Thank you, Chair, and my thanks to the witnesses for being here today. I guess I could ask anyone who has ever cheered for the Sudbury Wolves to raise your hands—there we go.
Being from Sudbury, I know the importance of mining to my community, my province, and our great country. Over the last three years, as the MP for Sudbury and prior to that in my role as the executive director of the United Way, I got to know the leaders in the mining community in Sudbury. From Vale to Xstrata Nickel, all of them were saying that production in our facilities will start to slow down if we don't find ways to bring workers and miners into our communities. So even though we live in an urban centre, we still see the same issues that you're seeing in northern parts of Canada and Ontario.
We would all agree that what we are seeing in Attawapiskat is truly horrible. We have the largest diamond mine in North America, I believe, in their area. De Beers has been trying to get people employment, but unfortunately the available skills don't match the demand. The Ring of Fire is fantastic news for northern Ontario—for all communities, all the way down from the train tracks to the infrastructure construction and everything that goes with it.
Your organization is looking at getting a jump on providing the training to the first nations communities, who are there already, before the first shovel goes into the ground. I'll open that up to start off with.