It is a concern, infrastructure-wise. Depending on where you are in the north, across the three territories there are issues of permafrost thawing and not providing stability for buildings. This causes concern here in Nunavut, because, depending on which community you're situated in, you may or may not have good foundations for your buildings. Many of our buildings, especially municipal and territorial government assets, are older, built back in the sixties, so there is the issue of age, but also of stability, especially when you consider potential permafrost thaw. Additionally, there is pipe infrastructure concern, and whether or not we have stability with the permafrost for pipes.
And then there is the lack of predictability for road construction and also for our shipping season. That in itself is complicated, because we have such a short shipping season. As we have no roads or highways or trains leading to Nunavut, we are totally dependent on shipping the bulk of our materials for construction for all manner of our infrastructure solely by ship. If we want to take the cheapest way and get the best bang for our buck, it's by ship. We only have a four-month shipping season, and if we can't make the ship in the budget year, then we have to wait another year before we can build.
Winter roads have been a critical problem, especially in the NWT and the western part of Nunavut, supporting mineral exploration and extraction activities. Where the ice is not freezing as it should, as in the case of supporting NWT mineral extraction last year, they couldn't use the winter roads to transport the materials required at the sites.