Thank you.
Mr. Smith and Ms. Towtongie, as Mr. Smith may recall, I worked for many years as legal counsel to a wildlife fund on the issue of Arctic offshore drilling. I'm interested in getting NTI's and the Inuvialuits' perspective on whether we should continue to have a system whereby INAC accords exploration rights prior to the establishment of protected areas. I wonder if these two Inuit organizations would provide us their position on this issue.
Do they think that areas should be conserved collaboratively between Inuit rights-holding bodies and the federal government prior to determination of the issuance of exploratory rights? Obviously in the case of Nunavut this has brought us to the point of litigation that is going to the Supreme Court. But in the case of the Beaufort Sea it brought us to the point of a rather large-scale, deepwater offshore drilling project, which was subsequently abandoned by Imperial.