Mr. Chairman, as I said in my opening comments, I said we are continuing to develop an airport investment strategy that will lay out the improvements that we need over the next 20 years. I also acknowledge the commercial opportunities that exist there for us. So, we do not have any particular game plan in mind that we want to achieve an objective other than to maximize the potential that is here for all of us. I do not have a preference in terms of the governance model. I know there are stakeholders out there, airline operators at all our airports, who do not want to see any costs off-loaded onto them because their businesses may be struggling as it is.
What we want to do here, and I know when we do it as a government it does make people nervous, we want to take a look at the long-term opportunities. I will meet with the employees, UNW. We would work it out with the UNW president to give everybody assurances that before any changes are made that we want to make sure that everyone's needs are considered.
This is not an off-loading. I know it makes people nervous that somewhere we are going to off-load the costs onto them. That is not the intention. In fact, I have said in answering questions last week that we are committed, if we do make changes, to keeping at least the same level of advancement that we currently in the airport operation in Yellowknife. We are not going to decrease that. So we are not intending to pull-out and somehow put those costs onto someone else.
There is a lot of potential. There is also a lot of need. If we are going to have international passengers coming to the territories, we need to probably have a 10,000 foot strip. It means extending what we have, ours is only about 8,500 feet. Now we have to build a 10,000 foot strip. Our airport terminal is too small and too congested right now. Same with the ramp space and so on. So there are some big investments that have to be made if we are going to get into the international airport league.
So, we want to look at these things. We are looking at them over the longer term. I do not have any conclusions that I want the panel to come to. We have given them a fair bit of latitude to do what they feel is best. They are going to report back to us in May and I will be happy to share the report with the Members and discuss it from there. This is clearly just aimed at trying to take advantage of opportunities that are before us right now, not to in any way off-load anything or take away benefits of employees or airline operators or anyone else. So I am open-minded on it. Thank you.