Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The initiative, that the honourable Member is referring to, is the airport transfers and community empowerment in the Keewatin. The department is proposing to transfer the ownership and responsibility for the development of operations and maintenance of the airports to the individual communities who have an interest and demonstrated their capabilities and the capacity to assume the responsibility. The department has no discussions under way that would propose to transfer airports to regional entities at this time. The transfer of airports to communities has been stated the objective of the GNWT since 1974. It is only since 1991, when airports were transferred from the federal to territorial government, that the transfer to communities was possible. We have been working with the interested communities toward agreements to transfer these airports and consistent with the community empowerment initiatives. We have involved communities in development operations and maintenance of the airports for 20 years now. The department has noticed significant additional effort and incurred virtually no new costs to bring in the possibility of community ownership to airports closer. Discussions about the airport transferred to local authorities have begun in all regions, except Baffin where no community has as yet shown interest. We will be pleased to provide more discussions with the community.
Negotiations on the Keewatin airport transfer have proceeded well, but there are still a number of issues that have to be resolved. The department and municipalities hope to come to an agreement fairly soon, before April 1, 1998. This may now be delayed somewhat pending resolution of some of the outstanding issues. Safety is one of the main concerns that we have, orderly transfer, capacity building. We hope that the remaining issues can be discussed with a community representative that has been going on. We had hoped to have discussed with some of the communities, with the workshop that just took place in Rankin Inlet. We would like to continue to try to reach an agreement with respect to some of the outstanding issues that I just mentioned. Thank you.