Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. First, it gives me an opportunity to express our condolences to the families and friends of those nine people who lost their lives in the helicopter crash in Kyrgyzstan. Our thoughts and prayers are with them at this very difficult time.
Second, it gives me an opportunity give some good news to the House. We are having excellent results as far as mining is concerned in Canada, with exploration expenditure up 32 per cent in 1994 and it looks like it will go to $675 million this year. Twenty mines are opening and only two closing permanently, and there are 2,000 to 3,000 new employees in the mining industry.
This is all due to the excellent financial position the Minister of Finance has set out for the country, the Whitehorse mining initiative, and the efforts of the government to build a more innovative society and remove the overlap and duplication in our regulatory regimes. Science and technology is leading the way in this industry.