Mr. Speaker, we had an opportunity to meet with the presidents of the diamond mines over a week ago to touch base with them and look at setting up a cooperative agreement on further initiatives we can jointly work on; for example, establishing the workforce in the Northwest Territories by reducing the fly in/fly out component, looking at additional training areas. That’s something we’re working on.
The other area with the mines that they’ve shared with us is that the cost of fuel has a big impact. They’ve been watching the markets and shared with us their concerns. We know, as well, the rate of return that some of the oil and gas areas of development are producing right now; there’d be an impact with that. That would mainly be felt, along with the federal government, on the royalties side as well as by the companies themselves. We’ve been working with the industry and, again from our side specifically, working through the Department of Finance to look at our numbers to ensure we’re still in a healthy situation.
I must remind Members that during the budget we had in June, we talked about the dangers that were potentially out there — that we must look to living within our means. That was the budget we presented to Members, and the Finance Minister is continuing along that path.