Thank you.
We have some good examples concerning the length of time it takes to get an environmental assessment through the cycle, especially for new projects.
Our Midwest project, if you want to compare it with the Olympic Dam experience—which, as Pam said earlier, was from 2009 with an approval within approximately two years—is an open-pit mine, but not a mill, because we would be using existing infrastructure for the milling side. It is just about at its sixth anniversary of going through the environmental assessment process.
The project description was filed in December 2005, and we just recently submitted our final draft EIS. We're probably into the last year. We're anticipating EA approval in the fall of 2012, subject, of course, to the minister's discretion. That will be a seven-year environmental assessment process.
We have spent many hours reflecting on the cause of that and on where improvements could be found. Of course, we are willing to take some responsibility on the AREVA and industry side of the table, but there are many improvements that could be made in the EA process.
Primarily, the lack of a single process is a problem. We have the provincial environmental assessment process and the federal environmental process running in parallel, and although it's a cooperative process, it isn't a single EA process. In addition, we're finding that the multiple reviews in the federal departments are creating new issues each review time.
For example, in our first technical comment period, we received over 300 comments, and in the next one we received well over 200 comments, many of which were new because we had new regulators on the file. We'd like to see a streamlined review process. We're still looking for it to be rigorous and expansive to ensure the protection of the environment, but we're seeking more efficiency.