Thank you, Mr. Chairman and good afternoon. Mr. Chairman, over the past few days, I have been trying to bring up the situation with the ERS, which is the emergency response service in Iqaluit. Mr. Chairman, we are going to lose our ERS on April 1st, 1997, although there have been several dangerous and life-threatening incidents at our airport. Mr. Chairman, because of federal regulations and changes in those regulations that say and state that we do not need the ERS in Iqaluit and, coming on the heels of the Avery Cooper report commissioned by the government, it was decided that ERS was no longer needed.

Mr. Chairman, I have had some good communication with the Honourable Jim Antoine, the Minister for Transportation. He has been very supportive and the department has been very supportive in this area, but it still leaves a void in my community for fire fighting capabilities. At the present time, all we have in Iqaluit is a volunteer fire department. They do not have the specialized training to fight fires at the airport. They do not have the equipment. My question to the Minister of Transportation is; on April 1st, 1999, who is going to fight those fires at the airport and who is going to be able to do emergency response in the transportation hub for the Baffin region, serving 13 communities and 14,000 people? Mr. Chairman, my question to the Minister would be, will this government commit to providing the proper training for our volunteer town fire department and also the equipment, so that we can tackle any incident that occurs after April 1st, 1997 at the Iqaluit airport? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.