Thank you, Madam Chair. The Member has a few questions. I’ll just start with the climate change subject. I just recently was at the TAC Conference, Transportation Association of Canada, and I met with the other Transportation and Highway Safety Ministers from across the country as well as the federal Minister, and when I had the opportunity, the first thing I mentioned was the fact that the Northwest Territories is ground zero for climate change. We’re having a huge impact not only on our roads but on our winter roads, our runways, things like that. I put it out there that the federal government needs to work with especially the… It’s more pronounced in the three territories but now you’re seeing more pronounced impact of climate change in the northern parts of some of the provinces. For example, last winter in Manitoba they weren’t able to put in winter roads. Some communities had their winter resupply completely cut off because of the climate changing so much. I think as it becomes a bigger issue in the northern part of some of the provinces, maybe we’ll get more support for federal funding to look at the impact of climate change.

We’ve received some money in the past through the Building Canada Plan to look at that. Certainly, I agree with the Member that we need to ensure that we’re doing whatever we can to look at climate change, to get the funding that’s necessary to examine the impact so that we can build our transportation system in that regard, knowing full well what the impact is.

One of the other things I wanted to respond to was the Member had talked about the warming of Great Bear Lake and that’s a direct result of climate change as well, and the fact that the community is having trouble with the winter road there. Last year we did supply some increased funding to the base to allow that work to get done and we will do that

again this year with an increased effort to see the winter road put in. We are working with the community of Deline, and like last year, there will be some additional funding to get that winter road in.