Hi Dodger -
I felt the same way and said so. I thought I would respond to you since my response also offers a bit of an apology to management as well.
I had a very good talk with Mike this week. From his tone and what he said, I do believe now that CUU was blindsided by Tetra Teck. I still maintain we should have known of Tetra's shortcomings earlier, but it appears that when the Mine Plan detail was revealed, it came up way short of what CUU was expecting, based on the parameters we set out at the end of last year. My impression is it appears that it was more like a Mine Plan 101 report, which anyone with some knowledge and a computer program could do. CUU was very disappointed with the content and asked for a re-do because of the size and intricacies of our project. Of course the rest of the BFS depends on this critical component of the over-all report. My impression is that Tetra Teck realized they had not delivered what was required, and and apparently even approved of the press release pointing the finger at their shortcomings. This does not make them look good to the industry, and they accepted that. I feel much better about the circumstances now and apologize to management for jumping the "blame" gun without talking to them first. And by the way, if you read/scan the Feb. 7,2011 Environmental Assessment Application requirements posted by Webgogs yesterday (it's only 145 pages), you get a feel for how involved and immense the project is and why it takes so long to put everything together.
To answer another question, Mike and most of the principal CUU management (Shane, CFO) plus the legal counsel Board member are blacked out, their options are on hold, and as far as I can determine, will stay that way until the BFS release or "something else". There is too much knowledge of the BFS content and whatever else is going on. No clue given as to what that is.
I find it interesting that there has been no call for the annual meeting, which was on May 17 last year. Legally, 55 days minimum are needed between shareholder notification and the meeting date, so we are looking at June at least. Could it be there may be something else we will be asked to vote on (my wild speculation only!!)?
And finally, for what it is worth, between the Elmer/Laird appointment, the Jim Gray appointment, the hurried Teckland land claims (before our REE - done by a Teck recommended company) gobbling up from Galore to CUU, the Chinese/Tahitian meetings and of course the Leafs out of the cup again this year, everything points to a Teck controlled District with a strong Chinese partner in my opinion. I'd still like to see a Big Guy bid for CUU tho just for fun and profit.
