Transport committee  Well, with any program there's always uncertainty at first, because, again, you're negotiating agreements between provinces and you're negotiating agreements between all levels of government. Until those things are out of the way, of course there are those uncertainties, but you need to have a deadline.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  I know that in a lot of cases in Manitoba you're talking about rural pipelines and smaller communities with sewers, which are easy to plan, in my opinion. Yes, obviously a lot of municipalities do have engineering and consulting advice, but again, it has been something they've been planning on for a while, and because this program came to light, it brought everything to the top.

Transport committee  Again, we are not experiencing the problem of shortage of materials in Manitoba. As an association, we have been reminding our members constantly that the deadline is in place. Right now, it's a firm deadline. We've been telling them that they must complete their projects, that otherwise it will cost them money.

Transport committee  Well, no. I can say that it wasn't. I'm very proud of the Manitoba municipalities. They are very good at planning. Yes, the projects might not have been on the financial plan, but they know their needs and have been planning for a while for those water and sewer needs. They know that at some point they have to replace this.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  There were a lot more that applied than were accepted. I think everyone put in an application, but of course the problem was that a lot of them, because of the short timeline of getting your project in, could not come up with their third. As I mentioned, with the barriers of municipal board hearings and things like that, a lot of municipalities just don't have that third in the bank, so they have to go to a borrowing bylaw to get their one-third.

Transport committee  No.

Transport committee  Yes.

Transport committee  If you had asked me one month ago.... In Manitoba, as I mentioned earlier, we've had excessive rainfall. We've had a wonderful end of September and all of the month of October to catch up, and we did that, but a month ago it would have been a very serious situation, as it is in Saskatchewan, because we were experiencing the same wet conditions.

Transport committee  As I said in my presentation--

Transport committee  I can only speak for Manitoba. Again, there have been challenges right across this country due to weather, but in Manitoba it's less than 5%. Again, under the stimulus fund, of 73 projects, four are at risk, and under the top-up of 22 projects, two projects are at risk. But if it weren't for the weather we got in September and October, we would have been up to that 30%, for sure, because a lot of projects in Manitoba were sewage lagoons, and a lot of earth-moving projects would not have been completed because we were so wet.

Transport committee  No, we are not experiencing that in Manitoba. As far as I know, there hasn't been a shortage of the basic equipment. In my own municipality, we're doing a water treatment plant, and some of that specialized equipment has been delayed because only a few manufacturers make it. But overall, I can say there hasn't been a delay in that type of pipe for that type of thing.

Transport committee  Yes, there are a lot of water treatment and sewage treatment plants that have the shells up, and they're working inside. Of course, road construction, as you know, cannot continue.