Well, maybe I'm biased because I lived up there, however, I think sometimes the territories get a bad rap for the process of dealing with Native land claims. I know from personal experience that the Native groups are basically pro mining, they just don't want to see caribou or other migratory animals disrupted and they want to get their fair share of the action which is going down on their property. That's fair enough in my opinion.

Then with the big messy disaster that you had at Giant Mine with the contamination of the area with arsenic all the territories have made environmental standards and permiting more stringent. You have to keep in mind that people still live off the land up there so if there's poison in the natural food chain, be it in berries or caribou, it's going to go directly into them!

However, just because it's a more involved process dealing with these things it's not really that difficult. A mining company just needs to show that it's acting responsibly towards the land and the people and as they mine they need to put some of the profits away for the day when the mine shuts down and needs to be cleaned up.