Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I believe there were two main reasons why the proposal was not accepted. One of them was the time frame they put forward to do the job. There was a suggestion that they were going to complete the highway, rather than what we are suggesting here. Even with the accelerated plan we have proposed, we thought that the very minimum we could do this in would be three years. The plan that was proposed to us said two years. We did not think we could do that. It could not be managed in two years. There would be a lot of outside equipment required in order to advance it to two years rather than three. A lot of the benefits of the project would have gone south rather than staying in the Territories.

The second main concern was the financing aspect of it. It was suggested that over a ten-year period we could finance this road through a financial scheme that was proposed whereby the Legislative Assembly would approve a financial plan and we would pay off the expenses of this project over a ten-year period. I believe the department put some thought into that, and that we would basically be in the same situation if we simply went out and borrowed the money ourselves. Thank you.