We recognize the impact that the pandemic has had on our workforce, both mentally and physically caused by lengthy lockdowns at site, worker shortages, isolations during quarantine and external pressures stemming from family or economic challenges. We are taking additional measures in 2021 to improve overall well being of our employees, particularly in addressing their mental health concerns. We are developing concepts for detecting potential COVID fatigue in our workforce to prevent this from manifesting into greater accident frequencies or severities. In 2020, our number of lost time injuries was a record low, which we attributed to the increased safety awareness during the early stages of the pandemic. Despite our programs and the reduced accident frequency, we incurred tragic accidents that took the lives of 2 individuals during 2020, one at [ El Varon ] mine in Peru and one at La Colorada mine in Mexico. Nothing is more important to us than the safety of our workers, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to continuous improvement of safety in our business and the protection of our workforce. I'll now turn things over to Matt, who will discuss a couple of our material environmental topics. Matt?

Thanks, Steve. Climate change poses a threat to the global environment, society and is also a risk to our business. The silver that we produce plays a crucial role in pharma solutions as it is a critical component in renewable energy needed for a low-carbon future. To achieve that future, we also need to produce silver and other metals with the lowest possible carbon footprint. In 2020, we signed on the supporters of the TCFD and began implementing its recommendations, including conducting climate change risk assessments and incorporating climate risk considerations into our capital allocation planning. Building on our emissions disclosure over the past 11 years, we incorporated elements of the TCFD reporting framework into our 2020 sustainability report. At the operations level, our climate strategy is focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the short and medium term. As previously mentioned, our sustainability goals are established bottom up, meaning that each mine developed site-specific energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions targets. Our strategy also includes improving our public disclosure, considering physical and transition climate risks in our strategic long term plans, conducting stakeholder engagement on climate change and increasing our use of renewable energy. In 2020, we set our first public short-term emissions target. Our 2021 target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 11% compared to the 2021 base case. We also plan to develop medium-term greenhouse gas emission reduction targets based on each operation's future energy profile and transition risk assessments. We intend to set meaningful targets for the year 2030. While we fully support and are committed to advancing efforts towards a global target of net zero carbon emissions, our ability to meet the goal is dependent on the emergencies of new technologies, availability of low-carbon electricity and valid transparent carbon offsets. We continue to monitor the development of these solutions to climate change with the aim of reaching net zero emissions by 2050 or earlier. Over the past several years, we have implemented meaningful projects to reduce energy and emissions at our operations. In 2020, we were able to certify the electrical energy supply for Morococha is 100% renewable, and we're currently working on advancing similar opportunities at our other operations. We recognize that access to valuable water resources is an important issue in the regions where we operate. We develop and practice comprehensive water stewardship programs at our operations that expand our understanding and minimize potential impacts that we may have on regional aquifers and streams. Our approach involves minimizing our use of freshwater, expanding availability of water resources for other users and avoiding negative impacts on water quality within and beyond our operating boundaries. In 2020, we completed a study on the potential physical risk of climate change on our operations, which includes extreme weather events, impacts on water availability and changes in rainfall and temperature patterns. We maintain mine level water balances to understand how much water is extracted, recycled and discharged. Each operation develops targets to reduce water use through site-based projects and initiatives that increase recycling and reduce water consumption. For example, in 2020, [indiscernible] increased the reuse of effluent from the mine water treatment plant that was upgraded in 2019, realizing a 90% reduction in the external freshwater required for mineral processing. Our overall water use intensity has declined in recent years, mainly since we are now operating more mines, the process was using low water intensity heap leaching technology, given the favorable geology and mineralogy of those ore bodies. We are working to lower our water use intensity by improving water efficiency and recycling in site level activities, including mineral processing, dust suppression, equipment washing and camp use. With that, I'll turn the call over to Monica to discuss our social performance and provide an update on our inclusion and diversity approach. Monica?

