I'll start with your first point regarding the critical situation in northern Manitoba at the moment.
Certainly the north has a lot of advantages, but it has a lot of challenges, as I mentioned in my opening remarks: isolation, unemployment, lack of alternative employment, and social issues. Through the years, WD has been doing significant work on the ground. I'll mention some of the examples, from The Pas to Churchill to Thompson, where we've helped, always in collaboration with partners.
For example, there's the environmental aerospace testing facility in Thompson, which has helped put aerospace on the map. We've done work in establishing the Northern Manitoba Sector Council so we can do projects, again, for skills development and in the mining industry. We also work with the University College of the North. All of those things are being done. Of course, I go back to our Community Futures Corporation and all the great work that the five communities are doing in the northern region to help address these issues.
I will speak to the point on Churchill. It is a critical time at the moment. Our department has been very active. My deputy minister has been up in Churchill. He has been chairing the weekly calls with the northern delegation, which is a consortium of industry leaders, mayors, and indigenous communities. They took the call to action, the first step, wanting to save the shipping season, but are now turning to what we can do immediately to help the community. Our immediate focus has been on the community, on what we can do for the people who have been unemployed, or are unemployed because of the situation, in a kind of a whole-of-government approach in the sense of supply of food and making sure they have—