Good morning, everybody.
I'm sorry for my tardiness. I informed the staff ahead of time that I had drop-off duty for my daughters this morning. That's why I was delayed.
My name is Joel McKay. I'm the chief executive officer of the Northern Development Initiative Trust. We're a regional economic development organization that serves northern British Columbia, an area about the size of France, to give you a sense of our magnitude. We have about half a billion dollars in assets.
A year and a half ago, we took on responsibility, in partnership with the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure here in British Columbia and with B.C. Transit, for B.C. Bus North and intercity transportation for the area of British Columbia that is described as northern B.C., which is the Fraser Canyon and north to the Yukon border. In that time, with $7.5 million, which is not much money, we have been able to create an integrated transportation network that includes 18 intercity transportation services, both long haul and intercity short haul—so distances of between 100 kilometres and 200 kilometres—serving both indigenous and non-indigenous communities. We have been able to add routes throughout that entire service area, reduce costs and keep the fare cost in line with inflation.
This year we are launching a new project, which will be a first in Canada, called the connected network. The connected network is a project that will create for the first time a technology that allows the traveller to transfer among all of these services using their mobile device or a phone-in service without any issue.
Right now in northern British Columbia and, frankly, anywhere in Canada, you have to act as your own travel agent. That is difficult when there are a number of different transportation services that are run by different non-profits or for-profits. We see this as a key barrier. We have adopted a technology that has already been deployed in western Europe in a far more complex transportation environment than the one in Canada, and we are going to pilot it and integrate these services here beginning this summer.
In short, our focus—and the reason we're involved in this—is that we see ground transportation as critical to serving the economy in northern British Columbia, which is our mandate. We take a community economic development approach to that. In 18 months, we have been able to significantly expand ground transportation services in northern B.C., integrate them, add new routes and actually reduce costs, and we will very shortly be launching a new technology.
I hope that provides an overview of what our involvement is here.