Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, in my Member's statement today I spoke about the continuing line-ups and long waits at the Yellowknife Airport. Mr. Speaker, in an effort to promote the airport improvement fee, the Minister said before the renovation began that the improvements would improve the experience of the travelling public and reduce waiting times, but today there is still only one line-up and the travellers are all forced to go through this bottleneck. I'd like to ask the Minister: after $300,000 in renovations, can the Minister explain how this is an improvement? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Minister of Infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Well, I can certainly tell you about all the improvements we've done out there with the revolving fund, probably one of the best things this Assembly has done to help improve tourism, particularly in Yellowknife. We spent a lot of money out there improving the system. The Member has raised the question around the CATSA Plus system, and let's make it quite clear in this House, I am not in charge of CATSA Plus. That's a federal initiative. That's their responsibility, but we are working very closely with them to improve the visitors' and the travelling public's experience.
Now, I have a bunch of notes here that I can clearly go to, but I want to make it quite clear that, you know, I've travelled as much as anybody in this Legislative Assembly, and there are times that I've been out there and I've been frustrated, myself. There are a number of issues around the security wait times. Sometimes, it's too many flights all at once. Sometimes, it's staffing shortages at CATSA Plus. That's probably the biggest concern right now with the CATSA system, is the shortage of employees and the amount of training that needs to be taking place out there, but we have been tracking the CATSA Plus system, along with our improvements that we've done out at the Yellowknife Airport, and we've been tracking it, and it's been down by 30 percent on average of wait times. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Thank you to the Minister for his reply, but I don't think that the public is going to find that to be too satisfactory, because, in fact, the Minister's staff, in a previous briefing to Yellowknife City Council, actually indicated and referred specifically that the installation of a CATSA Plus screening system would increase throughput of passengers. So do we have a CATSA Plus system and, if not, why not?
I can assure the Member that the system that is out there at the airport is the new CATSA Plus system.
It would be appreciated if the Minister could share some information at least with the committee, the Standing Committee on Economic Development and Environment, about what a CATSA Plus system entails so that we can get more information.
Mr. Speaker, at the same briefing, the Minister's staff told council to expect a 60 percent increase in throughput with this new system. Now, the Minister has said that it's 30 percent. Can the Minister at least describe to us how they measure it, and are they, in fact, measuring the throughput?
Yes, I did say that it has resulted in a 30 percent increase. We are working to improve it even more. Even though I say it's not our system, we are working with the CATSA Plus people to make improvements out there. The security staff right now is actually doing the monitoring and tracking of wait times, but we are moving to put in an automated system out at the airport for both security queue times and also we're going to be looking at the luggage wait times. So that's an improvement through the revolving fund that we're also going to be able to track these things and have better data for all the residents of the Northwest Territories. As I've said, the biggest problem we have out there right now with that system is staffing issues. It's not the system, it's not the new configuration that we've put into place, it's the CATSA staffing.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Yellowknife North.
Mr. Speaker, while I appreciate the Minister's reply as it relates to staffing issues, I mean, that's a concern that we all have here in the North, staffing issues. The fact of the matter is that there is still only one line-up. The staff there, quite frankly, in my view and others', they are doing a commendable job. It's just you can't increase the throughput without having more screening systems. So I'd like to ask the Minister: is this it? After $300,000 and all these improvement fees, is this as good as it gets, or are we going to see a much-improved system? Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
He's kind of left an open-ended question there for me, so I'm going to take the opportunity to say, you know, the revolving fund has given us an opportunity at the Yellowknife Airport to do a number of improvements. It's not just the CATSA system. That's a system that we're working on. We're working on something that is not even in my control. We're working with the federal government to try to improve it. We went and did other steps outside what I've just said about the new configuration and the staffing issues. For those of you in the House who have travelled lately, we've put up signage in Asian languages to help way-finding systems there to help people, prior to going into the CATSA system, be a little bit more prepared for when they're travelling. There are videos out there in different languages outside the security system to also educate passengers. So we're doing a lot of different things to improve the Yellowknife Airport, not just the CATSA system. There are the runways and all these other things that we're spending this money on.
As I said here probably a couple of weeks ago in my Minister's statement in the House, we're the victims of our own success, again. Landings are up 15 percent. Traffic by passengers is up by 4 percent. We've put in these new systems and we're trying to accommodate the people as best we can. My best recommendation to the travelling public is, you know, we're so used to being a small jurisdiction that we can go to the airport and jump on a plane 10 minutes before it goes, but the reality of it is, in the Yellowknife Airport, you have to start looking at going out there 90 minutes or 60 minutes prior to departing. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.
Masi. Oral questions. Member for Frame Lake.
