Thank you.
ITK acknowledges, as President Simon mentioned a moment ago, that the Arctic is a high-cost area and public investment is limited. So one has to make the best use of resources.
Insofar as pursuing a sovereignty strategy and a defence strategy in the north is concerned, it makes sense to try to make federal investments as multi-purpose as possible. That means consciously trying to wed civilian and military objectives. There are many examples where we think a creative agenda can actually serve a variety of ends.
We talked a moment ago about small craft harbours. It clearly makes a lot of sense to invest in small craft harbours. Those harbours are important for surveillance, monitoring, and environmental protection purposes. They're also important for reducing the cost of bringing goods into the communities. They're important for regional economic development purposes.
Associated with that is the expansion of the commercial fishery in the Arctic. There is the nucleus of an Inuit fishery, a commercial fishery. Their prospects are bright. There is some hope that the turbot allocations will increase in the next 12 months. It would make sense to have an Inuit-owned resident commercial fishery in the Arctic. Every boat that goes out watching those waters is evidence of Canadian use and occupation.
We talked earlier about the Rangers. Certainly the Rangers are a valuable part of Canada's defence policy, and the expansion of the Rangers program is welcome. In theory, the Rangers program could also be more consciously multi-purpose. In addition to environmental observation, you could in fact expand that program to allow Rangers to help in bringing country food back to the communities. There are some reports that say one in every two Inuit households goes hungry once a year. That's a shocking figure.
So multi-purpose investments would help.