Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I thank the witnesses.
First of all, Mr. Chair, I apologize to you, to the committee, and to our witnesses for being late. I had coverage for the first hour and then was further delayed by another committee obligation.
I feel bad about that, because the groups that are here today are in my wheelhouse, so to speak, on so many levels coming from the great Kenora riding, of course, with some of its challenges around parks and, perhaps to a slightly lesser extent, fisheries. But with Industry Canada and Parks Canada, we face challenges that are not too dissimilar to those of the vast regions in the Northwest Territories. Indeed, I had a chance to live up there in my former life as a nurse and can appreciate some of the more obvious challenges.
I've had a chance to do a cursory review of some of the speeches that were made here and of some of the information. I'll try to keep my questions somewhat general.
I am the chair of the all-party tourism caucus, so I also have an interest in what, if anything, we can do as MPs in a government to raise the profile of various regions. Obviously I bring to this a real interest in the bigger regions of Canada. I noted the Vancouver Olympics that we have this spring. One of the things that we were trying to do through the caucus was to get MPs motivated to help us come up with ideas about how to raise the profile of some of the lesser-known bigger regions in Canada.
In the instance of the territories and certainly of the Arctic, the inukshuk, to some extent, is a symbol that's been sort of.... I don't want to say it's been taken, but it's been used for the Vancouver Olympics. I don't always arrive in Vancouver and think of that, but it is nonetheless a gateway to Whitehorse.
I'm wondering if anybody would like to comment on whether there's been a special opportunity to raise the profile of those regions through your departments with respect to the Olympics, with brief answers to that, if you could, and then I'll move forward on some specific challenges and successes moving forward. It may or may not be related to the Olympics.