Thank you very much. I want to put a question to Lisa, from PDAC, and Francis, maybe you could chime in as well.
The Governor of the Bank of Canada was here earlier this week, and one of the things he talked about was foreign direct investment. I want to highlight that a couple of months ago, Bloomberg pointed out that FDI rose to $51.3 billion last year, as reported by StatsCan. That was the highest annual total since 2015.
Even as investment in the oil sands has somewhat levelled off, investment is coming in to other sectors of the economy. I'd like to talk a little bit about those sectors, one being relevant to both PDAC as well as the Canadian Electricity Association.
At PDAC, just a few months ago, there was, for the first time ever, a discussion between mining and the nuclear sector around the deployment of small, modular reactors as a form of energy, removing diesel from the mix. As we know, there are mines that have become electrified in Canada.
In your submission you spoke about the strategic innovation fund and how that will help move that along in terms of cleaner energy production for mining. There was a really interesting meeting attended by about 150 people, including lawyers, people from the finance sector, mining and nuclear, in a room, in Toronto, for the first time ever, talking about how we can electrify the mining sector.
Lisa, perhaps you could talk about how you see that helping the.... I know the METC was huge for the mining sector, but this is also a game-changing next step. Francis, you can talk about electrification.