Thank you, Mr. McLean and others, for joining us today, and thank you to all our witnesses.
This is meeting number 15 of the Standing Committee on Natural Resources. I'm glad to see we have three witnesses with us today, joining us virtually.
I will just let you know the process. This is a virtual meeting, and they run very smoothly. We have all gotten the hang of these, but there can be little bumps along the way. I believe you've been briefed on the technical aspects of your participation. At the bottom of your screen you should have a little button that says English or French, which you can use for translation. There's a mute button, which you should keep on unless you are speaking or answering questions.
Because we're on Zoom, when someone is talking, please let them finish before you start talking. That will make things easier for all of us, but particularly for the interpreters. I thank everybody in advance for their patience.
To the witnesses, you each have five minutes to make your opening remarks. One of my jobs is to keep track of time, which necessitates my interrupting you sometimes if you're going over the time limit for your initial presentation or with respect to questions and answers after that, so I will apologize for that in advance.
We have three witnesses. We have Professor Coates from the University of Saskatchewan. We have Grand Chief Abel Bosum of the Cree Nation Government. From Rio Tinto, we have Nigel Steward.
Professor Coates, why don't we start with you, sir?