The chair of the indigenous and northern affairs committee is reminding me that my cellphone went off at committee, much to my embarrassment. She continually reminds me of that.
Nonetheless, a lot lithium, the thing that runs our batteries, comes from northern Canada. The rare earth metals used in our cellphones come from northern Canada. I was recently in the Northwest Territories airport in Yellowknife, and when people are in the security line, they can see a whole collection of minerals on the other side of the glass. It was fascinating to see copper, nickel, and gold, all of the things used to build everything we use.
If I look around here, I can see copper wire being used for our headsets, to make the lights turn on, for the microphone system, or for charging my phone. All that copper started out in rural Canada somewhere in the ground and had to be mined. When we are talking about YESAA, we need the natural resources in northern Canada to continue to live the life we do. We need those resources to have the cellphone we carry in our pocket, which we all know improves our lives incredibly.
One of the things I really enjoy about my iPad is the fact that I can FaceTime with my children. This particular job takes me away from my family a lot of times, and I know that without the modern technology of Facebook and my iPad, I would not see my children as often as I do. Because of my iPad, I am able to FaceTime with my children. If it were not for mines in northern Canada, northern Alberta, or in northern B.C., we would not have the copper, the rare earth metals, all those things that build our iPads.
Western civilization is truly astounding.