TGR: Detour Gold Corp. (DGC:TSX) is your largest holding among your emerging producers. Detour is developing the massive, low-grade, bulk-tonnage Detour Lake gold project in Northern Ontario where the plan is to enter production in early 2013. Does that plan remain on schedule?

PV: It looks to be still on schedule, as the company updated its production plan last month and is guided for a January 2013 startup. Guidance for next year, which is its ramp-up year, is already between 350 and 400 Koz/year at a total cash cost of $800–900/oz. But the average life-of-mine production will be 657 Koz at a cash operating cost of $710/oz with a mine life of 21 years. If you are bullish on gold and want a gold company with leverage and in a stable jurisdiction, Detour is the way to go. I think the cash flow per share potential in 2014 will be over $6 at current gold prices. So there is still value in this stock.

TGR: On paper, Detour looks a lot like Osisko's Canadian Malartic project, which is basically just across the border in Quebec, although Malartic is smaller in terms of mine life. It has a similar scale of production, and a similar grade but Osisko had some production hiccups in that first year that hurt the company. It seems to have rebounded now. Are you worried about similar things happening with Detour?

PV: It's interesting that you mentioned Osisko because that's one of the reasons that these hiccups could be less of an issue for Detour. Detour can benefit and learn from the Osisko's experience and failures, and can use that information to make sure that it won't get into similar troubles. But, to be honest, every time there's a ramp-up and a mine that goes into construction, things fail, things break down and things go wrong. It all comes down to having a management team that knows what it's doing and knows how to make corrections. We have strong faith in this management team and in its ability to succeed.

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