We need to be providing an enabling framework and not a constraining one. I say that in all sincerity. In the example I cited in my opening remarks, this company tried for four years to get through the regulatory process to be able to open a foundry. They spent millions of dollars trying to do that. In the end, he gave up and went down to Tennessee, where he's spending over a billion dollars to process raw materials that are coming out of our mines in Canada.
This is just one of a number of issues that we continue to impose on ourselves, this uncertainty, and the fact that we don't get bipartisan agreement on big, major national projects that are important to our national security and our national health. I think there are things we could do better as a collaborative to be able to create far better outcomes than what we're achieving.
We have all the inputs in the world. I'll give you an example in the agriculture industry. The Dutch have 4.4 million acres in agriculture. They produce about $150 billion of GDP out of their ag sector. Canada, just in the three prairie provinces alone, has 78 million acres of arable land. The total output for Canada's ag sector is about $136 billion. The Dutch do better on their 4.4 million acres than we can do on our entire land mass.
You tell me why we can't do better. Some of it is that we're constraining, not enabling.