Thank you, sir, Mr. Chairman.
Yes, some progress has been made with respect to engaging or creating what we call IPGs, independent public government bodies, that were created through the claim to work on environmental assessments and work on land use planning that I mentioned—what is the purpose of the land going to be for the future: five, ten, fifteen, twenty years, infinity? To assess the land need for the years we have what we call the water board that is created to look after the interests of water. Some other gentleman had mentioned drinking pure water, and we want that to remain for infinity as well.
Those kinds of implementation initiatives have been taken. Those boards are functioning accordingly. Again, it's not without growing pains. They have their own challenges because of lack of resources from the federal side to fully perform their mandate. They have difficulty in that, and that continues.
That's again part of our challenge with the federal government, to fully and adequately resource those agencies so they can appropriately achieve their mandates, so they can do their job efficiently, basically. Right now, because of lack of funding and lack of implementation they're having great difficulty in making sure things are done on a timely basis and their mandate is achieved in the time limits. Because of the seasons in Nunavut, you have to hurry in many cases because the mineral explorations and people who want to use the land require permission through some of those agencies. It takes a long time for turnaround at times because of the short seasons to work in the north in the summer for many. Those challenges are before us today, but we're working in the best way we can to accommodate them.