They do. That's a great question.
So is the better way to do that to consult with first nation communities or to do what a former provincial Liberal cabinet minister did and announce that smelting operations would be just outside the city he works in, when the Ontario mining commissioner had made a judgment that the direction of that road would be at least temporarily impossible, given the province's failure to address the issues related to that? There are other alternatives, and they've been developed, as I say, through our process.
The other significant thing was obviously pre-positioning first nation communities for jobs in that sector. I made an announcement just a couple of months ago about things that we should be announcing, and those include 260 seats at Confederation College; full cooperation with the post-secondary education authority for KKETS, the Matawa aboriginal organization; and $3 million through the Ring of Fire directly to the Nishnawbe Aski Development Fund, which would focus on business capacity and business development for first nation communities in the Matawa organizations to derive direct benefits from the development of the Ring of Fire.
So far, the only thing I can say about that announcement of $1 billion is that it has given us finally some confidence that we have a scope and understanding of what the province might be willing to invest. But there have been no details, and the development corporation they proposed had no policy or articles of incorporation to support it, by the admission of the provincial minister, who is a dear friend and colleague of mine. I've worked very closely with him on this.
We hope that after June 12 we'll have a clearer sense of what specific projects we need to move forward on, and the federal government looks forward to being a part of that. I would note, finally, that our provincial counterparts had absolutely no problem from 2009 to 2012 with focusing on specific projects that supported community and/or resource development projects. I'm a little bit confused as to why they might now. Maybe it's just because there's a provincial election going on.