Thank you very much, Minister, and congratulations on your appointment as the first Minister of Rural Economic Development for Canada. I think that underlines and highlights the commitment to the people of rural Canada. Obviously you're right in there, rolling up your sleeves. I appreciate that.
To Will Amos, the member for Pontiac, congratulations on your motion.
I would be remiss, Minister, not to mention the member for Nickel Belt, who was appointed as your parliamentary secretary.
I am from Sault Ste. Marie, in northern Ontario. Northern Ontario is 90% of the land mass of Ontario, and there are a number of geographical issues and a number of remoteness issues, but I'm not going to delve into those. I am going to specifically talk about first nations.
There was an announcement recently under the previous program. Matawa First Nations Management connects four or five remote first nations in the Ring of Fire. It was important to do that for education, health care and remoteness. You know that there are first nations that deal with high rates of suicide because of their remoteness, and one of the things we've read about is the ability to connect people. The ability for people to support one other is important.
Bernadette, with that, I want to also talk about something you alluded to about the private-public sector partnership, because the private sector is involved up there. This is just a general statement. How important is it to you philosophically for the private sector to be involved, not only the big ones but the small and medium-sized enterprises across Canada and in northern Ontario?