We can learn from other countries, absolutely, but maybe they can learn from us as well.
There are some interesting things that I learned at the World Mining Congress, which just happened last week in Rio. With the UN sustainable development goals and all the discussions happening there, we have some unique kinds of things to offer the world. I think the world needs more of Canada.
There were people from the World Economic Forum and the World Bank who were interested in what was happening, for instance, in Sudbury, with the innovation on rehabilitation. When I started out in Falconbridge, the air was absolutely thick with sulphur dioxide. We've cleaned up that entire thing. The air there is better than Ottawa's or Toronto's. The water has in fact come back. The acid rains have been turned around, and we have 300 lakes that have fish you can eat. We have two million trees planted. There is a lot of stuff that we've done research on. The grass seed that we use is used in Norilsk to do that.
It starts right from exploration, the stuff that Harold mentioned. We can develop innovative techniques in geophysics and ways of targeting ore bodies. You all have this pamphlet. You know that a meteorite hit 1.8 billion years ago and created the largest concentration of wealth. That's a good signal for maybe looking at other possibles. There is also the type of targeting that Harold is turning his mind to.
Research and innovation cost money, though. It takes time; it can't be turned around in one quarter or two quarters. If you look at the various parts of this, it goes through the operational cycles. We need better mining methods. Back in the eighties, Canada produced five or six mining methods that are used around the world. We were giants. We had the largest research facilities, Noranda Research in Montreal and Sheridan Park. We had a variety of things like that.
These are different times. Maybe we can consolidate some of that stuff. I am looking at a possibility of Sudbury being a centre that we can consolidate. That innovation can go right across from geology to rehabilitation and close-out.