That's good, Mr. Chisholm.
As you probably already know, I'm the Minister of Transportation as well, so I know what it costs us, what impact climate change has on our transportation infrastructure in the NWT, and what are the repairs needed on an annual basis to our roads because of permafrost.
I think what we're seeing here with climate change is that where we put in ice roads, we're not able to maintain them as long. The season is not as long.
We've had some years.... As an example, I think it was in 2008 that the mining companies north of Yellowknife, which are dependent on the ice road for resupply, saw the season shortened by I think three or four weeks. It cost them $100 million to bring goods into the mines north of Yellowknife.
We also see some impact in the northern part of the territory, with beluga getting trapped in the Husky Lakes. We could probably attribute that to climate change as well.
I wanted to mention this specifically as well. On Great Slave Lake, we've seen the return of lake trout and inconnu into Yellowknife Bay. According to the aboriginal people, they had been in abundance in Yellowknife Bay prior to the mines coming to Yellowknife in the 1930s. The fish disappeared for basically 70 years, and those fish are coming back.
Con Mine shut down a number of years ago. For the Giant Mine, as you know, we're still looking at a significant investment by the federal government to clean up the mine site. But there's no blasting there, and there's no mining taking place near Yellowknife, and the fish are back in Yellowknife Bay. We believe that's a result of the mines closing down a number of years ago. The fish are back, so I wanted to mention that as well.
Thank you.