I guess I don’t have much of a follow-up because, quite frankly, I’m not sure what to say now because I was given the impression that they had studied this and had some paperwork behind it.
I don’t want to tie too much more committee time up on this, but I don’t necessarily think that those are the right things studied, and when you consider the Hay River rack price of gasoline today is 90 cents – 90.1 cents, by the way – it does lend oneself to wonder where the additional 48 cents, almost 50 cents are coming from. So how does a gain of 50 cents between Hay River rack price and Yellowknife, well it’s the transportation, the costs and everything. To say the bridge didn’t have an effect, well, if the deputy minister is correct with his math, I suspect he is, two-thirds of a cent, well, they
ate it, but that’s not the way it is when you go buy pellets that go up a dollar a bag from $5.50 to $6.50 overnight as an example.
Anyway, I don’t really see much to anyone’s benefit to pursue this point anymore. My point is this: that cost has increased. The Department of Transportation in concert with other departments could have spent some time studying this. As a public awareness, could Transportation have changed anything? Absolutely not. I’ve always maintained that private industry has the ability to set their prices. However, it’s government’s responsibility to inform the consumers and we failed, or I should say the government failed. Some of us tried to raise this concern and it fell on deaf ears and consumers are concerned. So there’s not really much more to add. Thank you.