Thank you, Iain.
I think the primary concern that you're referring to is called cumulative impacts. That is where we're seeing a lot of different types of development and they're all regulated independently, and the result is that no one has really a clear overview of the land base and what's going on on the land base. Foresters can have a really nice plan and they will put areas aside for reserves, and then an oil and gas company comes in and puts a survey line right through the middle of it, and then puts a road in, then a pipeline, and then the forestry company suddenly finds it has access to timber that was previously uneconomic, so we get these effects multiplying.
What I think the federal government could do is undertake research or sponsor research that would enable us to really analyze cumulative impacts more effectively in different jurisdictions. That's something that could be done by the CFS or it could be done through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. I was actually involved in a study like that in northeast B.C. about 10 years ago, sponsored by NSERC, but it was a pilot study and it wasn't taken any further. I know many first nations would be very interested in that. I know many government agencies would be very interested.
I think, then, if we find good methods to do this, they need to be built into environmental assessment exercises so it's built into the review system that's done at both the provincial and the federal levels so that we can actually determine what the future impacts are likely to be. When we talk about maybe opening up a new area for a mine or for forestry activities, what's likely to happen and what other values on that land are going to be affected in the future by opening up that development?
It's a big area of research. It's very complicated. We don't actually have good answers yet, so I think the federal government could really help us understand those types of things better.