First, in response to your first point, I'd like to add that while the Canadian economy presently is shedding jobs, we can't hire people fast enough. We are facing a human resource shortage and need people across a whole range of disciplines as quickly as we can. With the numbers I was giving you around new project developments, that's only going to be accentuated in the years ahead. This work shortage is a global phenomenon that we're facing.
The $140 billion investment also translates into tens of thousands of direct jobs, and a lot more indirect jobs, so there's a huge opportunity ahead of us.
I'll give you two examples that come to mind. One is a bit dated, but I'll use it anyway.
There were two major mining deposits around the same size, discovered around the same time. One was Voisey's Bay, which you've probably heard of. The other one was in Australia, the name of which escapes me. Their mine was reviewed and built before our process started. So that's just one example.
The other one that comes to mind, which is more recent, which is I think a sad story--though, hopefully, it's going to have a happy ending--is the Red Chris project in northwestern B.C. This was a project that underwent a comprehensive provincial assessment. The federal government, again, under the old rules, was quite far behind and ultimately decided at that time to do a screening-level assessment instead of a comprehensive environmental assessment. The federal government was taken to court. It was tied up for three years at different levels of court. Finally, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government erred in scoping down and should have treated this as a comprehensive assessment, though they did, to put it one way, show pity on the proponent. And the proponent was allowed to proceed because it wasn't the proponent's fault that the federal government made the determination it did.
Now, the new amendments have clarified all of this, and we now do comprehensive studies or panel reviews. We don't have an issue with that. We just want the rules to be clear and to know what we're getting into when we get into it.
So that is a project that is now in final permitting, and it's probably, we hope, going to start construction in the spring and start to create jobs for British Columbians and for Canadians. But that's a long delay and just an example of what can happen when the rules aren't clear.