Thank you very much.
I am also happy to be back at the committee as the session resumes.
Thank you to all the witnesses for joining us. Some of the testimony resonates with me as representative of a northern region.
Mr. McBryan, Boeings are not landing in my region, just very small airplanes flown by bush pilots. However, as my colleague Ms. Idlout said, planes are important for our region. In fact, they are a matter of survival. I imagine that, for you, the issue of northern infrastructure, as we've talked about, is extremely important. Not only do we have to build infrastructure, we also have to maintain and preserve it.
You are nodding your approval. I was hoping to hear those comments, because some communities depend on airplanes for supplies, workers, and so on. Economic development depends on airplanes, it's that simple. For the moment, there is nothing else. There are no roads. However, I know that the government may want to abandon this infrastructure, but I'm satisfied to hear that they are necessary for the development of the north.
You also said that it's a matter of who controls the money and where the money goes. That's important for us as well. People want to live in the north, and it's been like that for generations. Mining towns are popping up everywhere. People get there, and after a while, they want to stay there. They work at the mine all their lives. It becomes their home and they no longer want to go “down south“ as we say. They want to stay up north. They want to contribute to the local development. However, it's very difficult for them, because if they don't work at the mine, where do they work? There's nothing else. They'd like to have a house, but there aren't any: they belong to the mine. They'd like to start a business, but it has to be related to the mine.
What could the government or elected officials, like us, do to support community empowerment, which I think communities want, so that they have more power to make decisions?
For example, as Ms. Christensen said, there's the issue of housing, which is totally inadequate. Back home, there's a wall in town facing north to cut the wind. We don't have that in the south. Everyone lives behind that wall, all services are offered behind that wall.
In short, what could we do to have control?
You also talked about fly-in, fly-out operations, what we call in French, “une navelle aérienne.” We have a lot of those back home.
What can we do to ensure that people contribute to the community, develop the community and obviously stay in the community? It is indeed a matter of land use. We want to extract resources, as you said, but we also want that money to come back to us for development. I'll let you speak. I've said a lot, but, as you can see, I agree with you.