I think there are opportunities in life to put on the public record that some good Canadians were very patient. This is a great story that tells us something about what's happening today. What we're hearing from both the assessment agency, Parks Canada, and Environment Canada is that significant funds are being invested through the supplementary estimates to enable advance indigenous consultation, to enable engagement with indigenous communities so that they can responsibly and appropriately participate in project evaluation or protected area assessment—the list goes on—and to engage them in programs like the indigenous guardians program.
The lessons that were learned back in the late sixties and early seventies around Thaidene Nene were that you can't just tell them what's good and appropriate for the environment. In the case of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, it was the same lesson in the context of a project approval. You can't just tell the indigenous peoples of the Northwest Territories what to think and what to do. Those lessons were hard learned. It's taken a long time, but I think that our government is demonstrating that we are learning those lessons and that we're investing in order to make sure that we don't make the same mistakes that we did in the past.
I'd like to thank our civil servants and those who are not here today, but who are behind the walls at Terrasses de la Chaudière and other places in Gatineau and elsewhere, for their hard work, and I congratulate them on their successes.