Michael McLeod

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I haven’t been in this position long enough to attend the national conference with any of my federal colleagues. I would certainly be looking at the situation as the Member has raised to see what our position would be. Right now, we intend to work with the federal government on establishing some of the guidelines and be more focussed as we move forward towards the next conference. Thank you.

We’ll respond to all the different organizations that have contacted us over the last while regarding this issue and keep them informed as we move forward.

Mr. Chairman, we recognize there has been some difficulty getting the signs put up and getting them to stay up. Access is a really challenging issue to put signs in the ground or put signs up in the winter and to get them to stay up over the summer months is, of course, very difficult, and getting into and on the winter road in the summer is just something we can’t do. We did provide a couple contracts to individuals to put the signs up but it didn’t work out. We will, as the Member suggested, talk to our contractors that are always on the road system and maybe we can get some type of...

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The provision for dust suppressants and other measures on the airports was approved in our capital budget in the fall and I can certainly provide that information again to the Members. I guess it’s important to clarify that chipseal can’t work in the communities. We don’t feel it’s a safe way to apply a coating to the runways. It either has to be pavement or EK-35. We’ve used it in some communities and we have a schedule to apply it to other communities to the cost of about $400,000 a year. We have a number of communities scheduled for this year. We have already done...

Mr. Chairman, not all the applications are in yet. We have Aklavik identified as a community that we expect to apply, but we have not received an application from them.

Yes, it is one of the options we’re looking at. We also looked at the possibility of looking at a better drainage system or redirecting it and changing some of the culverts so the water would run through. It would be fairly expensive. It looks like, at this point, the easiest solution would be to be able to relocate the building. There are some land issues we need to sort out, but it’s a real possibility that this is the avenue we will go.

Mr. Chairman, this is a negotiated contract situation where both parties agreed on the terms. We certainly don’t want the company to have undue duress as a result of not being able to move forward and provide the maintenance as the Member is raising. I was not aware that there was an issue there. The deputy minister, Mr. Neudorf, can certainly undertake to have a sit-down discussion regarding the issues about, I believe, not being able to get out when they feel it’s required. That’s an issue we can take a look at. Thank you.

We’ve had several discussions with the Member and the communities involved regarding the requested extension to the runway lengths to 4,500 feet. The situation is, as the 2010 ruling comes forward and gets closer, people in the southern jurisdictions are putting some of their aircraft out for sale as they would rather buy more efficient aircraft to operate. The Beech 1900 and other ones are becoming fairly cheap and that’s becoming very attractive through some of the communities and corporations in the North. They are wanting to purchase these aircraft and require us to upgrade the runway...

Mr. Chairman, we will try to convince the government to invest as much as they can in the Northwest Territories. We have a lot of needs in the area of marine facilities. Certainly if we can convince the government to go further than just the communities that deal with commercial fishermen, that would really help us in a lot of different ways and address some of the issues that are being raised by the Member here today. Thank you.

I believe the question is if we have our staff go door to door to see if they’ve all applied. No, we don’t do that.