Thank you, Mr. Chair. We have kicked off some work on a socio-economic policy framework. We have to better understand, as a government, just even, for starters, when we try to negotiate a socio-economic agreement and when we don't. You can think of oil and gas activity around the North or other industrial activity, and there isn't any sort of policy framework that guides us into the negotiation of these agreements. We have relied on the regulatory process and recommendations made through the regulatory review that we negotiate a socio-economic agreement. In terms of the strength, I think that the strength that these agreements have really flows from that regulatory process and the permits that are issued on the basis of the company's commitments that they make in that process. We think there are sufficient teeth to the regulatory process, but we want to talk about this policy framework, how we are guided, when we enter into these agreements and what these agreements should look like.
The Member, in his opening comments, talked about monitoring. That is something that we think is very
important. That is something that we have been looking to put into agreements. There is monitoring agreed upon in the Diavik SEA. There is in the De Beers SEA. We are looking for that with the Mackenzie Producers Group socio-economic agreement. As we move forward, monitoring is important. We are trying to strengthen these agreements and make them more and more contractual. You can see the difference between the BHP agreement, the De Beers agreement, and the Imperial agreement in terms of how much more contractual we are attempting to get. Thank you.