Here is a transcript of an excerpt from the interview on the 48 hour comment that Frank made. What Frank is saying is not that he will be making an announcement but that in 48 hours he will receive a budget and timetable of what the bright minds at KWG suggest would get that East West Road built. It appears to be a discussion paper to assist in the talks with KWG, the Development Corporation and Noront. In other words Frank is being constructive here - hopefully things will finally get moving on this project!

George Tsiolis:

6:57

Do you have a dollar figure of that East/West road would look like and do you have a dollar figure, if any, you would contribute that would come from KWG What would come from Noront and what would come from What, if any, would come from either level – either provincial or federal governments?

Frank Smeenk:

The short answer is no. I don’t have that dollar figure but for our own purposes, because this is being debated we are looking at what we would do if it were ours to do. So I think I am about 48 hours away from having that plan, and that budget, and that time table. Then we will meet again with the development corporation and Noront and start to talk about the options and see what their budgets and timetables look like.

In the terms of the source of funding I think the genius of the development corporation is that this is a kind of a legal construct, a legal creature that we’ve seen before throughout history. There is a number of them in the Atlantic provinces. It is something, from the Province’s perspective is off of their balance sheet, but is nevertheless a public agency that has a mandate to generate revenue where it can and use that revenue to amortize a capital infrastructure such as this industrial road. So just to jump to the chase here an industrial road – fuel used on an industrial road, for example is not subject to the tax out of which the road network is built. So that perhaps could be a source of funding for the capital cost of construction.