Mr. Patterson has made a number of allusions to the Atlantic accord, which is a formula that stipulates a certain investment in R and D by the participants in Newfoundland's offshore oil industry. I'm not aware of anything quite like that in Alberta. It is certainly something that could be considered.
It's an interesting conundrum. In Canada—across all industries, not just this industry—we have a long tradition of being late to adopt technology. I'm not bringing news to anybody, right? It's the same in this industry. I mentioned the example of a company that has extensive credentials in the Middle East and slowly but surely there will start to be adoption in Alberta, but it's certainly slower than one would hope.
I think it's an area that merits its own study because we've certainly been considering this question for a number of years. We now have really good information about what shareholders in smaller companies expect in terms of being able to sell directly, as Mr. Patterson has described, to very large players. Statoil is an international company that might provide some interesting opportunities for us to learn, and then there are other sectors. I think the Atlantic accord perhaps looks a little like the IRB system one has in the aerospace industry, so I would suggest that this is an area where more evidence gathering might be required, because so far, sale cycles in Canada are definitely longer than they are in other parts of the world.