Okay. Thank you. I think that's going to be very helpful.
I want to talk a little bit about the regulatory environment.
I'm an Albertan. We have a lot of exploration, we have a lot of surface mining, we have a lot of subsurface extraction of natural resources, we have surface extraction with forestry, and so on. It's very much a resource-intensive economy.
The north, obviously, is the new potential that is so highly touted. I'm excited about it. I've spent some time in the north. I was a fishing guide on Great Bear Lake during university. I just love the Northwest Territories. I've loved the places I've gone in Canada's north. It is a beautiful environment. It's a harsh environment; it's a tough environment, I understand that, and I was only there during the summer months. I survived the black flies and mosquitoes and the other perils that were out there, not to mention grizzly bears.
I fly over this country every week. I fly back and forth to Alberta. I fly over vast tracts of the Canadian Shield. I don't see anything. I don't see lights. I don't see roads. I see a bunch of nothing, and that's on a clear night. You see the odd community. Yet we have all of this environmental protection legislation restricting everything we can do. I know I've walked in places that no human being has ever set foot on before in Canada's north.
I have a zoology degree. I've spent a lot of time protecting, defending, and conserving Canada's natural resources. That's where my head space is at. But at the same time, I realize that as a former public servant of the Government of Canada, the Province of Alberta, and so on, I relied on the fact that our economy would grow and prosper in order to pay my salary and keep things moving forward.
From a regulatory environment perspective—and I'm happy to hear the recommendations you had—how do we compare to other countries that you may have operations in, insofar as the timelines and going from discovery to an extraction process?