Thank you for the very interesting presentations. I'm quite impressed with the involvement aboriginal people have with the mining industry and with your companies.
I come from the Northwest Territories. Mining is playing a very big role in the areas of employment, training, and working with our aboriginal communities. It's certainly a way for our younger people to find employment and training, and become a very viable part of the community.
We have quite a few mines. We just had a diamond mine announce their opening in Gahcho Kué. They will be bringing over six and a half billion dollars to the NWT economy.
I see so many good things from the mining industry. My son works with the mine. He's been there almost 15 years. He went right from high school into the industry, and he stayed there. He's making a very good living.
I've also been watching, with interest, how the mines deal with communities. I know for a fact that for Gahcho Kué there are five impact benefit agreements and training. They've signed agreements on with the communities. There's been a real sense of relief from the communities that the mine is there.
We have other mines. I heard you mention Rio Tinto, a gold mine in the Tlicho area that we'd like to see move forward. They have challenges. We, in the north, have very little in terms of roads and adequate airports. Only 12 out of 33 of our communities have roads. Even though this mine isn't there yet, there are a number of communities where there are no roads. To make it viable, we'll need roads.
Our government has promised to review the environmental assessment process to make it more modern, more accountable, and more credible. I wanted to ask if you could tell me what you see as the role for indigenous Canadians in evaluating the mineral resource development projects. We have had some of the regulatory boards from the Northwest Territories come up and talk about how they've included aboriginal people. Some 50% of their boards are aboriginal and it seems to work well. I just want to ask if you've looked at that whole area.