I guess I'll comment.
I don't know offhand what the number is as far as rejections go, but I think the number as far as delays are concerned would be significant, especially when it comes to the process when you're dealing with navigable waters. In a lot of cases we're dealing with federally funded dollars also to apportion whether it's a disaster or any other type of mechanism. So it really does delay the process.
Perhaps we could have a definition of minor works, and an agency that has moved a long way on that is the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. They have moved a long way on what they deem minor works. In our province in the spring we have significant flooding, and a lot of provinces do. We have roads washed and culverts washed. The approval process with them is, put it back the way it was and that's all we require.
At some time you have to put the faith into your public works people to be doing the work that they're doing and into your local governments to be doing it also. If I have a culvert washout and there are three six-foot culverts there, I'm not going to try to replace them with two six-footers, because I know it's going to be back the next year doing the same thing. That's, I think, where the term “minor works” has to be defined, to replacement, if it's a replacement issue.
Where we have a problem in our province--Don has alluded to Alberta also--is that we are in a huge infrastructure deficit with bridges also. We don't have nearly as many as Alberta, but we have in the neighbourhood of 2,500 or 2,600 bridges in rural Saskatchewan that were built in the fifties and sixties. The way the agriculture community is changing in Canada--not just in Saskatchewan but in Canada--with increased weights and increased distances and everything being hauled, our bridges can't take it. Our municipalities can't afford to replace bridge structures when you start talking about $250,000 to $300,000 for a 20-foot span bridge, where steel culverts can do the same thing at virtually a third of the cost--and they can. We comply with DFO in burying them 20% into the waterbed and that type of thing. So it works that way. We just have this issue with the navigable waters people, where they want the ability to portage through it.