Natural Resources Committee on Nov. 3rd, 2016

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Thank you all for coming here this morning. I'm going to start with Dr. Hollings.

You talked a bit about the capacity of first nations communities and you also talked about some of the challenges with getting that social licence, if you will, with first nations and other communities. One of your recommendations was to establish best practices around community partnerships. You had a list of moratoria that were out there. You could talk about best practices, but I want you to perhaps start with this. What are the things not to do? Why are those moratoria in place? What went wrong in those communities?

[Peter Hollings]

I think there are probably different answers for each of those communities as to exactly what went wrong, but the general theme to all of them is that there was a very poorly done consultation process. The one I'm most familiar with is KI in northern Ontario.

There was confusion about what consultation meant. I think different parties had different understandings of what that meant, and at the end of the day, the companies who were involved didn't satisfy the interests or needs of the communities, so the communities just said no. That set things back a long time, and it's going to be a very hard road to change opinions and change mindsets within those communities because they've had a bad experience.

I would say that, yes, the key thing is the duty to consult, but it has to go beyond that. There has to be a meaningful engagement with communities from very early stages. One of the comments we often get is the first explorer or the junior miner may make promises, which then the community remembers, but for the company that then buys three companies up the food chain, there's a challenge in remembering those promises, or even documenting those promises.

It is that element of having some of those IBAs, or whatever we're calling those agreements now, more transparent, more available. There's sometimes an unwillingness both by communities and by companies to share that potentially sensitive information, but I think there has to be a way to encourage that process so that this stuff is better preserved.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

You think it's those agreements that are one of the key elements of success.

[Peter Hollings]

Well, if they can get to the point where they can have an agreement with the community, then having it well documented, well recorded, becomes critical, yes.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

You also mentioned that access to post-secondary education for indigenous students is important. I'm just wondering if you could perhaps expand on that and how the federal government might facilitate that, whether it's by removing the cap on funding for post-secondary education or other ways you know of.

[Peter Hollings]

I think the biggest challenge, again, for a lot of these kids is not getting through university; it's getting to university. It's getting through high school. It's getting them inspired. I think there are ways to improve that and recognize that.

We have a program at Lakehead called the aboriginal mentorship program, which has been running for a few years. We connect first nations high school students with, ideally, first nations students at university, and the students then mentor them. They make university a less scary place, a less frightening place, and something they can feel more comfortable in and can aspire to achieve in. I think providing good role models for community members of the benefits of going to university so they can see that they can still come back to their communities and are not going to be lost to their communities, which I think is often a fear of some of the elders, can help to improve that.

I think my president would be very upset if I didn't say remove the funding cap. Improving funding and facilitating that is critical, but I think the main challenge is getting those students through high school and into the university. We have fairly good systems to get them through university. The challenge is getting them into university.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Nolan, I wonder if you would like to comment on that aspect as well.

[Glenn Nolan]

I think the issue goes back generations. We've heard about the residential schools and the treatment or mistreatment of communities over generations. There's a serious lack of trust of any outsider coming into a community, even between communities. They cannot form a bond. It's almost like when you are constantly being hit as a kid and someone comes up and pretends to hit you and you feel as if you're being hit. There's that reflex that someone is going to come in and promise something they're not going to deliver. It's happened time and time again.

I think there are some shining lights out there that have proven that trust can be built. In Canada right now there are well over 200 agreements between indigenous communities and resource development companies. In the hard rock sector, there are a number of IBAs. I believe that is the process we would call free, prior, and informed consent. The communities feel that they've been informed of all the aspects of participation in the project—environmental risk, social risk, employment opportunities, entrepreneurial opportunities—and agree and fully commit their communities to that process. I think there are great examples out there.

We talk about legacy issues in the Ring of Fire development. Our company has about 75% of all the mining claims up there. That's going to last for generations. It's the generational aspect of building trust and building opportunities that are going to see success, not for our generation or the generation of my grandchildren but in the future, when the communities are going to be more involved, more integrated into the system, and possibly owners of the mine.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

I wonder if you could quickly comment on the infrastructure needs and the process around that with communities.

