Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the Member for the question. Mr. Speaker, for clarification, the figure of $44,000 quoted in the paper is not accurate. The most recent figure we have for the trip, if it were to return from Nuuk back to Yellowknife direct, would be $34,000. Also, there is no Challenger 2 jet. This is a Citation 2.
Mr. Speaker, if I may take a minute to clarify at how we arrived at the decision. In the first place, it was only my party of three people that I was involved in to go to Iqaluit and Nuuk. What we found out was that in order to go from Iqaluit to Nuuk and return, that was going to cost us two charters at roughly $7,000 a charter, plus the airfare from here to Iqaluit, which is $3,000 a passenger. What we found out by January 22nd was that there were not even anymore seats available on the airlines, so if we were to make the decision, we would have to make it pretty fast. We then phoned around to see if we could get better charter figures. We found that to go from here to Iqaluit return with a jet was $17,000, capable of holding eight passengers. That works out to $24,000 on airfares, plus it would bring us into Iqaluit on the day of the opening, rather than on the 15th, when we would have to sit in Iqaluit for three days waiting for the events to start. Furthermore, the House was still in session on that day.
There were all kinds of problems like this that we were trying to address. In the end, the ultimate decision was that if we take on eight passengers, it was cheaper than it is to go airfare plus room and board and time away from the office. It was far cheaper to use the jet. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.