Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I would like to make some brief comments on the diamond valuation plant or the proposal to get one in the north or in the northern community. I have listened to the debate and discussion in this House with great interest and of course hoping, in fact, that it would become a reality. I will be asking the Minister later in question period about the Globe and Mail article where BHP says they are going to build their diamond sorting plant on site and it is only going to be a small one and that in fact, the main sorting will be done, of all places, God forbid, in a foreign country, Antwerp, taking northern jobs and northern minerals out of the country to look after them. Mr. Speaker, I think the days of the north just being a store house so that people can come and use at their leisure with no work done in the north other than the extraction have to be passed.
So, we have a situation in my mind. We are lobbying very hard in this House; yet I see by the news that a huge multinational corporation has made a decision obviously independent of what we may think or what may be in the best interest of the people of the north and Canada, true. I think we have to press this issue and I commend the Member for Hay River and the folks from Yellowknife and, of course, the Minister for his efforts, but it seems to me that we have to redouble those efforts because we are not being heard. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
--Applause