Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Rickford, thank you for being with us. I salute the leadership you have shown today by agreeing to appear before the committee to present your province's vision. I sincerely wish that the same thing had happened in Quebec.
That being said, I would like to point out the good questions that were asked by my two previous colleagues, which end up reducing the ones I had on my list.
I'd like to talk about resource processing. I'm particularly interested in the example of the Cobalt mining belt. You know, I'm the member of Parliament for Abitibi—Témiscamingue, so I'm just a few steps away from this company. I have a sailboat on Lake Timiskaming, and when the winds are favourable, I get there quite easily. You have a great processing model.
Could you talk to us about the importance of being able to do this processing close to the resource and the example it sets in terms of land use and economic levers in our resource regions?