Thank you, Madam Speaker. My questions today will be for the Minister of Transportation. August 20, 2011, will be forever ingrained in our history as being a very terrible day. I mean, obviously, this is the day that near Resolute a plane crash took the lives of 12 people, 12 Northerners. Early on in this Assembly I know we spoke about this at great lengths, and I did talk about this with the Transportation Minister about looking at our Aviation Memorial Program, which was not touched since 1969. That was the last time it was dealt with, and that was the Pilot’s Monument that paid homage to the engineers and aviation people of the day.
Since that point, the Minister indicated that he would look at looking into enhancing a presence for a memorial. Given the fact that this House will not resume until after that tragic day, is the Minister prepared to comment or come to this House to say his department looked at making enhancements to our Aviation Memorial Program? Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Dolynny. I can check with the Clerk, but I believe the issue of the Resolute crash of the First Air 737 is presently before the courts. I could ask, perhaps, the Clerk for a ruling on that before I ask Mr. Ramsay for a response.
Thank you for that. The Minister responsible for Transportation, Mr. Ramsay.
Thank you, Madam Speaker. The idea conceptually of an aviation memorial and the government’s involvement in that is a good one and is something I have made a commitment to the Member previously that the government would be interested in doing.
As these things go, there are a lot of, obviously, aviation companies, businesses, families. There are a lot of issues that would have to be covered in the development of a memorial. We haven’t received a proposal from any interested party in the development of a memorial. If that was going to happen, we would certainly work with whoever it was that brought forward a proposal on a memorial. Thank you.
I appreciate the Minister’s commitment to this program as it was mentioned a number of months ago. However, like anything else, trying to get all parties together is obviously going to be a little bit tricky. Would the Minister commit to spearhead this project as a result, because a lot of the finances would come under this government? Would the Minister commit that his department would spearhead the enhancements of our Aviation Memorial Program, not only in Yellowknife but throughout the Northwest Territories?
I certainly would be interested in doing that and I will take that back to my officials at the Department of Transportation to see how that could happen. Thank you.
