Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I guess, first of all, we have to agree that a lot of the responsibility for investment in our roads lie with the federal government. We need investment from the federal government and will continue to bring our vision of what roads can be developed, or should be developed, in the Northwest Territories over the long term and work at trying to secure some funding. Any of the programs that may come forward we have developed a lot of that work. We've scoped it out, we've done some of the costing on it, so we are quite ready to move forward.

In the latest submission to the federal government we focused not only on areas in the Northwest Territories where there was a considerable amount of resource development. We have also looked at other communities where the resource development activity is not there in terms of large traffic volumes or aircraft, but we also took into consideration that there needs to be good roads, safe, reliable roads, and a lot of these roads are starting to get on in age and have to be reconstructed. We included Highway No. 6 and we've included in part of the budget that was in our proposal, a $2 million amount for a number of years, four years, because we feel that these communities need to have the roads, the good quality paved roads, such as that we're developing on some of the other highways. It also factors into the cost of living when you have roads that are...We have the good, safe, reliable system in place.

The negotiated contract issue is something I had responded to Mr. Menicoche on. I recognize and I'll say again, I recognize that there's still a considerable need in our smaller communities. A lot of times these contracts provide a lot of the training that happens in the small communities, and I know for a fact in Mr. Villeneuve's riding the company there has always done good work and has produced a lot of good equipment operators. But at the same time, it's been a revolving door for the diamond mines to pick the cream of the crop and the guys who want to go on and try other things.

We should point out, though, that negotiated contracts is something that's been focused on usually for the smaller communities. I don't believe we have any negotiated contracts in the larger centres. We kind of restrict them to the smaller centres. The larger centres have a good, healthy market or a good...There is good competition there and I don't think they would appreciate it to go in and negotiate a contract. Having said that, there are still areas of the Northwest Territories where there are a number of small communities where there's a lot of activity happening, and there's a lot of small companies and small aboriginal companies that are competing with each other. What has happened in some situations, it's made it really difficult for the MLA to sign off a support letter when you have three or four different companies asking you all for support, and it puts, sometimes, some of the politicians in a very awkward situation.

The Bear River Bridge, we have committed I think it's $11 million. It's a portion of the $25 million that was earmarked for this bridge and this is to pay for some of the engineering, the geotechnical, some of the work that has been, work that's required to do on this bridge, and also the start of the actual construction of this bridge. That's what this budget amount is for.