Mr. Peter Walsh:

One of the reasons for burdening the committee with the amount of paper that we did was in an effort to be transparent around this. We provided as much information as we could in a relatively digestible form for each of the PPP contracts. The notion that there is discretion in relation to the toll charges is one that I would like to address. The mechanism within the contract associated with the consumer price index sets a limit on the level at which the toll company can set the toll charges. It cannot go above that number. That is the mechanism for limiting it, and it has worked. Over a ten-year period, the charges did not go up at all. In fact, there was a brief period when they went down. Last year there was a significant change in that circumstance, for everything, and that brought about the increase in January.

To go back to what Deputy Smith mentioned earlier when he said the toll charges were deferred; the toll charges were not deferred as such, they were applied.