I would not say that we have obtained social licence, because that is a goal you have to work towards year-round. It is a constant job, a bit like a marriage. We have to make sure that the community always accepts us.
We have been present in the community since 2013, which greatly facilitates social acceptability.
I still go back every Christmas with my family. There is no way my children would go anywhere else.
We are involved in organizations. We are now one of the largest employers in the region. That has been built up over time.
We conducted two surveys: one in 2018 and one in 2019. We have not done another one in a long time. At the time, we had 83% and 82% support, respectively, but there are still 9% of people who do not approve our project. So we have to respect them and make sure we do not create losers. We are working on this with all our hearts, bringing together the strengths of all our engineers to try to understand how to best develop the project for the community.
Our project includes a number of concrete environmental initiatives, such as the gradual rehabilitation of the site, the fully electric mine—which we are developing with the Caterpillar industrial group—and the filling in of the pit. We offered everyone a radius of one kilometre around any infrastructure as well as voluntary acquisition of their property if they were concerned about what we were doing.
A number of what I would call original initiatives have enabled us to ensure that our project does not create losers.