Mr. Chair, I appreciate and I acknowledge the frustration of the nations. The minister was very clear in her testimony that we have some work to do to rebuild trust with the nations. I do wish to acknowledge that.
What I will say is that we did have officials who did engage through the representative on the dredging question. We were assured, when we contacted colleagues in Indigenous Services Canada emergency services, that in the evacuation plans there were alternative contingency plans that didn't rely solely on access to the Transport Canada port and also took into account that perhaps the airport would not be available. We too weren't contacted by the entities responsible for the evacuation. It was on that basis that we said that we wouldn't be able to proceed with the dredging on an emergency basis.
The other reason that we said we couldn't proceed with it on an emergency basis was for the reasons that I previously outlined, Mr. Chair.
It's complex in terms of doing it. Dredging has to be planned really well. The nature of this port and the surface infrastructure make it more complex for us. We would need more than a couple of months to be able to tackle this request.