Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, through our discussions with the Intergovernmental Forum on Devolution, hopefully we will have a little bit more resources to play with. In the meantime, I do agree that through consultation and talking with people with the local and traditional knowledge that road system, you would have avoided some problematic areas after the fact. I would just like to put that issue aside for a moment.
Mr. Chairman, I want to reiterate my concern, once again, about those communities that are linked only by air. Communities like Lutselk'e, Wha Ti and Wekweti and those communities that rely heavily on air traffic, our own transportation link, our lifeline that is the airports. I am still concerned that there is no training for specialized firefighting such as fuel fires. God forbid if there is ever a plane crash in one of our airports and we can't get that plane off the ground or off the airstrip, how we plan to deal with the emergency situation on that particular airstrip. Most communities don't have the equipment, let alone the personnel to do it. That's one area. I am not going to ask specific questions because I have asked questions in the past and they have never been answered.
The other area I want to ask the Minister to give some thought and to put it on public record, Mr. Chairman, is our position on asking for and receiving more over-the-Arctic flying schedules and routes. There is a concern that I have regarding greenhouse gases that the jet stream left behind by the jets stays up there, high above, 30,000 or 40,000 feet and doesn't disappear acting like a blanket over our northern environment. That's a theory that's been shared with me. I wonder if the department has ever looked at that theory, has ever discussed that theory with their federal and other provincial counterparts and if there is any validity in that theory. We should easily determine, since the fall of the Soviet Union and the increased traffic over the pole if there has been a difference in the environment. Last summer was a very depressing summer in the Northwest Territories. The rain never stopped. We are seeing more and more of those summers. We have seen more and more of those summers since the fall of the Soviet Union and the polar route has been opened up for air traffic. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.