[Glenn Nolan]

Right now the communities are isolated to the point of having only winter road access to bring their materials in. What we're seeing is that there are accelerated costs, obviously, when you have to fly in most of your materials or when the winter road season is shortened considerably. Over the last three or four years, we've seen the opportunity to bring in all their supplies diminished considerably. If we have development roads in, yes, there are some social issues that come with access to the outside. Unfettered organizations or groups may come in and not have maybe the best intentions in mind, but overall, I think if we keep communities isolated, they are going to continue to suffer from neglect.

The opportunity is there for them, once they have a road, to look not only at working as partners in projects but at other opportunities that are going to be in their backyards.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Nolan.

Mr. Harvey.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

First of all, I want to thank you all for being here. I know you all have busy work schedules. It means a lot to the committee to have amazing resources such as you that we can draw on to come and testify before us to help shed some light on these issues. I really appreciate that.

I'm going to focus my time on you, Ms. Flood. I want to take the opportunity to thank you for the written submission that you gave us, and that you spoke from, of course. It really does highlight what I believe, which is that the Canadian oil sands is a sector of the Canadian economy that's vital and integral, not just to Canadians in western Alberta but also to Canadians across the country. I've always been amazed by the innovation that has occurred in the in situ oil sands and continues to occur as we speak, and hopefully will continue for years ahead.

I want to highlight a couple of things you said in your notes that really appealed to me. The first was, “Our vision is to be trusted stewards of natural resources. And, we believe that through sustainable development—focusing on economic prosperity, a healthy environment, and social well-being, we’ll be able to help Canada meet its energy needs using oil derived with the lowest carbon intensity in the world.” I think that's very important.

I also want to highlight where you said that the energy sector will need to transform itself in order to succeed in an increasingly carbon-constrained and cost-competitive world. You also wrote that the goal of the energy system, in this context, is to deliver to nine billion people safe, affordable energy that minimizes carbon emissions. I wanted to highlight those because they really do speak to the innovation that has occurred. I praise you for those comments.

I'm from a very rural riding that is much like Mr. Barlow's riding, but on the east coast of Canada. A lot of my friends work in the oil sands. They work in the oil and gas industry, and they work in the northern mining projects, because we are a rural economy that has faced significant challenges as well in the past 25 or 30 years. I think that speaks to the importance of these projects.

I wanted to know if you could elaborate a bit on the importance of the innovation, the $200 million that you have been investing in innovation and technology. How do you feel the government can best contribute to that in order to see the industry move forward and continue to grow upon the successes that you've already had?

[Ginny Flood]

Perfect. Thank you for those remarks.

I think there are a few roles that government could play. First of all, one role is how you talk about the sector, and that the sector has a future. I think that's really important from a policy perspective. It's also important from an investor perspective, and how they look at our sector. I think that's one that's very important.

I would also say that some of the conversation happening around what the innovation agenda looks like, what kinds of clusters of innovation can happen, and how that promotes economic prosperity, is also very important. For our sector, certainly, if you look at Alberta and you look across Canada, there are logical hubs of technology that are happening through academia, through industry groups, through service providers, and through just the talent that's available, and readily available. I think that's another area.

We don't expect that government will ever have the kinds of funds that industry is putting into it, such as Suncor putting in $200 million annually. If you take the other companies in Calgary doing the same thing, it's quite a significant amount of investment. That doesn't mean to say we don't need government to help harness and leverage some of that expertise, because what we're talking about, as a sector, is that we want to be able to be transformative. We want to be able to have some real technologies that are going to be very much leading edge and world class, which we can then export.

I think what's really interesting in the mining sector, as well as the energy sector, is that we are known for being innovative in our resource sector. That is what Canada has a huge reputation for, particularly in northern climates. I'll use the example of our autonomous haul trucks in our autonomous mine in the oil sands right now. We're in the early stages, but being successful would mean we would have the first autonomous mine in North America. Autonomous mines do exist in other parts of the world. Rio Tinto has them in Australia, but it's not a northern climate, and the conditions are very different. If we're able to create that environment and move that type of innovation, we become a world-class leader in this space.

