The Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) represents the interests of the Canadian mineral exploration and development industry. The association was established in 1932 in response to a proposed government regulation that threatened the livelihood of Ontario prospectors. A timeline of the association’s history is available here, along with a written history that can be found here. Today, 81 years after its founding, the association is a national organization with 9,000 individual members (including prospectors, developers, geoscientists, consultants, mining executives, and students, as well as those involved in the drilling, financial, investment, legal and other support fields) and 1,254 corporate members (including senior, mid-size and junior mining companies and organizations providing services to the mineral industry).