Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I think you misunderstood. It's a management system standard where we don't give a verified rating that a company has achieved FPIC. It's more of a process of ongoing engagement in TSM.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Maybe I'll start, and then Kara can jump in. I'll use this opportunity to talk about “Towards Sustainable Mining”. For anyone who's not familiar with it, it's our sustainability initiative. It's a mandatory program for our members. It involves annual public reporting and third party external verification.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  No, go ahead, Mark.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Sure. In our submission, we pointed out that we do see some potential with additional clarity, good implementation and the right resourcing. I'll just add that if we have to wait three years for key issues to be clarified, there's going to be this period of uncertainty. That's why we're focusing on some things that we can do now to reduce that uncertainty, to clarify these key issues, specifically around the federal process for FPIC.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll use this opportunity to speak about relationship agreements between mining companies and communities. We're getting close to 500 active agreements between companies and communities in Canada right now. NRCan does track this on its website. Relationship agreements, impact benefit agreements or collaboration agreements—whatever you want to call them—set out the terms of the relationship between a company and a community.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the committee and fellow panellists. I'd like to start by acknowledging that I'm participating from Ottawa, which is traditional Algonquin territory. Kara is participating from Edmonton, which is Treaty 6 territory and the homeland of the Métis people.