One of the things that I didn't mention is the Xprize. We are globally looking at what other innovations are out there and really looking at ways to drive the conversation about reducing our carbon footprint. One of the ways we can do that is by looking at having another product, which would be carbon, but it would take the carbon and instead of emitting it, it would actually utilize it as a product. That prize is $20 million. It's through COSIA and a number of COSIA companies. I think Dan Wicklum mentioned there were 27 teams that have gone through the first phase, and then we're going into the second phase.

These are the types of things that we're looking at. Where government is really helpful is in making sure that it's providing that message along with industry. We have to do a better job of providing what we're doing, but there's also this culture of innovation at a regulatory aspect. When there is new technology, one of the things that we often run into is regulators who are very prescriptive. They like to have certainty, the same way we like to have certainty. When you introduce new technologies, sometimes it can be a very rigorous process. You have to prove that it will work, and you have to have a backup plan if it doesn't work. That can get very costly and increase timelines when you're looking for permitting.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Lastly, the reason I base my comments on that—and I thank you for your additional feedback as well—is that I really do think that the innovation that's being shown, not only in mining but also in oil and gas, especially in the in situ projects, really does speak to how Canada can position itself, not only in the next 10 years but over the next 50 years, to be a world leader in low-carbon, greener technology for extraction. I think it's that leadership that's going to allow Canada to play an integral role going forward, not only within the Canadian economy but also on a global scale.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

Mr. Strahl, you have about two minutes.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Nolan, it's good to see you again. I recall you more from your role with PDAC.

I wanted to pick up on some of the comments you made. In the previous government, I was the parliamentary secretary for aboriginal affairs, and I'd say the best day of my time in that role and in government was the day we announced Bill C-33, the first nations control of first nations education act and the $1.9 billion to transform that. The worst day was when it all fell apart due to a variety of factors, including infighting at the AFN.

I was at a Indian Resource Council meeting in Calgary where they talked about how communities are no longer looking for, I think the term was, “pick and shovel work”. They want to be partners, they want to be engineers, and they want to be fully engaged, in this case with oil and gas, but I think we've heard certainly from mining companies that this is consistent in that sector, as well.

I don't have much time, but perhaps you can give a recommendation. If you could recommend an action that government could take or that this committee could recommend to government, how can we help first nations communities get to that level of partnership with the mining sector? You have one minute probably to answer that.

[Glenn Nolan]

I think we could write a book on this and not come up with a conclusive recommendation. I'll start off with, again, it's about building that trust. This industry, or the oil and gas industry, or the resource development industry, in general, is not something that is foreign to the communities. It's something they're natural partners with because it's in their backyards, and it's just because they've been isolated and they've been neglected for such a long time that they feel they're being brought along without their participation. I think anyone would feel that way if you don't understand the process and you're being told, “This is good for you”.

I think it's about creating awareness, and I know that Natural Resources Canada has published a tool kit document beginning in 2006 or 2008 for informing communities about the mining industry. I'm sure there's one for the oil and gas industry that helps communities understand, as well. Whether it's using the INAC department or using other provincial programs to deliver that in the schools with the community leaders and the various groups within the communities, or whether it's an elder group or a church group, it continues to share that information that's vital for them to make a fully informed decision on whether they want to participate.

I think Pete Hollings talked a bit about the challenges of one of the northern communities, because they didn't have all the information that was necessary for them to make a decision.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Nolan. Unfortunately, we're out of time.

I just want to echo the comments of my colleagues around the table thanking you for taking the time to be here today and helping us along our way. Unfortunately, we do have to stop because we have three more excellent witnesses who are waiting to take your seats, so thank you.

We'll suspend for one minute.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

We're going to resume for our second hour.

Thank you again to all my colleagues and to the witnesses who are here. We're going to get moving quickly because we're a little behind schedule.

We have Douglas Morrison and Bora Ugurgel, from the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation; Michael Fox and Lesley Williams, from the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada; and Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, a professor from McGill University.

Welcome, all of you. I appreciate your taking the time to be here. It's a great help to us.

I'm going to give each of the three entities up to 10 minutes to speak, and then we'll open the floor to questions.

I'm looking directly at you, Mr. Morrison, so why don't you start?

