Mr. Speaker, I’d like to continue my questions with the Minister of Transportation on my topic today, which is the Yellowknife Airport.
Clearly today, we’ve heard 20 years of a government of complacency. We’ve heard about a government of perpetual planning where the guiding principles of “delay, defer and defuse” I believe are alive and well in this government and a government that is much okay with losing $2 million a year.
Given that the Yellowknife Airport is bleeding, as I said, to the tune of $2 million annually, can the Minister inform the House what are the short- and long-term strategies to financially balance the shortfall so that it’s not on the backs of the taxpayer? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Beaulieu.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. This evaluation of this RFP is going to get us to look at some options that would address the cost of operating the airport. As I indicated, and as the Member also indicated, this is costing us about $2 million. So, the option could be if we want to address this immediately, it would be to raise the price of the tickets of the travelling public, or we could raise the cost to the companies that are operating out of the airport. Again, they would probably likely just pass the costs on to the tickets. So, I would say that if we wanted to raise the $2 million, it would cost the travelling public about $10 a ticket because, even though there are 500,000 passengers travelling through the Yellowknife Airport, that’s usually 250,000 tickets. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m disappointed that the Minister would use scare tactics such as let’s just raise the price of tickets for passengers, let’s raise the prices for the airlines themselves. This is preposterous. These scare tactics are just being used to camouflage what I consider poor management, bottom line. We as a government have a responsibility to be better managers and not use scare tactics.
Can the Minister indicate to the House in the wake of almost every other airport of similar volume and size in Canada developing independent authorities, why is the Yellowknife Airport being held back for maximizing its benefit for its community? Thank you.
Thank you. The fact is it costs $7 million a year to operate the airport and our revenues at this time are $5 million. So in order to make the numbers match, we’d have to raise revenues by $2 million. So that could be an airport improvement fund on the tickets, like I indicated, or we reduce the operating costs or maybe reduce service at the airport to reduce the costs, but those are the costs now. So the government is now looking at those three different options that I indicated: an airport authority that is in place in many airports; a Crown corporation, which would be similar to the Housing Corporation; or a revolving fund similar to the petroleum products division. Thank you.
When a Minister is answering a question of how we can do things better, rather than using scare tactics maybe we should maybe run things a bit better. That might be the main solution to a lot of the problem we have here.
In its final report to the Minister in 2003, the report called it “the analysis of en route alternative airport facility and requirement of associate issues.” It states and recommends that a number of improvements for extended range twin-engine operation, or ETOPS, and a capital requirement of $19.4 million to extend runway 15-33 to a 10,000-foot runway.
Can the Minister indicate why 12 years later we are still waiting for this national and international emergency provision? Thank you.
The fact is it is the money. If we’re going add a fair chunk of capital on to the already large amount of infrastructure that’s at the airport that we are paying for, then it would be a matter of having to increase the costs of the airport again. If money was no object, we would have probably extended that airport quite some time ago. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Dolynny.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I think the Department of Transportation should take notice on how to run a business rather than government sometimes.
Finally, 11 years ago in the 2004 Final Report of the Yellowknife Airport Development Plan, it called for the reconfiguration of the existing passenger terminal building and development of a new west side terminal complex, emergency response service, de-icing facility and other major retrofits. The entire cost of the proposal, estimated in the order of $100 million, was to be spread over the next 20 years.
Can the Minister give us an update to this progress? Thank you.
Thank you. Change is a difficult thing when you’re operating at the airport. We have tried to initiate some of those changes that were not too intrusive and it was difficult to do. So we are still looking at those things and it has taken some time, but the airport is operational. We are expending more money than we are taking in at this time, so we’re looking at some options now that would not pass too much of the costs on to the travelling public. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Beaulieu. The Member for Frame Lake, Ms. Bisaro.
