Thank you very much, Chair Komarnicki and committee members, for this invitation.
As you noted, I'm joined by Mr. Gary Merasty, vice-president of corporate social responsibility with Cameco.
I'd like to commend the chamber for the insightful report that they had done up that precipitated the study you're working on. It adeptly recognizes many of the challenges that are reflected in northern remote Saskatchewan in particular.
We'd like to really echo many of the comments from Mr. Scott from Vale today.
Saskatchewan mining companies have developed a number of best practices for inclusion of northern communities in both the workforce as well on the business development side. We'd like to share some of those with you as well.
I'll talk just a little bit about the Saskatchewan mining industry. We're in a period of expansion right now. There's a lot of demand for the commodities we produce. Over the next five years, it is anticipated, mineral production by Saskatchewan will double. Companies have committed to spending over $50 billion over the next 20 years to expand existing mines that are in production or development.
Slide 6 of the presentation has a map of northern Saskatchewan. We're really focused on the area in the top third of the map. It represents northern Saskatchewan's 47 communities that would be considered remote according to the chamber report. It covers 46% of the province's land mass but only 4% of the population. It's a very dispersed population of 40,000 people, 86% of whom are of either first nations or Métis heritage. The population growth rate in the north is higher than it is for the rest of the province.That is actually a competitive advantage for our companies as local communities represent a great untapped workforce pool for our companies.
The yellow oval in the map is the Athabasca region of Saskatchewan, which hosts the world's largest uranium deposits. There are also two producing gold mines and a large silica sand operation in the region.
Slide 7 looks at the northern economic benefits from the mine.
In 2010, the northern mine operations purchased over $916 million worth of goods and services. Businesses owned and operated by communities or businesses from northern Saskatchewan made $361 million worth of purchases. A number of these companies now are in the top 100 companies within Saskatchewan, including Kitsaki Development Limited Partnership, which is the economic development arm of the Lac La Ronge Indian Band, the largest band in Saskatchewan.
Looking at slide 8, you'll see a bar graph that shows the value of expenditures that have gone into northern Saskatchewan directly from the mines since 1991. Between goods and services and payroll, over $3.39 billion has been invested in northern Saskatchewan.
The next slide is slide 9. In terms of employment opportunities in the north—and we heard from the CNA already—there are more than 3,615 individuals who are working directly at the mines; 46% of these are residents of northern Saskatchewan, predominantly of aboriginal heritage. Their payroll last year was over $90 million, which was injected into northern Saskatchewan.