Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today I would like to talk about the initiative that has been recently taken by Tamerlane Ventures to look at the ore bodies around Pine Point area and to undertake to invest some money to check out the viability and the feasibility of going back into this mining activity just 60 short miles from Hay River.
Mr. Speaker, some 20-odd years ago, Hay River was seriously and severely impacted when the Pine Point Mine closed down. That was a community of almost 2,000 people that did a lot of business in Hay River and supported a lot of economic activity in our community. Now Tamerlane Ventures is looking at those reserves again, world prices have changed on some of the products that they're looking at mining, and it may be a viable thing again.
Representatives of Tamerlane Ventures have taken the opportunity to come and brief our town council and talk to representatives in our communities, explain to us in great detail what their plans are, and we appreciate that. I believe that they've also visited with the other South Slave communities. So we're looking forward to what they might be able to do and some of the spin-offs and benefits this might create for not just Hay River, but for the South Slave in general.
Thankfully, today we have better environmental review processes in place than we did at the time that the Giant Mine went into operation and was constructed, and even when the Pine Point Mine went into place. We have, I believe, significantly modernized our environmental review processes and with these in place I am extremely hopeful that a venture of this type could be undertaken that will benefit the North and also respect our environment. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
---Applause