For everything referred to as the critical minerals supply chain, one of the challenges that arises is the amount of time it takes for projects to be approved. There is a balance that is not easy to achieve: on the one side, you want to make sure the projects move forward as fast as possible, but on the other, it has to be done in partnership with the first nations. You can't do what was done in the past and show up on their land and ransack it with disrespect and even racism. There is extremely important work that has to be done in that area.
Someone asked me how we could speed up the approval process at the Department of the Environment. My answer was that cutting staff in the department was certainly not going to speed things up. The department has to be given the resources to do its job. I am a former minister of the environment. At the time, we had almost no budget and almost no staff. I know exactly what happens. It is all very well to talk about respecting the environment, but that takes employees on the ground to do the work.