For a while at CAPP I looked after our members who were focused on the north, in the territories in particular, and what an amazing opportunity that is for Canada. Bluntly, it's something that's waiting to enrich all Canadians.
But it's a frontier jurisdiction in terms of the exploration and the infrastructure that's required to really ramp up some of the unconventional resource play model that you have up there. Yes, you're right, in that it's about roads, but it's not just about the hard infrastructure. You're going to need a lot more workers there, so you need schools because they have kids. It's a growth opportunity. There's a need for infrastructure and not just for a road or a pipeline.
We need that, absolutely, but unfortunately, just when things were getting a little more interesting in some of the exploration from some of the companies up there on the oil and gas side—the tight oil stuff was a great opportunity—the oil price dropped. It was bad timing. I think there's a low because that exploration piece is no different. Whether it's mining, oil, or gas, it's really the high-risk frontier piece. Once you can prove up or de-risk the resource, then you'll start seeing more investment and you'll see that kind of leapfrog effect on investment.
How government can participate in that is to continue to look at, as you have in the Northwest Territories, some of the regulatory processes and the transition between the federal and the province and how that's going. We are paying attention to a lot of those legislative instruments that are going on there. I think the industry would be reacting positively. There's simply something that's not in the government's control and not in our control right now, which is the commodity price.