Thanks, Matt. For us at Pan American Silver, our success depends on social acceptance of all stakeholders, including host communities, mutual trust and understanding are prerequisites to this acceptance. We build and maintain trust through ongoing engagement, open an inclusive dialogue and through managing both, the actual and perceived impact of our activities. Our commune response mechanisms provide a means through which community members can engage with our operations. In 2020, we are formally contacted in 1,290 occasions nearly 4 times as many as in 2019. But just to clarify what this means. 69% of the cases had to do with different kinds of requests, including request for employment, opportunities and donations, and they were largely driven by the pandemic. By the end of 2020, we have closed 95% of the total cases. We also conduct social audits that help us monitor our social footprint and manage our performance. In 2020, we completed a social audit in [ manantiales de agua ] in Argentina right before the pandemic started. Social audits scheduled after that one in 2020, specifically for Bolivia and Mexico were postponed to this current year due to COVID-19 related site restrictions, but both will be completed by the end of September. Pan American Silver is committed to recognizing and respecting culture values, beliefs and traditions and the rights of indigenous people. We have one operation, Timmins in Canada and 2 projects, Escobal in Guatemala and Navidad in Argentina that are near indigenous communities, and our tenants operation has impact benefit agreements with the local first nation communities. Investing in community socioeconomic development in a participatory way is another component of sustaining social acceptance. To us, working together with community members and local government is central to identify and implementing beneficial and viable social programs that contribute to long term community well being and self-reliance. During 2020, we contributed over $11 million in community investments. At the same time, we continue to encourage and emphasize the importance of hiring locally. Close to 99% of our employees are nationals of the countries where our mines are located. In 2020, 47% of all goods and services purchased by the Company that is $526 million were acquired through local or regional suppliers. The supporting host communities is a fundamental aspect of our social management approach. The COVID-19 pandemic created a humanitarian crisis and has had an impact in all the communities where Pan American Silver operates. We have been actively engaging with and listening to our key stakeholders including the most vulnerable families in our communities of interest to better understand the effect of the pandemic and identify how to best support their needs. Early in the pandemic, we created a COVID-19 Fund and committed $2 million towards food, Hygiene and medical supplies and personal protection equipment in support of host communities. We have also been working with UNICEF Canada for several years, and as you might recall, in 2020, we entered into a 3 year $1.5 million partnership commitment to provide health and education to vulnerable children and families in the Latin American countries where we are. Additionally, in 2021, we pledged another $750,000 to UNICEF distribution program of COVID vaccines in Peru and Guatemala. I want to talk about inclusion and diversity, a topic that is fundamental to Pan American Silver's long-term success. Local community members are central to workforce as well as the development of local businesses that provide our mines with much needed goods and services. Our human resources and sustainability teams work together to create programs and processes that enhance our ability to attract, hire, promote and retain employees who are representative of the local community and to encourage the same of local contractors and suppliers. We focus on identifying and addressing actual and perceived barriers to diversity and fostering respectful workplaces. In 2020, we adopted an inclusion and diversity policy, which draws on best practices and extensive internal and external engagement. The policy formalizes our commitment to a respectful workplace culture and includes providing equal and fair pay, maintaining an employee feedback and grievance mechanism and considering diversity when appointing, promoting or hiring at the Board and senior management levels. We see women as drivers of positive long-term growth for Pan American Silver. Test over 7% of our employees and 10% of our contractors are women. During 2020, operations pledged to take steps to support female employees and contractors in light of the challenges presented by the pandemic. It hasn't been easy. But as women are among one of the minorities most affected by this crisis, our actions, to name a few, while implementing work from home protocols when possible, accommodating personal obligations such as at home, child or elderly care and establishing social services hotline for workers to raise non-COVID related concerns, such as mental health or family issues. We also rolled out a company-wide maternity leave program to support all new moms on an equal basis and extended the med leave time average. Our efforts resulted in retaining 91% of our female workforce at the end of 2020. The pandemic also created an opportunity to attract and develop female talent. During the past year, for example, we have been training women from local communities as equipment operators, among other trades and careers with the intent of retaining them as part of our regular workforce. This initiative will provide women with economic stability while outfitting Pan American with a new pool of talent to support our operations. We believe that respect is the foundation for building an inclusive organizational culture and which the diversity is the norm, and individuals are safe, valued, treated fairly and receive equal opportunity to develop in advance. Our building respect together program, we launched in 2020 across the company is designed to help us foster this inclusive culture. We have rolled out the first module of the program to more than 95% of our workforce, including contractors through June of 2021 with over 20,000 total training hours completed. Our goal for 2021 is to complete the first 2 modules of the program, which are respect and awareness. And with that, I'll turn it over to Christopher to discuss human capital development. Christopher?

