Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to travel in the northern reaches of our country with the hon. member for Yukon.
The work to create this additional protected space adjacent to the great Nahanni National Park Reserve has taken many years and extensive consultations with all of the groups that I mentioned in my speech, including the Government of Canada, the Government of the Northwest Territories, the regional community corporations, and equally important, the people who have lived on this land for thousands of years, the Sahtu Dene and Métis peoples. In their negotiations, they had a variety of views on exactly what needed to be protected and how it should be protected.
I can assure members of the House that there were many versions of the ultimate map designating exactly what the boundaries of the park would be, including the protected areas, the spiritually relevant areas of the park, and the areas relevant to protecting wildlife and biodiversity, as I mentioned in a previous answer to a colleague on the other side of the House.
At the Prime Minister's announcement in Norman Wells not far from the new park, which still requires infrastructure to be developed to allow easier access, there was great joy and satisfaction that all of the considerations necessary to create a new national park had been recognized in the spirit of co-operation and collaboration.