Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just following on the same line as Mr. Nitah in regard to small communities and making sure that we have a fair, reasonable price in the communities, considering the high cost of living in the small communities. My concern is more in the area of privatization.
What I see in privatization is that people that are looking at POL for privatization are looking at the lucrative operations where they know they have the volumes. They will be able to sell the fuel and they will be able to get the price and make money at certain operations, such as the larger centres. But in the smaller communities, Tsiigehtchic, or Colville Lake, or Lutsel K'e, any communities that have these operations where you have to bring a lot of these fuel costs where it is going to cost an operator extra dollars to maintain that service in these small communities.
What we are discussing in committee is that there have been a few places where they have privatized. Recently in Tuktoyaktuk, and they are looking at other communities. We have to realize that once you start cutting different portions of the business where you take all the profitable business out of the picture and we are stuck with the ones that are losing money, the communities or the government are going to be stuck paying the cost to continue to maintain that service in those communities. Especially communities such as Colville Lake.
I would like to ask the Minister exactly what they are doing to insure there will not be a monopoly out there when this privatization takes place where we sell off all the profit and we are stuck holding the bag with the ones that are losing money.