Thank you, Monica. Pan American Silver's greatest strength has always been our people. Our decentralized approach to running our business means that each operation is responsible for delivering on the company's objectives. It's our people who translate our vision and values into actions at our operations and who directly engage and build relationships and trust with our local communities. Our approach even on capital development focuses on attracting, retaining and developing our employees throughout their careers. Succession planning is a key component of our success. The Board reviews their succession plan on an annual basis. We also run a leadership development program for management and prospective management employees in addition to the supervisory safety leadership training program that Steve described. In addition, we provide both the technical training and educational opportunities to help employees advance in their roles and their careers. In a cyclical industry, we are proud of our ability to retain our employees, many of whom have been with the company for decades and have grown and advanced into senior roles. In fact, most of our senior management team has now worked together for over 15 years. We've worked hard to be a lean and efficient company. This approach has helped us retain our employees through market fluctuations, and it has benefited us during the epidemic. We incurred very few layoffs or job losses during 2020. In 2020, our company-wide turnover rate was approximately 8% compared to 11% in 2019. We also respect our employees' right to unionize. In fact, 8 of our 9 operations have collective agreements with one or more unions and 54% of our employees are unionized. Our commitment to recognize the right of freedom of association and collective bargaining is set out in our global human rights policy. Labor strikes and work stoppages have the potential to disrupt our operations and reduce production. So we focus on maintaining positive relationships with our unions and with unionized workers through working in partnership with them. To improve relationships with our workforce, including both employees and contractors, in 2020, we launched PASS listens, an employ feedback and grievance mechanism. Employees can now anonymously voice concerns, provide feedback or raise grievances directly to human resources. All grievances are reviewed by the Vice President of Human Resources operations. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Michael for closing remarks. Michael?

Thanks, Christopher. I hope this presentation has helped to demonstrate our efforts to apply the highest sustainability standards across the organization. To continue providing value to our stakeholders and contributing to the well-being of our host communities, it is imperative that we continue to strive for excellence by demonstrating sustainability leadership and delivering on our ESG programs and commitments. I recognize that we still have work to do. This work includes strengthening our approach to sustainability risk management. We are currently developing the implementation plan for an enterprise risk management system, which we intend to roll out company-wide in 2022. In 2020, Pan American Silver applied to become a signatory of the United Nations voluntary principles on human rights and security. The voluntary principles exterior is currently reviewing our application, and we hope to have confirmation by the end of the year. In the meantime, we're implementing these standards to all our sites. As well, we continue to implement TSM across our operations. Our goal is for all operations to achieve minimum level A for all TSM protocols in 2021. In addition, we continue to develop more quantitative, measurable targets and metrics to drive performance and improve our public disclosures. Furthermore, the company has recently published the communication and progress or COP report for the UN Global Compact, demonstrating the company's commitment and compliance to its 10 principles and providing valuable information to interested parties who may wish to access this report. I will be remiss if I did not close by saying how very proud I am of the work that Pan American Silver's employees and executive team have done to deliver on our sustainability commitment during the unprecedented challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic. We will continue to successfully manage our challenges and grow opportunities by adhering to our values, listening to our stakeholders and working collaboratively. I would like to thank you for your interest in today's call. Your participation is indicative of the growing recognition of the connection between a company's ESG management and performance and its financial performance. We welcome the opportunity to demonstrate and discuss our efforts, and we look forward to further dialogue in the future. And with that, we will be happy to answer submitted questions. I'll turn it over to Siren to help us moderate the Q&A portion of this call.

Thanks, Michael. As a reminder, you can submit your questions via the webcast platform by typing it in the box in the bottom left side of the page and by hitting submit question when done. I see we do have a few questions that relate to the Escobal mine. Sean, can you please start by providing an update on Escobal and the consultation with the Xinka people?

