Those are very interesting questions, because I have been involved with some of these issues myself.
Communities want to see economic development. They do want to see our communities prosper. The generations that are now starting to get into higher levels of education want to be able to see success and to have opportunities as other Canadians do. That said, there is also a sense of wanting to make sure that the lands given out for economic opportunity have as little impact as possible and that the technology that moves into our areas is deemed safe.
The way to do this is really to have good discussions with our communities and with the leaders. You need to start this framework quite early. We do have YESAB here in the territory, which looks at impacts and benefits. They are the ones who give the social licence to have economic opportunities.
At the community level, I think you must go into the regions well before anything takes place. You have to talk to people. You have to give them a big-picture view with a long outreach of 10 to 20 years on what the vision is for that area. You have to work so that the people are well informed and have opportunity. You have to bring forward very early the pros and cons of some of these economic opportunities.
This is particularly true with oil and gas development. In our region we have a lot of mining. We've had it for over 100 years, and people are quite familiar with it. Oil and gas is something different. We haven't had that here in the north. There could be a lot of education moving forward. People talk about the Law of the Sea. What are the different routes if there's going to be an extractive industry in that area? Start gearing education components to our people so that they could become the petroleum engineers, etc., and not always the menial caste labour.