I think, to make a long story short, there is tremendous potential, and while infrastructure is a barrier, it's most certainly not the only one.
I think one of the barriers is giving northerners a greater level of autonomy to make decisions on what they want for their own future. Historically, when we looked at infrastructure funding programs, the north has been unduly limited through per capital allocation formulas.
One of the things that the current government should be commended on is the departure from that and having a per capita plus formula, and also specific northern carve-outs for infrastructure, allowing our region of the country to participate on a more level playing field in competition for limited pools of resources.
I think even beyond the policies and the programs—and we could talk about that for a long time today, which I am happy to do, not only as a professional but as a personal advocate for responsibly developing northern Canada—we need to move away from having this Garden of Eden mentality about the north in people's minds in southern Canada.
It is not a massive expanse of 3.4 million square kilometres of parkland. It's people's homes. It is a place where people are born and raised. It's where people's families are. It's where people raise their children. We cannot be continually unilaterally making decisions about what that part of the country means to us without elevating the perspectives of the people who live there to a level playing field.
I would say that is a really important piece of balance in this discussion—