Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to everyone who presented today.
Mr. Campbell, I would like to speak with you. A couple of years ago, when I used to sit on the other side of the table, I had the honour of being the parliamentary secretary for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development and spent a lot of time in the north meeting with not only indigenous Canadians, but industry up there. I was obviously pleased to see the way they were often working together on common goals for common projects.
I want to talk about a couple of issues.
One of my trips there was travelling in February to Inuvik with the prime minister at the time to announce the completion of the Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk highway, the completion of the road to resources. It was a great community celebration and a big investment in northern infrastructure. I know there is more to be done there, certainly.
You spoke about the threat of treating the northern territories as a national park, essentially. Often, south-of-60 NGOs, groups, and even politicians look at the north as a great white tundra that is pristine and that we should protect at all costs, because it is easy to do. There are no people living there, so you can meet your goals to protect land without displacing people and—from the perspective of a southerner—without having much impact. Certainly Leona Aglukkaq and others used to fight against that notion, the notion that we should allow the north to be turned into one big national park. We see it now with the marine-protected areas that this government has set targets for. The north, again, is seen as an easy target where we can set aside vast tracts of land that will never be developed.
Can you talk about what impact that has had, and expand a little more on your fear of what it might impact—not only resource companies and the thousands of workers who rely on that employment, but indigenous communities that are supported in large part by resource development and resource revenues in the north?