[Douglas Morrison, President and Chief Executive Officer, Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation]

Yes. Thank you very much.

We're very pleased to be here and have the opportunity to present to the committee.

My name is Douglas Morrison. I'm the president and CEO of the Centre for Excellence in Mining Innovation, called CEMI, based in Sudbury, Ontario. My colleague here is Bora Ugurgel, managing director of the ultra-deep mining network, which is focused on productivity below 2.5 kilometres, or 8,000 feet below surface.

CEMI was established in 2007 by both industry and government. We help solve mining industry challenges by delivering commercially viable innovations to enhance safety, increase productivity, and improve environmental performance. The ultra-deep mining network was established three years ago and is funded by the federal BL-NCE network.

My 35-year career in the mining industry includes 15 years working in the underground mines in Sudbury in operations and mines research, then another 16 years living and working in Australia, South America, southern Africa, and other places as well, finishing as the global mining sector leader for the consulting company I worked for. The last five years at CEMI have been to build a 17-person team that focuses on innovation and commercialization of research.

CEMI's internal technical staff has over 30 years of experience working in mines, and we are the only innovation/mining research group that has that capability; 40% of our staff are senior business professionals who then negotiate commercial agreements with companies to commercialize the work we've done and move that through. No other research or innovation group has that internal capability.

Our primary focus is metal mines: gold, nickel, copper, and zinc. Those are the underground mines based in Ontario, Quebec, and Manitoba. Also the copper mines based in B.C., which are now becoming underground mines as well. All our solutions apply to the global mining business. The solutions we developed for our mines in Canada apply to all metal mines everywhere in the world.

Commercialization of mining innovation helps the mining industry to improve its operational performance and its rate of return. That's why mines are operating.

Our core advantage is the ability to bring together the best teams in the world to close the innovation gap—everybody's heard of that—but the bigger gap is the commercialization gap and our lack of ability to move things into a commercial setting. Our ability to do that gives us a huge advantage to be the leader in commercializing and implementing innovations on a global scale.

Your committee is trying to investigate how to create economic opportunities for the mining industry. We recommend that to create a strong foundation for future growth, the government should invest in developing the scale and range of the mining service and supply sector companies. We in Canada cannot influence where global corporations invest capital. We can make sure that we deliver innovations to our mines that make them globally competitive. If they're not globally competitive, they will close.

By vesting our service and supply sector companies with innovations that improve productivity in our local mines, they can expand their businesses to customers in mining jurisdictions all around the world, and by doing so, increase employment here at home.

To achieve this, government needs to invest in organizations like CEMI with an established team of experts who have experience in the industry; who focus on innovation, not research; and who have a global perspective on where the industry has to go. It is critical to distinguish between research, which gives you a technical result, and innovation, which gives a commercial result. If mining companies cannot buy or lease technology or hire expertise, the investment in research is very limited. You have to have a transmission from the research end of the spectrum to the industry part of the spectrum. We are focused on that innovation component.

To do that we need an effective innovation ecosystem, as well as investing in basic research activity.

The strength and scale of our current mining service sector is the unique advantage our industry has. Yes, we have over 37 mining centres across the country, but we only have four, perhaps five, mining clusters. A cluster has to have a critical mass of mining companies, service and supply companies, research facilities, and innovation groups that all work together to improve the performance of those operations.

We have over 37 centres across the country, but we don't have that many clusters, and we need to focus on them. The largest and most comprehensive of all those clusters is in Ontario, split between the small and medium-sized enterprises in Sudbury and northern Ontario, and the large, original equipment manufacturing companies, OEMs, in southern Ontario.

This is not a northern issue. This is a national issue on how we manage this business for the benefit of our economy. There are tremendous opportunities to improve the environmental performance of the mining industry, and it's essential to do that for us to get the social licence to operate in the future. We can see all around us in every country in the world how that issue is changing rapidly.

We propose that you invest $60 million in CEMI over five years, with half based on environmental changes and environmental improvements and innovations. Because of our track record in commercializing results, we already know that with that scale of funding we can bring another $200 million from private sector companies to collaborate in that effort to make those improvements happen.

