Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This whole initiative was not done on a whim. I do support it. I think we have to take a look at what our options are to provide housing in our communities. We have a real problem in all the small communities in the North. It may not be a big problem in a larger centre. We have requests from practically all the communities to deal with the issue of housing teachers, band managers, SAOs and nurses. We have communities that will not be able to attract professional people in the communities if we don't provide accommodation that is suitable and affordable. We are not in a position, as the Member knows, to say with any great certainly that it's going to cost more if we don't waive the BIP. At the same time, we can't say it's going to cost less with any certainty either. All we can do in this situation where we are required to put houses on the ground at the cheapest cost possible is to anticipate the worst case scenario and the best-case scenario and eliminate any potential for raising the cost of these units. That's what we are attempting to do.
If there is no desire and BIP came in at a higher rate, it would really make it difficult to go forward with this whole project. We don't have a lot of time to get these houses on the ground. I certainly support this initiative. We are responding to the needs of the people of the North. We can share some of the information that we've compiled. We've gone into the communities. We haven't done, as the Member is indicating, gone out on a whim and said let's do this. We've talked to the affected communities, we talked to the different agencies, we talked to the LHOs, we've tested what it would come out to in the different communities and we've done an assessment to see what we could afford to rent these places out at cost recovery with no built in profit margin. So I think we've done due diligence to this project. If the Member is concerned about waiving the BIP across the board and the government picking and choosing when it applies, that's a bigger issue that maybe Cabinet has to look at. I understand RWED is doing an assessment of what this may cost in terms of supplying a subsidy or a preference to different companies. There is a lot of interest in this whole initiative. We know this is certainly not going to satisfy the communities. Most communities are coming back and saying our allocation is not close to meeting what they need.
So the demand for 45 units is not all that's being requested out there. However, this is the direction and how many units the Cabinet directed us to go out and do. We've done assessments. We know it's higher. We know this may have a positive aspect to it. There are a lot of people coming forward and indicating that they would like now to look at setting up manufacturing of these units and other units. There is a high potential that we are going to need camps, well-site trailers, right across the North from the Deh Cho Bridge project to the pipeline to the Bear River project. There are a number of different things which will place a requirement for trailers in the North. So it is a big project. I can understand the concern. However, in this case we wanted to remove any potential for increasing the cost of the units.