Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Minister, for the response. While I'm pleased to hear that forest fire management is going to be looking at northern operators for equipment, I think there's a lot of room for just the very thing other departments are doing right now. This morning, I heard the Minister of Government Services, or whatever it is, talk about how happy he was to have northern firms starting to do things, like building tanks. We never used to build fuel tanks here in the north before, but now we are doing all these things.
Maybe now we will have to start looking at northern companies in these areas. The reason there are only a few companies that provide forest fire fighting expertise is because they think the government will go back to the companies that have the specifications they want. It perpetuates the notion that no one else can do it. I have information, Mr. Chairman, that there are aircraft in the Northwest Territories now that were used formerly to fight fires in the United States, under US regulations. I don't imagine they're too much different from Canadian regulations when it comes to water bombing. But, they will go to others. Why? Because they have specifications specific to one company.
One company that provides a certain type of equipment, and that is where the specifications are drawn up from. They go out to tender and say what we are looking for has to be this, this and this. Nobody else can provide that equipment, because nobody else has it. But, if they were to allow northern contractors to tender and say they can provide another type of equipment which is just as good, they might be successful. They might have to use a different type of aircraft, perhaps a little bit smaller, that used to be used for fire fighting in the first place. Then, I think the government would be meeting its buy north, hire north policy to greater efficiency.
I want to point this out, Mr. Chairman, because northern business people bring this to the government and for one reason or another, they're not listened to. They have a stock answer sometimes that they require certain types of expertise and certain types of equipment and it can only be purchased here or there. It eliminates the establishment of northern contractors to be able to build the equipment and to be able to put money into purchasing the types of equipment that fire fighting requires.
I want to point this out, Mr. Chairman, because just this morning I heard how excited the government was about establishing northern business in areas that had not traditionally not been able to supply these things. Next year, I would like to hear the same response from the Renewable Resources people, especially in forest fire management, that they've reviewed their policy and now have located northern contractors who not only can do the job but can provide the equipment because specifications have changed to accommodate northern businesses and contractors.
Mr. Chairman, I would certainly like to hear that next year and see that some steps have been made in that area. If we give northern business an opportunity, people who stay here 12 months of the year and spend all their money here -- or most of it anyway -- in the Northwest Territories as well, and not go to some firm that bases their equipment in sunny climates or takes opportunity to make tremendous amounts of dollars here in our territories at the expense of the people who need the kind of work that we ask for. With that, I don't expect massive changes, but I certainly want the new Minister to know these concerns are out there. All he has to do is to contact some of these northern operators and talk to these people. Get the people who are based in those little offices somewhere in communities south of us, and go to talk to these northern operators and find out what they can provide for us in that area. How much of this stuff can you provide to us so we don't have to go south? Don't put tenders in there that are multi-yeared so nobody else can get into this field. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.