The first one would be the clean mining program of $13 million. That's to improve waste-water management from tailings facilities. Another one is a remote access program, which is $30 million to improve rapid access to remote locations, remote sites, remote communities, and make that happen much faster than you can with infrastructure. That would also bring a large amount of funds.

The lean mining program is a continuation of the ultra-deep mining network, and that focuses on productivity. We have to introduce low carbon, reduce emissions, and all those things, but we also have to make sure we move ore more efficiently and cheaply. Mines have to be productive. Our programs have a five-year horizon, with the design to have measurable impacts in earlier stages of the five years. We do address safety and we do address environmental issues, but not at the expense of productivity.

Mines close because they are insufficiently productive to provide a return on investment, not because we have safety or environmental incidents. We need to be focused on what the business is about while improving its overall performance.

Our objective is to see existing mines continue, new mines open, and to increase employment in Canada to make that happen. Most mines are focused on reducing employment in their mines. We want to see that employment shift from the mining companies themselves to the service and supply sector. The opportunities for indigenous communities to participate in middle development initiatives are increasing all the time, and the mines are already the biggest employer of aboriginal peoples.

A remote program would create several indigenous businesses to enable the delivery of services and supplies to communities and to mine sites far sooner than traditional infrastructure. New mining developments are the best chance for indigenous communities to establish a sustainable economic foundation, but only if there are new mines. New mines have to meet all the needs of local and indigenous communities, yes, but they also have to meet the needs of the global metal market. Those two things have to come together.

Several large mines in northern Ontario are scheduled to close within the next five years, and no replacements are planned. It takes five to 10 years to bring a new mine into production, and that means there's already a production gap that cannot be filled if we only continue to repeat the processes we have used successfully in the past. There will be no major base metal operations developing new ones if there's no innovation. Innovation is essential to make that happen.

We have to be smarter, faster, more cost-effective in every aspect of the mining business. Innovation is essential to the survival and growth of the industry at home and to the expansion of our service sector companies through international trade.

Investing in the commercialization of innovation is one of the best ways for government to sustain and build economically sustainable communities across Canada. Investing in organizations like CEMI means investing in Canadian ingenuity and Canadian business acumen to help us deliver our commercial advantage to the global mining industry.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much, Mr. Morrison.

Who wants to go next? Professor?

[Professor Roussos Dimitrakopoulos, Professor, Mining and Materials Engineering Department, McGill University]

Sure.

My presentation will be a little different from the previous presentations you had. I was looking at your website. It will be slightly more technical, not because I'm here to say anything else other than to discuss and present, through examples, the effect of technologies on different areas, from digitization, productivity, economic cash flows, economic issues, environmental performance and sustainability. You will be asking, of course, how do these things all connect into one?

Sustainability, and everything that you see on the list, means something slightly different from the general usage. Here sustainability simply means, can I make more out of a mine that I already have or that I am building, based on new technologies?

I thought I should also tell you what the organizational model is that we have been following. I worked for a mining company for some time, spent 10 years in Australia, where I made a lot of friends, particularly in big mining companies. I came back to Canada due to the Canada research chairs program.

In 2006 the idea was that we would set up a consortium. In the companies you see here, from AngloGold, Vale, to BHP Billiton, you probably recognize these very big names. One interesting part here is that most of these, except perhaps Kinross, which joined us last year, are totally non-Canadian. Barrick is also Canadian, of course, but the rest of them are not. I find that interesting because suddenly you see people from Chile, Brazil, Australia, South Africa, coming to fund the work we do.

The budget has been about $1.1 million per year now for five years, so multiply $1.1 million by five. Of course, we capitalize on government programs, particularly the research funding through NSERC, Canada research chairs, of course, and to some extent FRQNT in Quebec.

One thing I find interesting is the way we operate. One thing I found interesting from the beginning, and I appreciate it now more than ever, is the fact that what we set up is not like a professor who has a lab or sets up a lab. It isn't quite that. It is that we have a real collaboration between the companies you see here and the expertise we have in the lab that I run and the new technologies we develop. The whole thing's a partnership. I can tell you extremely clearly that all these companies are in Montreal, at least twice...from anywhere you want.

