Total Metals’ flagship is Electrolode, a copper-zinc-gold-silver VMS project about 69 km from Ear Falls in the Red Lake district of northwestern Ontario, alongside four other assets: Pick Lake (zinc, Winston Lake belt), High Lake and West Hawk Lake (gold, on the Manitoba-Ontario border), and Menary (gold, near Coeur Mining’s Rainy River mine). In this conversation, I asked chairman Michael Dehn about the finished winter drill program, the plan to consolidate a district rather than build one deposit, First Nations engagement and permitting, money, and the share price collapse.
TL;DR
Total Metals finished a 25-hole, 8,408 m winter 2026 program at Electrolode and is now in compilation and target ranking, with no drill turning at the moment. Dehn told me the re-run Maxwell plate modelling showed they drilled too shallow, and that holes should have gone roughly 200 m deeper, which he offered as part of the explanation for weaker continuity at Arrow and Garnet. The near-term plan is a shift to gold and he expects to drill High Lake before the end of September if First Nations meetings that week go well, Menary before year end, and first assays early to mid October. He said they plan about C$2 million of exploration spending, still have about C$2 million of flow-through to spend this year, and will need to raise hard dollars for marketing and G&A. The strategy he laid out is aggregation, roughly 2.5 million tonnes per deposit across at least five deposits to reach 10 million tonnes or more, which means deals with neighbours and, eventually, a possible split of the critical metals assets from the gold assets.
What have they done for shareholders lately?
The concrete work in the last year: the 8,408 m drill program at Electrolode with high-grade but narrow zinc and copper intervals, the acquisition of the High Lake and West Hawk Lake gold properties last fall, the Menary gold project south of those, and Pick Lake at the end of April, which he said was bought for C$2.2 million against an independent analyst valuation of US$13 million. He also described the Electrolode resource as being from summer 2025 rather than two months ago; the published inferred resource for the Arrow Zone is 2.11 million tonnes at 0.66% Cu, 4.74% Zn, 17.92 g/t Ag and 0.66 g/t Au, effective June 1, 2025 (the transcript audio garbles these grades). Two drone airborne geophysics surveys have been flown, one at Electrolode and one at High Lake, and a prospecting campaign at Menary picked up gold 200 to 300 m south of previously known surface gold. On governance, he said management holds no royalties on any project, insiders are around 12% at an average cost under C$0.25 with no cheap founder shares because the vehicle came through a rolled-back shell (Brigadier Gold, renamed Pace Metals, RTO’d by Compton Mining), senior management is paid C$10,000 per month collectively, and change of control triggers 12 to 18 months of salary.
How much money do they have and what are they spending it on?
He never gave a hard cash figure. What he did say is that about C$2 million of flow-through remains to be spent this year and that they expect to spend roughly C$2 million on exploration, plus about C$200,000 on marketing on top of that, using the old 10% of exploration budget rule of thumb. More flow-through will only be raised once permits are in hand, because of CRA implications if it cannot be spent properly, and a hard-dollar raise for marketing and G&A is likely. On financing history, the host cited a C$5.5 million bought deal late last year with about C$3.2 million in hard dollars at C$0.90 with a full three-year warrant at C$1.15; Dehn separately said they raised C$20 million last fall between August and December, which does not sit easily with a sub-60 million share count and a roughly C$12 million market cap at C$0.20, so treat that figure as unresolved. Financings were done at C$0.60 with a C$0.90 warrant, C$0.90 with a C$1.15 warrant, and flow-through around C$1.15. He said he does not want to sell royalties or a zinc stream because those become dilutive in production, and would rather take equity dilution now.
Upcoming catalysts
Operational: First Nations meetings within days of the interview, then a drill program at High Lake targeting the shallow extension of the Purex Zone, which he hopes to start before the end of September, plus drilling at Menary before year end, more field work at Menary in the second week of September followed by channel sampling and a drill permit application. Technical: assays roughly two to three weeks after sampling, so early to mid October, two boots-on-the-ground gold sampling campaigns, and two geophysical programs, including a gravity survey over the Pick Lake deposit looking for a repeat signature at depth and an airborne survey planned for the fall.
Corporate: possible transactions with Electrolode neighbours to add copper-zinc targets, further hard dollar and flow-through financings, and a potential future spin-out separating critical metals from gold, which he said depends on both sides reaching enough scale first.
Risks
The risks he named or that follow directly from what he said were mostly about permitting and drilling, as both hinge on First Nations meetings that have already slipped twice because of a power outage and forest fires, and fires also cost drill availability in northwestern Ontario this summer. The flow-through has to be spent this year against permits that are not all in hand. A hard-dollar raise is coming at a share price down from a 52-week high of C$1.40 to roughly C$0.20, with about 26 million warrants outstanding and at least one fund he described as a warrant clipper that has been selling. On the geology, the Garnet results reduce the odds of continuity to Arrow, intervals are often narrow, the resource is small and modest grade, and the aggregation thesis depends on deals with neighbours that are not signed. Logistics ate about 20% of costs at Electrolode and a bridge to fix that would take six months. West Hawk Lake sits inside a Manitoba provincial park, and value from gallium, germanium and indium remains unproven metallurgically.
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