Mr. Friesen, on the concept of conservation offsets, if you had a development opportunity in a particular area and your analysis indicated that because of the soil conditions or whatever you couldn't follow the critical path that your closure and reclamation model contains, would that be the kind of site--I think the committee would like to understand the concept here, and perhaps, Mr. Carlson, you could comment--that would qualify as a conservation offset? There would be an application; it's analyzed in a preliminary fashion; a decision is made with the precautionary principle that this is too sensitive an area. Would you support that being included in the inventory of conservation offsets, Mr. Friesen, from both a scientific perspective and an economic perspective?
On November 28th, 2006. See this statement in context.