Tom Beaulieu

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...

Mr. Speaker, the volume at the Yellowknife Airport changes fairly regularly. Right now we have approximately 500,000 passengers moving through Yellowknife Airport on an annual basis. We are looking at that now. We are hoping to… The RFP will close. We’re going to do an evaluation. What I’m seeing, just by drawing a timeline from March 2nd for the evaluation, hiring the actual consultant that’s going to be doing the work, I’m seeing that the results of that would likely be sitting on the desks of the 18th Assembly. We’re not sloughing the responsibility, but we’re looking at the timeline.

I...

The latest report was completed in March 2014. It looked at five similar types of airports as far as landings and passenger volumes go and because of their varying governance systems. We’ve looked at those five reports. We’ve now put an RFP out, which will close on March 2nd, to examine the various alternatives in those five different airports to determine which governance structure we feel would be the best to move forward with the Yellowknife Airport. 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. 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...

There would mainly be three options, alternatives that we would look at. We would look at a Crown corporation; we’re going to look at airport authority and even possibly using a GNWT revolving fund similar to the way we administer petroleum products.

Mahsi cho, Mr. Speaker. There have been several reports. There was an indication that there may have been seven reports done on airport governance but there may be more than that. There have been a few reports done since then. Thank you.

As the Member knows, we’re very approachable; the department is approachable. When we get information from Members, we do try to attend to the areas that are in the worst condition. We know that we don’t have the money to improve every section of that road to what the members of Sahtu would like to see; however, we’re addressing the worst areas.

As I indicated, we’re approachable and we do want to fix the roads to the best of our ability with the money that we have. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

We have training sessions with the employees on disclosure. We have a Harassment-Free and Respectful Workplace Policy that clarifies personal harassment within the GNWT and the public service. We are trying to let individuals know that if they do disclosure in any of those areas that I spoke of, it would be a safe disclosure.

The only thing we could come up with on why there has been so little uptake is people actually don’t feel safe disclosing with the public service, with their supervisors, management and so on. I too get a lot of calls where I indicate to the people that this is an...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I was fortunate to read the letter that was written by one of the members from the Sahtu, indicating how bad the road was and so on. We had not anticipated that the roads were that bad. We thought they would be improving.

When the Member and I drove on it, it was very early and it was rough, but the department considered that it would be improving. We recognize that we do need more money to continue to improve the winter road and that we need more money for watering and more grading cycles to be able to smooth out that road.

At this time we have a contract in place and...