Finance committee  Sure. I guess I took the bait and focused on HST. To come back to what was buried in his question, there are a couple of key points worth mentioning. First of all, concerning the flow-through credit program, it's the small exploration companies that can take advantage of that, n

Finance committee  Okay.

Finance committee  Well, I don't know if this committee wants to weigh into the B.C. HST political debacle, but our industry is supportive of the HST. I have a few points that are certainly worth noting in response to your comments. The HST was brought in, but the PST was removed, so it's not on

Finance committee  Do you want to interrupt me?

Finance committee  Not that I can think of. The original rationale for this in the 1990s was there had been a pretty steady decline in Canadian exploration, particularly for base metals, and it was seen as an important way of stimulating that kind of grassroots exploration. It has been tremendously

Finance committee  The B.C. government has done that, and it was very welcome. In their last budget they did provide a three-year window.

Finance committee  Thank you. Just for the record, we weren't late. We were just outside waiting to be called in, and I guess we missed the call. Thank you very much for the opportunity to speak to you. I wanted to begin by acknowledging--because we don't always get the opportunity to do this--t