I would start by suggesting that the Canadian mining and mineral exploration industry is almost unparalleled in terms of its quality, its capabilities and the best practices that this industry brings to its operations, both in Canada and abroad. When we think about Canada's capability to discover more minerals and metals within our own borders and bring those metals to market, it's almost unequalled compared to any other country. Our ecosystem is very robust, from the exploration end of things all the way through to mineral processing.
When we think of where the shortfalls are.... At PDAC, we think of our members as largely being the junior exploration and developers within Canada, and we think about what can be pulled out of the ground, as you pointed to. Our recommendations are centred around the concept that we need to build up a larger inventory of known resources and reserves within Canada. It would be in our best interest to understand where those are located, so quality infrastructure decisions can be made, so we can understand what our energy balance will be in the future, and so we can ensure that we can actually access those prospective lands with a social licence to operate well in mind.
That's really where our minds are focused at this point—to build up that resource capacity within Canada. With that in mind, the lion's share of what we have seen over many years with respect to exploration in Canada has been focused on precious metals and more traditional base metals. The amount of attention devoted to—as this committee has considered before—lithium or different types of lithium species, or graphite, cobalt or other metals, has been relatively immaterial in Canada's history.
What I can say is that we are the second-largest country on earth in terms of geography. We have every geological terrain and potential for discovery—in virtually every region in this country—for rare earths, lithium, cobalt and the things this committee is talking about and considering. I would say there's unparalleled exploration upside and vast exploration potential here in Canada that we need to maximize to ensure that all of those downstream issues that we're considering are put in focus, as opposed to the upstream portions that are maybe lacking right now.