Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Further to community government funding, I'm wondering if the department -- well, first of all, I want to commend the department in their efforts, along with NWTAC and the communities and community governments and a number of individuals that were involved in a group that took the time to assess the communities' infrastructure gaps and needs for further formula funding. I appreciate that. I also appreciate the government's two per cent increase with regard to this pot of funding.
I'm just wondering if the department can maybe speak a little bit around the communities' ability to use these funds for the purposes of borrowing to help reduce their infrastructure gaps. There is, you know, interest rates are at an all-time low but, yet, these infrastructure gaps are at an all-time high. Maybe this is a time in which communities can and should be encouraged to some degree to use borrowing as a mechanism to help reduce their infrastructure gap.
Can the department explain about how these funds might be able to be leveraged? Can they be used for down payments and/or payments, in fact? Does the government have the ability to provide guarantees on these types of thing? And is this a time in which we could potentially use these funds for borrowing to help reduce that gap? Thank you, Mr. Chair.