Thank you, Minister. The first thing I want to highlight for the Member: I think us buying MTS had a positive impact on him because Lutselk'e had two years of delivery of goods and fuel in his riding.
What we are going to do from this point forward is, as I have said in various different statements, we are going to hire another communications person, work closely with the communities on goods and delivery of services to the communities. We are working with Coast Guard on the sea ice issue and a number of other issues that we are going to address, hopefully, with him going forward around navigational aids and all kinds of things around the sea ice conditions and marine infrastructure investment and stuff.
Like I have said in the House before, people continue to say this is an error, and it is not an error. There was a multitude of effects that got us to this point. I disagree with the Member; us buying MTS was probably the smartest thing we have done. If we wouldn't have bought this, the chances of even having delivery up there by us wouldn't have happened. I believe that company would have been stripped and sold out, and we would have had to rely on delivery to the Arctic coast coming around from Montreal or Vancouver, which would have added significant costs to the Government of the Northwest Territories and to the residents in those communities. That is a point we can ponder, but that is my point on it, and I believe that we did the right thing to service these communities.
An unfortunate event happened this year. We are taking the unprecedented step to help mitigate these circumstances. We are delivering all of the fuel to the communities that need it to make sure that they get through the winter. We are taking the unprecedented step of delivering all the goods and commodities to the community on a case-by-case basis.
We have reached out to every one of the customers in the communities. Paulatuk has 33, Kugluktuk had 11, and Cambridge Bay has 24, and we have talked to every one of them. There were some people that were clearly upset that the boats didn't arrive, but that is the challenge of living in the North, and that is the challenge of climate change. We are taking this step, which is going to cost us a significant amount of money, to be able to help those people up there, and they are quite happy.
Can you imagine what would be going on in this House right now if we didn't take the unprecedented step of flying in all of these commodities and goods into these communities? That could have been the case if it was in a private stakeholder's hands. I think we did the right thing, and we just need to remind people that this is a challenging environment. Thank you, Mr. Chair.