I think the sense is this. First and foremost, it's the view of the Government of Canada that there's an infrastructure gap in the country, which is why the Government of Canada has made such a big investment in infrastructure writ large. Second, it is the view of government, and I think the assessment shows, that there's a deeper infrastructure gap in northern Canada and in remote communities for all of the reasons we've been discussing here this morning.
To be frank, I think to try to put a precise dollar figure on it is difficult, and in fact it becomes a little bit arbitrary in terms of what the questions are. What are the aspirations for your community? What are the aspirations for the region? What are the opportunities for the economic development, social development, and quality of life improvements in the region? I think we see it as a moving target. We see it as one for which you establish the priorities through an iterative approach. There's no one magic capital plan at one point in time that does it.
That leads us to the importance of engagement, consultation, and partnership building. It takes sustained, structured engagement, communication, and information sharing among the communities, the owners of the infrastructure, and funding partners like the Government of Canada and other partners. An important partner here actually is Nav Canada, because Nav Canada is in the middle of modernizing its infrastructure. That's a key part of the piece here.
I think we see it as an ongoing effort in which you're working to get the best shared understanding of where the most pressing needs are and where the investments will have the biggest payoff in terms of meeting the transportation needs and in terms of eliminating bottlenecks. Those change over time. With economic development in the north, as those patterns change.... For example, at individual airports you can see enormous fluctuations in volumes. It's not on the Auditor General's list of 117, but Fort McMurray has had a tremendous change in the volume of passengers through it because of the change in the economic circumstances of the oil sands. We've seen that in a number of our remote communities.
It's not fixed in time. You actually have to stay dialed into the communities and the owners and the operators to figure out where at any given time the best investment is to be made. I think what we have here is an opportunity to make a new set of investments, that we haven't made in the past, with the new programming and the new funding that the Government of Canada has put in place to address the challenges identified by the Auditor General.