The key contribution is that they are a think tank. Okay, I'm a professor. Fine. I may know some things as a professor, maybe theoretical things, mathematical, computing, whatever you like it to be, and mining, etc. But what do I know about the large-scale, serious problems these companies have? I will show you an example of the collaboration. When we work we interact consistently, and we become friends until they move on to another position in their company or they retire.

That is, more or less, the model. If you have an interest, you can always explore this more. I say this because I find the way that we operate in Canada to be very different from the way I actually learned in Australia.

I will talk to you about mining complexes. It's not a complex thing; it's just the amalgamation of different things. We start with mines, as you see them here. We continue with the treatment of what we extract. We have, of course, our waste dumps of all sorts and kinds. Of course, the main job we have is to generate products that we sell in the markets.

This is what I mean by “mining complex”. “Mineral value chain” is another term we use. We are having difficulty deciding which one to keep.

Before I continue, the other aspect here is that we realize that managing risk is a serious issue. By “managing risk”, I don't mean anything but “technical risk”. I think the example I have here will show you what I mean by technical risk. I will show you the graph on the lower left corner of the page. It comes from the late nineties, when most of this work started, at the time when I went to Australia and got into these things. What it shows you on the horizontal axis is that the deviation from the expectation of production for these mines is at about 48. Of course, we see deviations from expectations here in one and two that are at minus 60 or very negative, and you understand if that happens that there is no mine.

You also have the other end, whereby some operations may start producing double what was expected. Of course, they are lucky, in that they will not get closed, but at the same time, what very commonly happens in this case is that we set up a structure in a mine that we can not really change that much. We can get stuck with overproduction and a wrongly set-up mine, which generates very suboptimal metal production and cash generation.

An easy way to show you a starting point in all of this is that in mines we have exploration that we call “drill holes”. They're about 30 to 40 metres apart. We model, as you can see in the bottom list shown here, deposits. In other words, we describe them at the scale of mining units, and we interpolate values in these blocks. The values are for metal, but they could be different elements. It could be anything you like that relates to the properties of the materials we extract. I should stress that the materials we extract are extremely heterogenous.

There are new technologies that were started some time ago; I am not the only who works on these. The petroleum industry has used them since the early 1990s. On the one shown here, you can see that we have a mine. You can see three sections. This is a vertical section of a small part of this mine. What I'm trying to show you there is a concept called the “Monte Carlo simulation”, or, as we call it, “stochastics”; it doesn't make a difference to me. The only issue here is that we describe the uncertainty that we see in the deposits that we are exploring. Here, you see, for example, three different scenarios of how the deposit might look based on the information that we have. Different areas from one scenario to the next to the next have different values. Red is high-grade gold and blue is below one gram per tonne.

The key issue here is technologies that can do this. There is a devolution in these technologies from basic to complex. The second thing is that it is not exactly simple to simulate scenarios, as we call them, of mineral deposits when you have a million or two mining blocks describing whatever we'd like to describe.

That opens up, of course, the key question of computational requirements. Of course, if you asked me 15 years ago if I could do two million mining blocks, I would have said that I was not exactly sure how to do it, or I would look for shortcuts. These kinds of things are a starting point to describe technical risk, to say there is now a technical risk so how do I model the deposit and how do I describe gold content if that is the metal of interest?

To go back from that point—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Professor, I'm going to have to interrupt you and ask you to wrap up quickly, if you could.

Thank you.

[Prof. Roussos Dimitrakopoulos]

Okay.

The answer to this mining complex is what you see here in terms of flow materials though mines and the ability to characterize the possible outputs. All the risk-based methods better do that.

The key issue one needs to bring up is that these new methods now generate bigger mines, more metal. They have a substantial increase in cash flows, as you see from the graphs here, and are a bit, more than anything, else closer to the expectations we have.

I think we'll stop here. I was planning to make comments on generalizations from the previous comments, but I guess we'll leave them for later.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Professor. I'm sure you'll have an opportunity when the question session comes.

This takes us to PDAC, our final witness for the day, actually our final witness for this portion of the study, which is probably appropriate.

The floor is yours.