Thank you, Mr. Chair.
First, I'd like to thank all the witnesses who are with us, including the deputy minister and the assistant deputy minister.
I'd like to thank you for the incredible work you've done over the past year. It has been a tough year for everybody. We have made it through some extremely difficult times.
As you know, I represent Sudbury. So we're going to talk about mines, something that we haven't touched on very much.
I'd like to talk about mining. Nobody has asked any questions of the minister about this topic, so I will ask the ADM and the DM as to the potential of this sector. It's something near and dear to my heart.
Sudbury has a story I always mention about where we were 50 years ago with innovation. We wanted to build the largest super stack in the world so that pollution would go further. Next year we're bringing it down. We're bringing down the second-largest super stack in the world because of innovation, because of the community coming together and because of regulation. They have all worked together. We talk about oil sands and natural gas out west, but we've lived it in Sudbury, with the transition and the difficulty.
Mining is important, and we certainly know that critical minerals are key to decarbonizing our economy and electrifying our economy. I want to know two things.
I want to hear about the critical minerals plan that we are making with some of our partners.
Can you also very quickly address the geoscience program? We need to be able to access these minerals. We have tons of them in Canada, and geoscience plays a key role in that and the opportunity it represents.
Mr. Tremblay, would you like to start? After that, we will hear from Mr. Labonté.
The floor is yours.