Don, Neil's statment is puzzling but then again so is Neil. That has been well discussed.

Clearly it is difficult for infrastructure like roads, railways etc to be BEYOND politicians for obvious reasons.

Just guessing but I suspect he meant that there are lots of stakeholders involved with the issue, govenment being only one, albeit a key one.

Gov't will not agree to foot the bill all by itself. Noront, FWR, Spider may not have a lot of funds to contribute. However Cliffs or any other Major will need to step up to the plate if they expect gov't funding.

The other stakeholders are Ontario Hydro (or whatever they call themselves now), CN Rail, CP Rail, First Nations, Indian Affairs, MNDM, Industry Canada etc.

I would be very surprised if all of these stakeholders plus others have not already been involved and that is what NN meant by BEYOND government. In fact I believe I picked up a hint in some of my reading that this is in fact the case.

Again I refer to some of the feasibility reports regarding electricity, northern development etc that posters here have been kind enough to provide. Anything like this can not be accomplished in a vaccuum. It requires all of the stakeholders working together to make it a reality.

Again stay tuned

SN