As a department we’ve actually noticed changes in the weather for the last 15 to 20 years and have been undertaking quite a number of different things to address that, ranging from constructing bridges on the Mackenzie Valley winter road to spray ice in enhanced effort to construct ice bridges both on the Dempster and on the Fort Providence crossing, to changing our O and M practices and devoting a lot more energy and effort into O and M of the highway and particularly at this time of year where we are.

In the past you would have very few freeze/thaw cycles, but lately it seems to us and we’re seeing it in the actual on the groundwork that we are needing to provide a lot more effort in terms of maintaining the highways and maintaining the airports and providing a lot more consumables. So a lot more sand and gravel and the types of products that are required for getting good friction on our surfaces.

So we’ve made a number of changes over the years on that side of things and in our O and M activities, including increasing budgets and including expanding the services that we provide. So in the wintertime our O and M highway forces are on staff for seven days a week and 12 hours a day each day.

Capital projects, as we look at those projects and we do the design, climate change is one of the factors that is considered in that. I think that that’s

perhaps still a little bit evolving in terms of what that actually means. We do hope that some of the research that is underway that we, as a department, want to undertake and that we are working with other jurisdictions to address will be able to help us guide that even more in the future. Thank you.