Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, and I -- you know, I recognize the Member's concerns. You know, I've been to Hay River several times to have a community meeting and, you know, it is important to the Member's constituents that, you know, there's great concern that, you know, we're not getting our tugs out of Hay River on time and, you know, it reflects a lot of our disruption up the valley. So, you know, I think the Member's going to be really happy right now because we are getting this started. And I appreciate that, you know, we have talked about this and talked about this but, you know, we really seen -- you know, last year where we just had struggles getting our supplies into Sachs Harbour. That is still the point that we're at.
So Mr. Speaker, I want to let the Member know that we are just finalizing an RFP for the initial phrase of the dredging. We want to call it harbour restoration, and it will be posted in the next couple days, Mr. Speaker; either today or Monday. And I will give a head's up notice to both the Members from Hay River on where we're at with the RFP process.
But I also want to take this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to thank the Members for their patience as we worked through a number of things, such as the engineering permitting process to get the first phase underway, which will concentrate on the channel. And the fisheries, so that they can have access to the harbour, Mr. Speaker. I would be remiss if I didn't thank the federal government on their assistance in funding this phase of the harbour restoration.
Mr. Speaker, we need our tugs out there in order to keep schedule this year. We need them. It's, you know, very important to some of the Members. It's important to this government as well as the communities to get supplies and fuel up the valley. We've spent a lot of money in the last year from this government, and we can't afford to do that anymore. So I just want to thank the Member for the question. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.