Charles Dent

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the landlord may be prepared to pay a good part of the expenditures. As I said, this special warrant was passed on August 22nd. There were no negotiations with any landlord at that point in time. So when FMB passed this, there was no way of knowing whether or not that was going to happen, so it doesn’t really matter to this decision when it was passed as to whether or not a landlord is prepared to pay. If we can get the landlord to pay for it, then that’s great, because it means that we don’t have to take the money out of the government coffers; we’ve...

Thank you, Madam Chair. I guess it’s important to point out the decision on cost recovery or how it’s going to happen hasn’t been made, so there are opportunities -- and you are having it right now -- for some comment and some debate. But I think it’s important to remember that when this was approved on June 30th, the fiscal situation that we were looking at was quite severe.

We had, not that long ago, gone through a budget session. Members will recall that the Minister of Finance in his budget address announced that we would be looking at next year's budget -- the one that will be coming up...

Mr. Speaker, as I’ve said, we’ve opted out of the Canada Student Loan Program, so we don’t maintain the exact standards of that program. The federal government has agreed to contribute, because our program, in general, is better than the federal program. So I don’t believe there was that sort of stipulation in any agreement for the contribution, no.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess to the last point first, since the money to pay for the project is coming out of general revenues, any receipts would go back into general revenues, as they should.

One of the terms and conditions of CATSA providing a contribution is that the improvements have to have a life of 10 to 15 years. Actually, CATSA says it has to have a life of 10 years. The department has projected the changes to the passenger terminal building will likely meet the needs of the travelling public for the next 10 to 15 years. So they feel they are safe on the CATSA side and are...

Madam Chair, if the landlord is going to put money into the tenant improvements, then I would suspect that we wouldn’t spend the $115,000. We have the authority to spend $115,000, but we will only spend whatever is required to develop the space. So if it only takes another $10,000 to develop the space, that’s all that would be spent. If it takes $115,000 to develop the space, that’s what will be spent. But we have the authority to spend in the area of $115,000 now, to fit up the space. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Sorry, Madam Chair. Could I get the question repeated, please?

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, it was a change that I had wanted to see made for some time and we had some evidence that students, in spite of being warned that there was a requirement for 75 percent success, or success in 75 percent of a full course load, that they weren’t all aware of it. So the transition from first and second year to subsequent years was not going as well for some students as had been hoped. In order to make it more likely that students would be successful, I directed the department to come forward with this change. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don’t have that information. The Minister may have that information. It’s not a question of whether or not this was known for awhile, it was. But the negotiations on what portion CATSA would pay went right up until the committee was advised that this was going to be an urgent expenditure. So it wasn’t a situation where there wasn’t some knowledge about the project having to go ahead, but there wasn’t a clear knowledge of what this government was going to have to pay. As I understand it, the department was negotiating to try to get an even larger portion paid for...

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, I think it’s important to remember that this special warrant was approved on August 22nd. On August 22nd the FMBS had absolutely no idea that a landlord or potential landlord would be willing to pay for part of the tenant improvements, whether that’s a small part or a big part. So that didn’t factor into the decision at any time. The expectation was that the tenant, that being the Government of the Northwest Territories on behalf of the Legal Services Board, would have to pay for the entire cost of the tenant improvements, and that’s typically what has...

Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I think it’s important to remember that the $6.6 million is over 10 years. So it’s about $660,000 a year. I don’t believe the Minister has a final plan yet for how that money would be raised, whether it’s from landing fees or an airport improvement fee. Mr. Braden suggested we have a small number of users. In fact, a couple of years ago there were 300,000 plus passengers through that air terminal building. So even if it was a couple dollars a head, you would pretty much raise that amount in an airport improvement fee. But perhaps we can ask Mr. McLeod what...