Human Resources committee  We recognize our limitations in providing training for skills development and those kinds of things. We defer to the communities and the community organizations to help us do that. We take over once the people become employees of Goldcorp and we provide additional training, for example, on working in an underground environment.

Human Resources committee  Yes, we do the same. We fly some community members in and out of their home communities so that they can come to work for us. We do have regular aircraft routes that go there to pick them up and take them home when their rotation is done. It's absolutely true.

Human Resources committee  Certainly. I don't want to come back to this mineral development sequence, and the opportunities associated with all of those different phases of mineral development, but when I saw the announcements coming out, there's a huge opportunity here for connecting all of those things and doing it maybe not on a grand scale but certainly in a more geographically reduced scale.

Human Resources committee  Yes, we are, actually. Absolutely we—

Human Resources committee  It's not typically a direct relationship. In certain instances, yes, but it's not a direct relationship, or not in our experience to date.

Human Resources committee  Our preferred approach, or at least my preferred approach, is that the communities come to the table with us and say, “We have the ability, with this organization, to work with you.” We work with the communities directly. So it's not necessarily direct, but it's very close to the asset holder.

Human Resources committee  We've taken I think a slightly different approach in Quebec, depending on where we are located. You have to understand that in Quebec, our Cree partners already came to the table with significant capacity in terms of business. So the business is there. They themselves told us, “We don't want all the contracts.

Human Resources committee  Certainly, talk a little bit about our experience with the Cree. In terms of our relationship with the Cree, to their credit, they were adamant that they would provide us with employees who were work-ready, and they took ownership of it themselves. They set up the training programs with their institutions that already existed.

Human Resources committee  I'm not certain what infrastructure you're referring to.

Human Resources committee  Okay, certainly. I was speaking there more in terms of the Ontario context. One of the challenges we face, particularly with remote communities, is that they don't have things like power. They don't have grid power. They don't have the ability to expand their communities because they're limited by their existing diesel capacity.

Human Resources committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee, we at Goldcorp are pleased to have been given the opportunity to testify at the hearings of this committee on the very important subject of opportunities for aboriginal Canadians in the workforce. Mr. Chair, as you and other honourable members will know, Goldcorp, a Vancouver-based and proudly Canadian company, is one of the largest gold mining companies in the world, with operations and development projects here in Canada, the United States, Mexico, and other Central and South American countries.