Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess just a broad perspective on the department's opening comments that I just want to let the Minister know that it's good to see that a lot of the new highway infrastructure improvement initiatives are in cooperation and in partnership with our federal government, and it's good to see that the department has initiated a lot of these good initiatives because they do comprise of a large component of retaining our current infrastructure in a safe and reliable mode, I guess. I know that a lot of the monies that the Department of Transportation is putting into our highway systems is through the federal government. It's good to see, and I hope that they keep up that kind of lobbying effort and meeting with our federal government to renewing a lot of these funding initiatives and seeing some more improvements in our highway systems.

I guess I just wanted to touch on stuff like initiatives where the Corridors for Canada I and II that where they are talking with the federal government on initiatives of this type, that all the highways in the NWT be included in these funding arrangements, because I feel that all highways in the NWT are corridors in the NWT and every highway has just as much weight on importance to residents as any other one, whether it's for commercial use or just for private use.

Just on the topic of negotiated contracts also, just to stress some more points that my friend from Nahendeh was talking about on the importance that these negotiated contracts have to our smaller communities and our more remote centres that rely heavily on transportation contracts coming down the pipe to the community, and the money actually being directed into the community and staying with the community. Again, you know, just earlier today I was talking about the government's new outlook should be one that splits up the policy into two different perspectives, one for the smaller centres and one for the larger centres. Because I can see the government's rationale in that the negotiated contracts are not really fair in Yellowknife, Hay River, Smith, Norman Wells, and Inuvik and places like that, but all the other 27 smaller

communities, you know, negotiated contracts are really valued to the communities as a whole. A lot of the community elders, youth, and people who want to stay in the communities rely on these contracts, and I just don't see the fairness in just going across the board and having one negotiated contract policy that applies to every community in the NWT. I hope the government kind of embarks on this new outlook, I guess, for the revitalization of small communities. I know a lot of the companies in these small communities that work with negotiated contracts and they've been going on for years, but a lot of those negotiated contracts have a lot of merit in why they should be retained as negotiated contracts. A lot of these educated people in a capacity that is built within these communities assists people in moving into the diamond mine industry, or the oil and gas industry, and they don't usually stick around in the community too long once they're qualified either through heavy equipment operator course or something of that nature. It's a continuous capacity-building initiative, I think, for smaller centres, and I think that's something that the government should place a lot of value on in keeping our small communities in the loop and not having these large corporate giants coming in and plopping themselves down in the community just to win a tender or something like that.

With that, again, I know that the Bear River Bridge project in the Mackenzie Valley road program is at the $100 million mark and that includes the beginning of the construction on the Bear River project. I just wanted to ask the Minister, what portion of that $11 million is directly attributable to the phase one or phase two of this Bear River Bridge project? I just want to get some perspective of how much the department is actually looking at spending this year on the project.