Thank you for the question. It's always nice to talk about another aspect of my responsibilities in the Government of Canada.
As the minister responsible for FedNor, I'm particularly proud that since 2006 there have been over 1,240 projects that benefit northern Ontario's economy. Northern Ontario is no different from other constituencies that are represented in Parliament. With the great recession there were job losses. Northern Ontario relies on forestry, mining, tourism, and certain amounts of manufacturing. All of those areas were hit by the great recession as it wended its way through the world economy.
I've tried to focus FedNor's responsibilities on helping to complete the economic recovery. We want to make sure that we help hard-working Canadian families and businesses in northern Ontario, and that every investment decision we make has a positive impact on the economy of northern Ontario. I was pleased to see that in budget 2011 we were able to add $4 million to the FedNor budget—that's over a three-year period—to establish a cyclotron laboratory in Thunder Bay. That's a great research project. It will help create medical isotopes. We know how important medical isotopes are and how we've had some difficulty in that regard. This cyclotron will be able to create medical isotopes for early detection of cancer cells, which will be helpful to our constituents across the country.