Certainly. Rare earths are a bit of an oxymoron; rare earths in fact are not that rare.
There are two types of rare earths, light rare earths and heavy rare earths. The light rare earths are actually geologically present in many parts of the world, and they occur with other deposits that we see. The heavy rare earths are used in magnets, for example, that go into powering motors, such as for our little windows in cars or the big windmills you see that require the huge magnets, and so on. Those types of rare earths are, indeed, rare. They're in short supply. And they're in high demand from countries such as Japan, Germany, and the United States, because of their applicability in new forms of energy, whether in defence applications or in the automotive sector or in the electronic sector.
Canada has at the moment about 100 projects under way to try to find these rare earths. Many of them are for the light rare earths, but several of them are for the heavies. There are about four projects that hold some real prospect in the north for these heavy rare earths. So it certainly holds well for us to try to play a role.
I don't think we're ever going to be the primary player or play a huge part in the world's quest for these rare earths, but I think we can be a player in the future. And industry is responding to the geoscience that exists out there already. Industry is taking advantage of some of the real returns on our investments in gems, for example. And we've seen, as I said, at least one of those projects looking at actually coming into production in 2014-2015.
Again, I think this holds well for Canada going into the future. We can enter a market that we haven't played in at all.