Yeah. Thanks, Siren. As you know, the operation is currently suspended in on care and maintenance. And in May, the Ministry of Energy and Mines held the first meetings to complete the court ordered, government-led ILO 169 people's indigenous people's consultation process. So it was one of the principles, participants in that process were fully supportive of the consultation. Although there have been 2 pre consultation meetings so far this year, the process is facing some disruptions from COVID-19, and there isn't a third meeting scheduled yet. We're in the early stages of the process, so we're not able to provide a time line or date for restart of the Escobal mine. During the 2 meetings so far, participants have presented information regarding the roles of the government institutions that oversee the project, aspects of the constitutional court order and basic information about our company and the mining project. It's encouraging that the Ministry of Energy and Mines and Xinka Parliament have announced several agreements during the last year, and following the 2 meetings, including a commitment to conduct a cultural and spiritual impact study. Obviously, we're looking forward to our continued participation in the process. We're committed to complying with the court order and the obligations of our environmental permit. And finally, I'd like to say that we respect Xinka People's right to consultation. There's some additional information in the appendix of the presentation on the Ministry of Energy and Mines website and so those links are there for further information on the consultation process. Siren?

Thanks, Sean. We have 2 questions in relation to the Escobal mine as well. Has Pan American drilled any water wells to provide the community with additional sources of freshwater? And secondly, how much work has been done by Pan American on the water sources and areas that were affected by the previous mining done in Escobal?

Yeah. First of all, we're not out of compliance. All of our water discharges is compliant with local regulations. So that's an important point during our care and maintenance operations. And that was the same status during operations itself. Currently, we're not drilling any wells. We are engaged with the municipality and with the different community organizations to identify collaborative projects on water infrastructure. Most of those projects are very small projects on water distribution. And on water quality monitoring and supporting the capacity of the municipality and improving their capacity to monitor water quality, I would expect during the consultation process that water availability issues will come up. Water infrastructure will come up. And I'm looking forward to those discussions and seeing how we can support and mitigate any concerns that there might be. Siren?

Great. Thanks, Sean. And another one on Escobal. In the target, resolving all medium and high risk grievances by the end of 2021, does that include resolving the Escobal dispute? What does that mean long-term for the reopening of the mine? I think you've already answered this, but is there any expected reopening date for the mine?

Maybe yes.

Yeah, again...

I'm sorry, Sean.

Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah, we -- as I stated, we've just started the consultation process with the pre-consultation meetings. And the challenges of COVID are significant. And so I would expect that we see a slow progress on some of the meetings right now, and we have to take the health concerns into consideration. So we definitely can't provide any timeline for the consultation process and certainly no time line for restart of the Escobal mine.

Yeah. I think, Brent, do you have something to add here as well?

Yeah. Thank you, Michael. Yeah, I just wanted to clarify that when we're talking about all medium and high level grievances that do come in, those are the ones that do actually come in through the year -- through the year that we're actually coming in. We usually try and have a target of trying to resolve 95% as about 5% will come in the last month of the year. So that's our target for high level and medium level grievances throughout the year. We know that we have some historical grievances and Escobal being one of them. And as Sean said, those are the ones that are dependent of an actual consultation process that is being run by the government of Guatemala. So on that one, we don't actually have a time line because we have to actually respect the process that is actually being put in place. But all other grievances, as I mentioned, that are medium and high level that come in throughout the year, we have a target, and we monitor this now through one of our sustainability performance indicators as to how the teams are actually managing it, responding to it and working with the different parties to try and actually solve these grievances.

Thanks, Brent. Thanks, Sean. We have a question here on how do you see the implementation of the new global industry standard on tailings management at your operations?

Yes. Thanks for the question. Matt, can you please answer the question on the tailings strategy?

Yeah, sure, Michael. So tailings management is a very important issue for the industry and certainly for us at Pan American Silver. We comply with the Canadian standards, and we have done for many years. And we've been implementing the Towards Sustainable Mining tailings protocol and the Canadian dam safety guidelines of the Canadian Dam Association. So regarding the global standard, right, in a process right now -- with the mining Association of Canada to review the equivalences of the TSM and CDA frameworks and look at how we can comply with both standards through TSM. So at this stage, we're reviewing the standard through Mac and seeing how we can achieve compliance with both.

Thank you, Matt.

Hopefully, that answers the question there, Michael.

Thanks, Matt. I see we don't have any other questions at this time. If you do have a question, please submit it into the webcast portal. If we don't have any questions, I want to thank you again for your participation in this environmental, social and governance conversation. If you would like further details on what we discussed today or you have any other further questions, please feel free to contact Brent or Monica at [email protected]. Thank you, and goodbye.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.