Certainly. The first thing I would say is that we've been at this a long time. The relationship we have with our partner communities was not developed overnight. We had some missteps early on. We recognized those missteps. What we have now is a relationship that, frankly, is built on trust. Our partner communities trust us to act in a way that is going to maintain safe operations, and to respect them in a way that we are a clear and understandable partner that acts in a manner such that they know we will do what we say we will do.
The point is that this takes some time. There are best practices in terms of discussion and consultation and partnership, and I think those are key. We now call these partnership agreements, or community partnership agreements, because we believe we are in a true partnership with our communities.
We recognize that we cannot exist as a company in northern Saskatchewan without the support of our partner communities. They're a significant part of the workforce that works in our mines. They are suppliers. Community-based businesses have been the major suppliers to our mine sites, in the order of $3 billion over the last 10 years, through contracts and relationships we have with community businesses, in most cases run by northerners or indigenous Canadians.
My advice is to go slowly, take your time, and try to understand the position that your community partners are coming from. Work with them so that they can understand what you're trying to accomplish together.