Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
I really wasn't going to go here, but Mr. Erskine-Smith mentioned plant-based proteins and so on. I guess if the concern is about simulated chicken nuggets and where that's going to lead people in the future, I think it's important that.... Vegan ideas and vegan thoughts are great, but promotion at the expense of other industries is not great. We need a few beef animals out there to manage these millions of acres that we have of grazing land. Anyway, I just thought I would start off with that.
I guess if we want to talk about regulations, maybe we should take a look at oil sands reclamation, because these are regulations that have been in place for years. Here's what one of them says, that 100% of land must be reclaimed:
The Government of Alberta requires that companies remediate and reclaim 100 percent of the land after the oil sands have been extracted. Reclamation means that land is returned to a self-sustaining ecosystem with local vegetation and wildlife.
If anybody has ever gone there, they will see what that is all about. I think that's important. Maybe, as we discuss that here on Earth Day, keep that in mind. We can also think about the 19 square miles of mined land in China that is there for solar panel production and about the rare earth minerals in Africa that are being dug out by children for battery development. These are the things that we're going to have to think about, as well, when we talk about mining for rare earth minerals here in Canada. It's not going to be very easy to get past regulations if we have this attitude that industry is always bad. Believe me, Canada is something that we should be proud of, and I do stand for that.
Mr. Priddle, you mentioned that soft costs are typically half of the cost of the total project. I wonder if you could expand somewhat on what you see as those soft costs.