Thank you.
I think the one thing that none of us want to see across Canada is legacy mines. We already have many of them that spot the north and all of Canada. We pay a lot for these. Giant Mine is a really good example right now, which is costing the federal government millions of dollars to manage 237,000 tonnes of arsenic that's tied up because of irresponsible mining practices and not proper technological solutions to mining that's going on. We don't want that. Let's put that out there.
The reason we don't have that in modern mining is because of the power of the well-asked question. The well-asked question in environmental assessment comes from scientists, from NRCAN, from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, from Environment Canada, from all of the excellent scientists who are hired by and working in the federal government who ask the developer the well-asked question. When they pose that question to them, the developer then goes and looks at what they're proposing and performs the analysis they need to do and the technical work they need to do in order to prove to the federal government that they are not going to pose a risk to the environment and that they will take care of and put enough money aside to take care of any concerns or any environmental impacts that are going to be there.
So yes, we're very worried about what's going to happen with environmental assessment being gutted, because those people who ask the well-asked question will no longer be in the room. They won't be able to say what's going to happen with water, water quality. They won't be able to ask about technologies.
I just sat through excellent technical hearings in Yellowknife for three days. And yes, that was a period of time, but without that time together, the developer would not have been pushed forward to make big changes to their process so that they could protect water quality, be protective of caribou, and be protective of people of the north. Those technical sessions are absolutely fundamental to pushing good ideas forward and rejecting ideas that are not going to be protective.
I believe very strongly as an academic and as a person who works in the trenches and communities that environmental assessment is absolutely critical to good projects moving forward. That's what we want to see. We want to see good projects move forward. We want to see bad projects changed or rejected.