Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I apologize to the honourable Member, but the responsibility for delivering the project belongs to the Department of Public Works and Services. The difficulty for me in answering is that we have different interpretations of how the projects are being applied. But, I do want to say that there were other considerations. The unfortunate thing is, we haven't seen all the kinds of reductions in the cost of doing business that the honourable Member has pointed out have occurred across Canada. That has not necessarily been the case for northern business.

That's the unfortunate thing. One component of the BIP still forces us to incur costs that are higher than what other companies would bid. We are not seeing the advantages of the competition that exists across the country. We haven't seen the downgrading of prices. The other thing is, the incentive program has gone up an additional 5 per cent since this project was put into the capital budget, in addition to those that were already proposed. Those are the factors that should be considered.

The actual delivery agent is the Department of Public Works and Services for this project.