Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect this is simply a different situation. This is a situation where a mine is in jeopardy and operating a mine which employs people and creates revenues for this government in its revenue generating capacity and then reallocates these revenues to expenditures that affect all of us. It is not the same as exploration dollars and the exploratory site. This is an operational mine, which just happens to be in Yellowknife. That is the first part.
The second part is that Polaris and the Nanisivik Mines are not gold mines, the Echo Bay and Lupin mines are closed, we have lost the jobs. I believe 30 or 40 jobs in Mr. Ng's riding. We have lost whatever limited revenues we got because that one has temporarily closed.
Yes, Mr. Chairman, I agree that this government perhaps has not provided as much assistance in the oil and gas industry as it should in the past, but certainly we are moving rapidly to do that in the future. There were some announcements lately in Mr. Deneron's country for example, Chief Harry Deneron, where we provided and we will continue to provide significant support to that industry.
Part of the overall investment north economic strategy is to do exactly that, it is to find a way to provide support and to create an environment that we can get some of this activity moving forward. Frankly, the life cycle of many of our mines, whether it is in Nanisivik, Little Cornwallis, Giant, Con, et cetera, are in jeopardy.
As Finance Minister it causes me some concern that revenue base could be slowly diminishing. My responsibility is to go out there and try to find new ways to generate revenues. It may appear to my colleague, Mr. Krutko, that we are not giving the support to the oil and gas industry as much as he would like. I would dispute that at this time. I think we are and I think we will continue to do more in the future and that is certainly our intent. Thank you.