Human Resources committee  Certainly at the current time, virtually every single entry-level position in our company is held by northern aboriginal people. Our growth opportunities are in the skilled area of trades and other professional training. Related to the questions on the physically demanding side

Human Resources committee  I'll answer from our site in Saskatchewan, if I can. I can give you a chemical example on this front. We have the northern preferred supplier program. We set a target a few years back: 35% of all goods and services provided or required at our mine sites would be provided by abo

Human Resources committee  Sure, I'll jump in on that. I absolutely agree 100%. As I mentioned, one of the reasons why we do have over 50% of our employees from northern aboriginal Saskatchewan is because of that homegrown training and the efforts undertaken there over a number of years. I think that is w

Human Resources committee  I think one of the big issues for grade 12 graduation in our communities is funding adult students, and this is one of many, but I'll give you an example. If you went into any of the northern first nations schools and entered a grade 10 classroom in September, you would find stu

Human Resources committee  I don't know if I can have an opportunity to back that up.

Human Resources committee  That is an absolute truism. Since the mid 1990s, that has been the model in northern Saskatchewan: taking the training to the communities. That has resulted in 51% of our mine-site employees being northern aboriginal people. That is one of the key indicators of success—training i

Human Resources committee  Investing in the regulatory infrastructure would help us speed up a lot of the processes. There's a lot of duplication at present, and this has resulted in a lot of time being consumed. Overlapping issues between the province and federal processes has cost time and a significant

Natural Resources committee  I'm sorry. I misunderstood your equity question. I thought you meant it from an employment participation perspective.

Natural Resources committee  Right. At the current time, the opportunity that we pursue with the communities, based on the communities' direction, is to help build businesses within those communities to provide services to the mine sites, which in the last six years have provided $1.7 billion in gross reve

Natural Resources committee  No. That's good.

Natural Resources committee  Let me add that in northern Saskatchewan, through various panel hearings in the 1990s, the government, northern residents, and the uranium mining companies set a best efforts target at 67%. We're at 50% currently and have been sustaining 50% for the last number of years. But sin

Natural Resources committee  The mining companies in northern Saskatchewan, with the government and the northern community, said of the workforce at the mine sites that we would strive and make best efforts to achieve a 67% employment rate of northerners. That's one fact. The second fact is that we are at 5

Natural Resources committee  I'll take that question. We're actually one of the uranium companies--

Natural Resources committee  I'm sorry. Go ahead.

Natural Resources committee  No, we work very closely with AREVA in northern Saskatchewan and with some of the other mining companies. You have to take a bit of an economy-of-scale approach to leverage some of the training opportunities.