Each one of our 51 communities has thought about how to reduce dependence on diesel and how to lower energy costs in communities. Often our communities are in jurisdictions where there won't be major projects in a town of 1,000 people or 500 people. They won't just replace all our energy grid for, say, the 17 communities in Nunavik or the 26 communities in Nunavut. There just aren't the resources.
We've had to think about incremental positive change and how to diversify our energy supply within our communities through wind or solar. We thought about small nuclear and about hydro, but all of these potential solutions do come with costs that are new costs. We also don't imagine that we can just shut down our diesel power generation, because we are isolated. Each one of our communities is its own little island of energy capacity. We wouldn't want to leave our communities without any sort of backup, if at all possible.
Over the years, there have been many different conversations about how to make our communities more sustainable and to lower the cost of energy. The reality for people in these communities is that we're adjacent in many cases to massive hydroelectric projects or massive energy projects that are pumping 10,000 times more power than we would ever need every day, but we have absolutely zero access to it. We get no benefit from any of the benefits that come from those major projects.
That has been the frustration of many Inuit and communities for decades. Government is always thinking about how it can ensure that it does the most it can for small communities, but it also has limitations as well. Moving forward, we need to see a balance between the terms and conditions of these major projects and the benefits to the small communities, adjacent communities, to ensure that there is some level of equity and respect for the lands and areas in which these larger projects operate.
I'll give you an example. If fibre optic cable is going to be laid in strategic locations across our homeland to serve defence purposes, this is a perfect time to be able to provide equity to Inuit communities to ensure that fibre optic is provided to our small communities along the way. This is perhaps the cost of doing business or the cost of equity in this country.
Canada is a remarkable place. There's so much rural area in this country. It's not as if the federal government has never had to consider spending more money to ensure equity because of remoteness. We're asking now to be brought into that conversation in a meaningful way, whether it be connectivity or whether it be energy.