Thank you, sir.
I guess my first observation would be that, in one sense it's early days. When the mining regime was brought in, it wasn't overly specific. It set out more broad contours, and it's a work-in-progress. Resource companies that I've been talking to in recent years have spoken about the flexibility of the IA process, the fact that federal officials are looking for ways to improve it and to actually see it implemented.
I would lump that process into a 15-year history of what I call “over-regulation” of the industry. We have this idea that if we do more and more regulation, more and more surveys, and more and more evaluations, it will result in somewhat better outcomes. I think that's still a testable proposition and not necessarily one that's been proven yet.
We spend a phenomenal amount of money investigating these opportunities. It takes a lot of time to do it and a lot of the money that goes into it doesn't go to the local community, it doesn't go to the local first nation and it doesn't even go to the province. It goes to broader entities. I'm really concerned, to be honest. I think we should look at expediting the outcomes and focusing on the final product.
Are we actually getting safer and better mines? We do really well in producing safe mines and we do really well in ameliorating some of the social and cultural effects, but I'm not sure those more positive outcomes are due to the length, time and cost of the regulation.