Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here, those in person and those by video conference. It's a great thing we have now so that we can hear from people across the country when the rest of us are all here in Ottawa. So welcome to everybody and thank you for your participation.
I think it was Mr. Scott who mentioned the 50% turnover of people working for you in these remote communities. I come from a business background, and I'd like you to comment on this. I'm assuming it makes better business sense and is actually more cost effective for you to hire people who are local rather than to fly people in from all parts of the country—you have to find them a place to live; they've got to move their families. It would make business sense, one would think, to hire as many people locally as possible to do the work in all these areas, whether it be in a mine, or a factory, or a smelter, or whatever it happens to be.
Could you comment on that? When you've looked at that type of analysis, I'm assuming it makes a better business case to hire locally where you can, rather than trying to get people in from all over the country, or from around the world, potentially. As we know, some industries rely significantly on foreign-trained workers to come over because they can't get people with the required level of skilled trade here in our country to go and work.
Can I get each of you to comment on that and whether you're got any suggestions about what we can do more specifically to be getting local people to be working in these industries?
Do you want to start, Mr. Scott? Then we can work our way around.