Wally Schumann

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not have that type of detailed information. I can get it for the Member, but I am pretty sure that the ferry captains have to be certified every year to make sure that their ticket is up to snuff, but I will get that information to the Member.

The Department of Infrastructure uses a few significant ways. We have Facebook. We use Twitter. We do press releases. We have our superintendents in the region who convey those types of messages. That is mostly how we get it out to the public. A lot of these things happen on very short notice, and we try to do our best to get the information out there.

I would have to look into the exact legalities of that, but there are probably more legalities if we left the person inside the building when there is no security or people in place to make sure nothing is going on. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

As I have said, the costs must be offset by revenues, and this is not the case. We have not changed our hours of operation, and moving forward until such time that this happens, we will not be keeping the airport beyond the posted hours that we have right now.

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table the following four documents entitled "Follow-Up Letter for Oral Question 503-18(2): Northern Frontiers Visitors Centre," "Follow-Up Letter for Oral Question 744-18(2): Northern Frontier Visitors Centre," "Follow-Up Letter for Oral Question 773-18(2): Road Safety on Ingraham Trail," and "Follow-Up Question for Oral Question 814-18(2): Yellowknife Airport Hours of Operation." Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I don't know if we have met or had an expectation of how many people we were going to hire. We hired the people who we needed to run this operation, but I can tell the Members of this House that, at peak employment of July 31st, we had 141 employees at marine transportation. Sixty were from the Northwest Territories, and 81 were from outside the Northwest Territories, and most of those 81 were to crew the boats.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The sailing season is still ongoing. We still have, I believe, another boat to leave Hay River here in the next week or so, but I believe, for the most part, all the communities that were vulnerable to us not buying this asset have been serviced and their freight has been delivered, for the most part. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Duly noted from the Member's suggestions. We can look into those sorts of things. I think one of the other things that maybe we can start looking into is similar to what we did in Hay River with the crosswalk situation. We had the digital signs posted on the highway, and we tried to relay as much information that way as well before people leave the communities.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Ferry operations are dependent mainly on water levels. Water levels can be too high to make it safe; water levels can be too low to make it safe. That is the main criteria of operating the ferry, to get vehicles and people across it safely. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I think you are going to have to take that up with the carbon tax moving forward.

As I have stated, we will look at this, hours of operation, when revenues are coming in to offset the costs. Things are moving forward. This is early days. We will continue to monitor this. The advisory board is in place moving forward. Very shortly, they will be commencing to have their first meeting.

As the Member stated, we have freed up some cash. The physical needs of what the airport needs moving forward are far beyond what the Government of the Northwest Territories could handle before. This gives us an...