Madam Chair, with regard to the muskox harvesting, as the Member knows, there is an overabundance of muskox in relation to the caribou that traditionally wintered in the same areas. What I see as a few difficulties -- maybe more than a couple -- one is we don't have a marketing strategy for muskox meat. We don't have the subsequent sales that would follow an effective marketing strategy.
The other difficulty we have, supposedly, is the distance and remoteness of Sachs Harbour; bringing that meat down to Edmonton, Montreal, et cetera, where we expect to develop a market for the meat. The suggestion is it is a long distance and expensive. It may be economical. We also know we have legs of lamb here from Australia. So I am not sure if the distance is insurmountable.
Having said that, the other problem I see is the one to do with the regulations where federal laws govern how you could take live animals and then reduce them into packages of meat for commercial resale, and the steps and laws that we have to follow in dealing with those.
We also don't have a clear idea of how, in partnership with the Inuvialuit, we could deal with the overpopulation of the muskox and how to address the problem of a wipe-out of the caribou population that used to be there. Thank you.