Thank you, Chair.
This is very interesting. I'm new to this committee, but I've spent a lot of time on the fisheries and the environment committees, and so I want to talk to you about a few things.
I'm an Alberta guy. I appreciate the fact that we have jurisdiction over our own resources there, very much so. I'm not going to go down that road, but I understand a lot of the problems when it comes to economic development, sustainable development, exploitation, and so on. Sitting on the environment committee for as long as I have, I constantly hear from various officials. I get it, whether it's an infrastructure project in my constituency or a mining development in the constituency, whether it's for coal-fired electrical generation, whatever the case might be. The regulatory process for environmental impact assessments is sometimes the bottleneck when it comes to getting some projects done and off the ground in a timely fashion.
You mentioned in your opening remarks that timeliness in the north is critical. We have two seasons in Canada: we have winter and the construction season. I'm going to ask you straight up how long these regulatory processes take. For example, if a new diamond mine were going to pop up some place up in the north, from start to finish, what are we looking at insofar as a timeline to get the various permits in place is concerned, to get this thing up and off the ground so that investors can see some results? What part does your department play in that process?
How has your department...? I'm not going to ask you to assess the capabilities of other departments; I don't think that's fair. But do you see any ways of streamlining or improving these things so that we can get both results we're looking for: the protection of the environment, but at the same time the economic opportunities that come with mining and exploration?
The second question I have for you is this. As I say, I grew up on a farm in Alberta. I can't tell you how many times we've had an oil and gas company come across and do a seismic test on our farmland. Now, of course, they don't share that information. One company does not share the information with another company; it's proprietary information. They may be looking at different depths, et cetera.
One hundred million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but not when you take a look at the vastness of the Canadian north. What is $100 million really going to tell us about where the various prospects are for metals and mining and so? How much of the repository of information is that going to fill up, in particular, where there are some voids or lack of knowledge right now?
And what does industry give back to us? Does it pay for that information? Is it publicly accessible information? When industry goes out and does any of its work in lieu of or on top of the information that it gets from the Government of Canada, does it provide any information back to us? Are there any agreements when it comes to sharing this information, or is just simply that we provide the service to industry and it goes about and does what it wants to do and we never hear from it again?