One of the things to understand is that, much like for oil and gas, the resource itself is governed by the province or territory. As much as what Enercan or the geological survey of Canada or CANMET can do, they can be supportive. We need your help to bring the provinces along at the same time. If they are the ones giving the permit for the resource, you can't drill without the provincial or territory permit.
British Columbia does have a Geothermal Resources Act, so companies like mine were able to get these permits and start financing and do the exploration.
For a mining company to also do geothermal, they'd have to go back to the territory or province and get that piece of paper that gives the company the exclusive use of the resource. For that privilege they may pay royalties as well, possibly to the federal government as well as to the provincial government.
It is a type of industry that needs federal support the same way you've supported oil and gas, but at the resource level it's owned by the province or territory. We'd like to have parallel meetings, such as this, with our counterparts in the provinces and territories. It's a little bit of the cart before the horse. We need to see that the federal government is in place and supporting it.
When they look at our slides and we have so many points of not having parity with the other industries, that becomes a challenge, I think, for the provinces to see that the feds are serious. Right now you can have, again, the Canadian resource property, and if you're a natural gas well you get to write off or claim the expenses for the very same permit I'm talking about, that lease. However, if I'm a geothermal person trying to sell heat against natural gas, they inherently have an economic advantage and so on.
We have the technology, the people, and the resources, but we don't have policy parity and we don't yet have the provinces and territories where they need to be, with the exception of British Columbia.