Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I thank the Member for the question. It really relates to what the department has been saying all along, and that there is more and more pressure on the department to come up with ways to fund roads into those communities that are not presently served by an all-weather road system. There is also obviously more and more pressure placed on the mines to come up with some form of a transportation route in there because, as the Member noted, with global warming and the shortened season for bringing in resupply, the mines are getting pressured more and more to have some other form or route into their mines.

We, at this point in time, have not been talking to the mines about any all-weather road system because basically the road that they maintain into the mine sites is all paid for by the mines themselves. We have not been talking to them, and they have not approached us, towards talks on an all-weather road system into the Slave Geological Province.

Nevertheless, the department has been working on some plans in the past when we did some surveys in the communities to see what the cost of all-weather roads would be into the North Slave, for instance, and we have those studies on record. With those we are trying encourage Indian Affairs to come forward with some kind of a funding program whereby we could construct all-weather roads into those communities that are not on the system. Thank you.