Thank you for that.
One of the finest parts of my job is that I get the opportunity to visit places like Prince Rupert. I understand your attachment to the area.
You're correct in saying that there's a lot of activity and there's a lot of hope in Prince Rupert surrounding things like the Pacific Northwest natural gas project. On the expansion of the port, as I noted, the expansion of the Fairview container terminal is one of those really significant developments on the horizon for Prince Rupert. WD was actually involved in delivering the federal government's contribution towards the establishment of the Fairview container terminal. That was just before my time at WD, but there was some $30 million contributed by the federal government via WD.
One of the things we had to do in connection with that was secure the agreement of the local first nations, who, as you know, were not all united on the expansion of the Fairview container terminal. It impacted different first nations communities differently. As well, it is an area of overlapping land claims, so it complicates the...frankly, that's common throughout British Columbia. The five major first nations organizations, bands, represented around the Prince Rupert area all had different views on Fairview, and it was a complex and difficult process to get them to the point where the benefits associated with that project were enough to offset some of the concerns.
That's the calculus for a lot of first nations communities, right? It's the economic benefits associated with these communities. Yes, first nations communities, most of them, are deeply interested in economic development, but it has to be done in a way that's environmentally sustainable and respects their traditional practices and cultures in their communities. There's been quite a bit of work already done in association with the Pacific Northwest project. It's not one that we're directly involved in at this point. Other government agencies are involved in it, but I know from my participation in interdepartmental meetings in B.C., for example, that they're working hard on addressing the concerns of first nations associated with it.
I did have another answer about what we've done for aboriginal youth. We have funded a whole variety of mobile trades training trailers, one of which we did with Northwest Community College. The idea of that is to bring some of the training opportunities directly into first nations communities. For some of these youths, moving out of their communities, moving out of a small community and going to a place like Smithers or Terrace, is a really big dislocation. If you can bring some of the training to them, you stand a better chance of their actually getting involved in the economy.