Agriculture committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee, clerk, and fellow attendees. I appreciate this opportunity. I didn't think I'd have an opportunity to speak to the agriculture committee in this role of mine. The Canadian mining industry is a major economic driver contributing over $52 billion to gross domestic product in 2012, employing some 400,000 people, and accounting for $92 billion, or over 20% of the value, of Canada's total exports.

Human Resources committee  If I may, I want to jump in before we run out of time to share an anecdote and also to partly answer your question. There is another initiative that I got involved with in B.C., the Breakfast Club of Canada. Let's not overlook that a hungry child doesn't do well in school. When I was involved we got Grand Chief Ed John involved as well.

Human Resources committee  B.C. AMTA was created under a previous program, the ASEP program, the aboriginal skills and employment partnership program, which sunset in 2012, I believe. This picks up on the comment about the uncertainty. It was created very explicitly under a program that had a number of successes across the country, particularly those that involved the mining sector, but they didn't just apply to the mining sector.

Human Resources committee  I'm not familiar enough with the competencies of the ASETS holders in Williams Lake, so it's hard for me to answer that specifically. With B.C. AMTA or the Mine Training Society, elsewhere you have this partnership, you have the support from industry and the educators, and you have an accepted curriculum.

Human Resources committee  Sure, and thank you very much. You have before you a copy of our presentation, but I'm not actually going to go through it. It's there for you to consider at your leisure. There's quite a lot of information in there, and in a few minutes I'll turn to slide 8 entitled Aboriginal Training Organizations and Mining Sector in Action.

Environment committee  The program is based on a system with five levels of performance. The objective of each mining site is to be at level 3 at least and, in principle, to go up to level 5. I am talking about level A or AAA. We have replaced the number system with the letter system. When you reach level A, which we think is good practice, that means engaging with communities of interest, including environmental groups.

Environment committee  I think our brief was pretty clear that it's always better when there's some flexibility. I also want to be clear that flexibility doesn't mean no regulation. We're not suggesting there's no role for regulations or that it's a question of voluntary versus legal. We say this in our brief as well.

Environment committee  There are a couple of points. If you're developing a mining project and there's a species at risk in the area, that's going to be captured through the environmental assessment. It actually may be a showstopper, depending on the nature of it, to be honest, but it will be captured through the environmental assessment process one way or another.

Environment committee  We haven't seen any conservation agreements concluded yet. It's in section 11 of SARA, but the whole act I think has largely been driven more by the development of recovery plans than by action.

Environment committee  Then I don't know if any of us understand it. I don't understand your question.

Environment committee  Yes.

Environment committee  I have trouble with the question because SARA stewardship initiatives would also be government-mandated. They would be built through stewardship agreements.

Environment committee  I'd like to reinforce a point made by Mr. Bates earlier, when he referenced the North American waterfowl management plan, which I think is an incredible initiative that's been going on successfully for years. As I referenced in our brief, a number of our members have been able to get involved in that, some very directly, through the intermountain joint venture in B.C.

Environment committee  I think the total footprint over the history of mining in Canada is 0.03%

Environment committee  It's a small area.