Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just to respond the way I did yesterday with the similar discussions around the cost to divide the department into the two separate mandates and the ongoing cost, we feel this is a priority of the government. The direction was one we took from the membership as a whole from the Assembly.
We have been working very closely with committee, I would say in every step of this plan as it's unfolded. We looked at a number of options. There were some options that had us spending as much as $7 million a year in ongoing costs if we were to truly duplicate some of the functions. We chose to pare that back and go with a much more prudent option and that meant sharing of resources. We will have the shared service centre model rolled out.
So we think we've tried to improve program and service delivery effectiveness. It does require adding positions and building some capacity in regions. Yes, it requires additional superintendents. I don't think you could do this and create two separate policy departments and then ask one superintendent to moonlight on both sides of the departments and then have it roll out effectively. So this was something I was supportive of. I guess I would take Members back to the amalgamation of these three departments some time ago and the $8 million savings at that point. We are up from there, but we aren't back to that original budget for the three departments and I think that was in 1996-97. So there has been an improvement in that area. I really think this is going to enable us to be much more effective and work with people in the regions and in communities to be more responsive on both sides of this department.
I have to restate that I think there are a lot of things that we are going to miss going forward if we aren't effectively organized. So I believe this allows us to do that.
The Beverage Container Recovery Program, we've had a number of hurdles, drafting of the regulations was one we had gone with a contractor outside of the internal resources of the department. That's been taking more time than we had initially thought. We have been working with the advisory group at each subsequent step as this program has been developed. There were some concerns from one of the main wholesalers in the Northwest Territories who wanted us to revisit the modeling and look at other options that put more of the administrative burden on retailers. We looked at some of these, didn't think it was practical and did make some concessions in terms of the amount of deposits that would be required, but this took time to work through these options. We also understood and recognized quite early on that we had to work quite closely with the advisory group to make sure that we had support at each step of the development. Then when the RFP process went out, we didn't get proposals for community depots from every community. We still have additional work to do there.
What we're going to do is try to roll it out to communities where we do have proposals, but then we're going to embark on a plan to go out and solicit interest from the other communities that didn't put forward submissions for a community depot and we do have some capital funds to apply to that initiative. So we're going to work very closely with communities and hope to get broader interest. So there have been a range of things that have led to some of the dates slipping. But we are optimistic that when we roll this program out, it can be rolled out effectively. The proposals will be ones that have successful and thorough business plans. The last thing we want to see is some of our community depots or regional processing centres fail after rolling out this legislation. So we are taking this slower than we had initially thought, but I think we're doing a more thorough job.
There was one other question the Member put to me and I'm going to have to ask, the Wildlife Act was the other question. Obviously this is another initiative that has been ongoing for a number of years and it has been slow going. The companion legislation, Species at Risk Act is another piece that we're working on. We hope to have some progress soon, but there's been some discussion and debate around the process chosen and how we could more effectively involve land claims and organizations in the process to ensure that they were consulted at every step of the way. This is a very cumbersome process, but, again, this is very important that we don't do anything that flies in the face of commitment through land claims and ensure that we take those into consideration and this has to be done thoroughly, it has to be done adequately. Wildlife I think is so important to people in the Northwest Territories that it requires this due consideration and careful progress. Thank you.