Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My questions are for the Minister of Transportation. I would like to ask him a few questions in relation to the response that he provided to the Member from Yellowknife Centre in reply to an oral question the other day on transpolar flights. Mr. Speaker, the Minister indicates that the promised opening of Russian airspace will prove a great blessing for their air industry in time and fuel savings and that, literally, everyone in the world stands to gain from new shorter and less expensive transpolar routes.

I think that he should have qualified that, it is everybody except us who stands to gain. Sometime ago with some northern transportation representative we had estimated that these new polar routes would garner NAV Canada something like $125 million because of more flights going over us but that was based on 60,000 flights. Now the Russians are talking about 150,000, so the money that NAV Canada would make would be twice as much as what we had estimated. What I would like to ask the Minister is, is all that money that would be going to NAV Canada, will that be reflected in lower costs to us in the north since most of that money will be raised through the airspace that they are flying over the Northwest Territories? Thank you.