Mineral resource development is absolutely essential for northern economic growth. Economic opportunities north of 60 are driven by mineral development, accounting for 81% of resource production. There's further potential, actually, for oil and gas development in the medium to long term.
More than $8 billion in new mine investment in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut is slated for the next five years. The government has launched an action plan to improve the northern regulatory regime to bring a whole-of- government approach to regulatory issues and to attract investment opportunities.
NRCan—my department, Natural Resources Canada—supports public geoscience in the north. And there the effort is to bring geological knowledge of 40% of Canada's land mass up to par with geoscience knowledge of the land mass south of 60. The geomapping program for energy and minerals—that's “GEM”—is a northern economic development program that's designed to provided public geoscience knowledge that industry needs to guides its exploration strategies in the three territories.
I have run out of time, but this is a really exciting area.