Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Ms. Jeffrey.
If you understand the mining industry in the Northwest Territories, you understand that a capital investment in the underground shafts at Diavik and Ekati put up our GDP earlier on, and now they've stopped. So that's why GDP has dropped. That's not really a reflection on our economy in the Northwest Territories.
You talked about the population dropping. That was a mistake that Statistics Canada made, and it has been corrected. The population did increase a little.
But during the boom time, from 2000 to 2010, when sometimes we had 10% GDP growth, we experienced a population decline because people couldn't afford to live there, and the policies of the development of the mines were such that a great percentage of the people who worked there came from other parts of Canada.
I think you should review your analysis of the Northwest Territories. Five or six mines are in the chute now—environmental assessment. That's more than the other two territories combined. We are an active place and we have the sophisticated infrastructure to handle mining development. We're experts at it, as a matter of fact. We're experts in many of the northern development fields.
I enjoyed your presentation. I just did a northern development report at the natural resources committee. I think that would be an appropriate place for much of this discussion, because you're talking about national issues. You're talking about housing. I've lived in the north all my life, and I've been to every community in the north and I've been in houses over and over again. I think three elements are key in housing. One of them is ownership. Ownership tends to make the house better. Two is a wood stove. In almost all our northern communities, if you have some way of burning biomass, you're usually more successful in your house. Most of the houses that were built are public houses, where the liability factor has eliminated the possibility of putting this very essential appliance into people's homes. Three is a freezer on the back porch, because we are a hunting and gathering society and we need to have the tools required to do that work. Those are successful homes in the north.
It's not really about the construction. I also disagree with you.... If you talk to the NWT Housing Corporation, they are world experts. We've built houses in Russia. We've built them all over the world. They're excellent homes, but not necessarily for the people who live there because of course they're public housing. They're not designed for private ownership, which allows people the flexibility to design their home so that it matches their lifestyle, so that the sustainability that's available to them in their lifestyle has to be expressed in the home they live in. That's a key. I'll have to look at your report to see if you caught that element of it correctly, as to how housing should be built in the north.
Getting back to this issue of national versus international, what's been the focus of the Arctic Council? The Arctic Council is composed of eight nations and permanent participants. Is the main focus national issues within the countries, or is it the shared issues that are integral to understanding how to take care of our Arctic regions—environment, shipping, fishing, those types of issues? Is that not the focus of the Arctic Council, and has been for many years?