A myriad of factors come into play. To give you a really good example, we built new units in Dawson City. Because of the permafrost—it's a discontinuous permafrost in that community—they tend to have to dig down 15 to 20 feet. One contractor broke his backhoe trying to excavate a lot. In that case the water kept coming into what would have been the hole for the foundation. We got to the point where we said, “Cover it up and we'll use it for parking.” We expended a lot of money and got nothing out of it.
Everything you see here was manufactured elsewhere. We do not have a manufacturing base. The 18-wheelers come up from Edmonton and southern British Columbia. There are products that other Canadians take for granted because of the manufacturing base--in southern Ontario as well. We do not have that, so we have the additional cost of freight. We have higher costs of labour compared to southern Canada.
Land is generally available. A few years ago we had a real spike in new home construction in Whitehorse. For a temporary period, the Government of Yukon ran out of serviced land. But the cost of taking raw land and servicing it is very high. That increases the cost of land at the start of the process, which then increases the overall cost of housing.
We have a very short window of construction compared to a lot of jurisdictions in southern Canada. For example, we have buildings going up right now, and they're trying to clad them against the weather so they can work inside. They then need to have their Herman Nelsons blowing heat into that building to keep the materials and workers warm so they get a higher level of productivity. If you've ever tried to change a tire at 30 below, try to pound nails and use a saw at 30 below. It's not very productive.
When you add all of the factors together, it costs a lot of money to build in the north. The community spatial index for our most northern community, Old Crow--with Whitehorse based at 100--is 220. So you can look at the difference in what things cost, even within the territory.
There's no one easy answer. It's a lot of things combined.