Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, earlier I spoke about airport infrastructure in Nunakput, and my questions are for the Minister of Infrastructure. Mr. Speaker, can the Minister explain how the Department of Infrastructure monitors territorial gravel runways to ensure regular maintenance and safe operations? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Department of Infrastructure works closely with all our airport maintainers and airlines to monitor maintenance operations at all our airports across the Northwest Territories. We also conduct detailed airport inspections and assessments twice a year on all airports within the Northwest Territories and every year in the Nunakput region. We just finished a detailed inspection actually at the end of July with a number of personnel who went up there. We had engineers, electricians, surface specialists, and operations managers assessing each airport in the region. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
I appreciate the response. Mr. Speaker, under the current monitoring and maintenance plan, when will the Nunakput Airport runway surface next be rehabilitated?
At all our runways, we already have a number of stockpiles of gravel specific to airport runways, so this is already in place. With an effective maintenance plan in place and a drainage management plan in place, this helps extend the life of all the runways in the Northwest Territories. We also have an EK35 program which we put on all the runways, the gravel ones, in the Northwest Territories to help tighten up and stabilize and bind the gravel that's on the runway and keep the dust down.
To specifically answer the question of what we're doing in Nunakput, in the 2018-2019 capital plan we have drainage improvements specifically at the Sachs Harbour runway.
I appreciate the response. Mr. Speaker, has the Department of Infrastructure previously explored paving or chipsealing runways at one or more airports in the Nunakput region?
The department has investigated the advantages and disadvantages of doing this to the runways across the Northwest Territories. One of the cons of this whole thing is, if we were to even do this, say, in the northern region, put chipseal down and the chipseal peels up, it could cause delays on those runways and disrupt service to them; but the other side of it is the cost of the equipment that would be needed to repair these. We're not going to go out and buy paving equipment for each community to be able to address this thing.
Based on performance around that, Transport Canada does not treat runways any different if they are chipseal paved versus gravel, so there's no advantage to doing that. I believe the Province of Saskatchewan has done this and we are working closely with them and seeing what they have done, because they've already returned a number of those runways that they did back to gravel.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Nunakput.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the response. Definitely travelling around northern Canada you see the advantages and disadvantages of having gravel runways, and definitely the limitations to the certain types of planes that they're allowed.
Mr. Speaker, my final question is: how is the GNWT's partnership in the Northern Transportation Adaptation Initiative being used to leverage funds and other support for stabilization and enhancement of airport infrastructure in our most northern communities? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
We've worked with Northern Adaptation Initiative administered by Transport Canada and we've done a significant amount of research with their help to understand climate change and the impact on our airports and runway system across the Northwest Territories. We've also invested in drainage improvements, as we expect that this will become increasingly more challenging with permafrost degradation, and we will continue to work with them.
The other thing where we do work within the federal government is the Capital Asset Assistance Program, and we're always in discussions with them on how we can utilize that source of funding to help northern airports. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
