Well, I hope you'd also strongly assert the interests of the natural resource economy in that particular context as well.
If I could, just to change subjects, we're exporting 99% of our diamonds in pretty much a raw and uncut state. I've had people tell me that what we should be doing in Canada is setting up a bourse, a diamond commodity exchange. It wouldn't be feasible in Yellowknife, notwithstanding their best intentions. I started a dialogue with some of my colleagues in that area in the last Parliament.
I think they've made some efforts in Yellowknife and beyond to do some cutting and polishing, with some success. But I'm told that if you set up an exchange like they have in Antwerp and other parts of the world, then the value-added starts to move from that, because people want to be close to where the diamonds are being exchanged—and it's a matter of cutting, polishing, and points beyond, in terms of value-added. And it has to be in a large cosmopolitan centre to make it work.
Does the federal government have the authority, through NRCan, I presume, to direct that a proportion of those diamonds—30%, 40%, or 20%, whatever the number is—go into a diamond exchange in Canada, if it were shown to be feasible and a desirable place to go, for value-added processing in Canada? Has the department ever looked at something like that?