Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have moved this motion for several reasons. First of all because I believe it is inherently unfair for the north to be charged in a similar manner to the way the southern carriers are charged. It is unfair to lower the cost of doing business in the south by $100 million while at the same time increasing the charges to our air transportation carriers by $7 to $10 million. By making this motion, we are certainly not closing the door to further reductions in the future.
As my colleagues have mentioned, there are many reasons why we feel our charges should go down. First of all, being that we are using sub-standard navigation aids, one of the air transportation representatives mentioned that we are using navigation that has been used in World War II, as compared to in the south, where they have radar, that type of thing, we do not.
The second one, is of course that the maximum weight for the planes are being charged and in the north, we can almost never use maximum weights because you have to fly long distances and you have to carry lots of fuel and therefore you can never travel at maximum weight. There is other reasoning there as well, however I will not go into that.
The third reason of course is the en-route fees that NAV Canada charges. By this, I mean the fees that NAV Canada charges to planes that fly over Canada. Those charges are set per kilometre that is flown over us. I spoke last week of four polar routes that will be opening soon, that will fly over us and directly through previously restricted, Russian airspace. Through these polar routes, the Northern Air Transportation Association representatives have calculated that NAV Canada will make a windfall of approximately $140 million by travelling through NWT airspace. That is NWT airspace. In any other area, if you mine something from an area, you get royalties. If you get oil out of an area, you get royalties. A similar situation should exist. If they are making $140 million off of our air space, that should be reflected in our air transportation costs or perhaps they should just pay for our whole fees and then distribute the rest of that to us, that is not needed to pay for the NAV Canada services they will provide to us. So, Mr.
Speaker, I will be voting in favour of this motion.
--Applause