Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Braden, your time has expired. I will go to Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps one suggestion I could make that would maybe discourage the Cabinet from approving these special warrants in between sessions when we are not here is to have session every month. We could have one week a month and then they'll have to bring all their expenditure approvals to us. We'll just have a Cabinet meeting with 19 Members so that we don't have a special warrant for $4.6 million where we have absolutely no say whatsoever. I mean, I was crying fowl over $115,000, now we are dealing with multimillions. That's one suggestion, which will go, I'm sure, unheeded.

---Laughter

But to the airport expenditure, Mr. Chairman, I don't know what transpired that made it such an emergency item here, and I guess the Minister and Ministers McLeod and Dent have been working hard to explain this. One of the fallouts from this is the restaurant contract at the airport; the requirement for extra equipment and whatever that they need to be put into the airport, that didn't come about just this summer. That has been an ongoing project nationwide and internationally at every airport since September 11th. That didn't just pop up on us and it's not a surprise, but for some reason I guess they've been negotiating for three years and finally they got to it. The irony of it all is that the Department of Transportation let out a contract for the restaurant at the airport just this spring and they signed a contract for five years for a restaurant. It was only about three months after these people had been running a restaurant they get told actually there will be no restaurant under the new plan, there is just going to be fast food. The deal with the restaurant speaks to me about one part of the government not looking at what another part of the government is doing. There is the Department of Transportation, it's interested in looking after the airports, making sure it's meeting the standards and all of that. I don't know how that happened. I would like to know if the Minister is aware of any damages. Are we responsible for living up to the agreements under this restaurant lease, Mr. Chairman? Thank you.

Ms. Lee, that is a bit of an aside from what we are talking about, but I will allow the question. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I'm not aware of the terms and conditions in the contract for the restaurant space, nor am I aware of what the plans are for that space through this. So perhaps I could refer the question to Minister McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, the Member is right; we did sign a five-year agreement with a company here in Yellowknife to provide food and beverage services, and I'm not aware of the fact that we did indicate to them that we will no longer be using a restaurant, because we haven't made that decision yet. Right now we are in the process of doing a retail concession study along with a customer satisfaction survey, and we are doing a cost assessment as part of the request for proposals. So we have not decided at this point that we will not have a restaurant. We are more in a situation where we will be making a decision based on what is more cost-effective and what does the general public require and why. It may be a food court, but it may be a restaurant. There is no decision to terminate the contract with the company at this point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Ms. Lee, further questions?

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think I'm on the verge of doing three to zero here. It is in line with this because of the fact that this whole money for renovations to allow for an explosive protection system and different conveyor belts to make sure that all the baggage could be X-rayed and stuff, that is the money that is being sought here. It is that renovation that is requiring the Department of Transportation to look at all of the configurations in order to fit everything in. I am encouraged to hear that the Minister and his department are having talks with the proprietors of the restaurant to see if the contract that they had entered into could be lived up to. I think there's a question as to what kind of services they are able to provide or they thought they were required to provide, and whether or not it's similar to what the department has in mind. But I would encourage the department and the Minister to do anything they can to try to live up to that lease if at all possible.

The second thing is an issue about the added fees that would have to be levied to the businesses at the airport. Mr. Chairman, as I recall, it hasn't been that long since we increased the levies for the users at the airport. I think it was within the last two or three years, and the increase was quite substantial and it has had a very negative impact on the businesses. With the skyrocketing oil prices, I'm sure that is impacting heavily on the airline carriers. So it will be an extra cost on top of extra operating costs. At the time it was felt that the government had to make that tough decision, but I really don't believe there are enough numbers of operators out there to have a large enough base for the government to rack up a lot of money. So that's one area of concern that I need to express in light of what this government has to do, and the fact that this government has to pay a lot more money than what the federal government is prepared to pay to undertake these renovations that we are being required to do. I guess that's more of a comment, and I just wanted to express my view on that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll pick up where I left off a few minutes ago, and that was to explore the negotiation that we undertook with CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority. Minister McLeod assures us that his officials negotiated aggressively and we got the best deal, but that doesn't answer my question. How do we know we've got a deal that's at least comparative with other similar sized airports? Have you done the analysis? Have you got the comparisons to show that Yellowknife is at least being treated on an equitable basis for the investment that we're going to get in this from the national people? I want to see some proof here that we do indeed know we're getting a square deal. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have any detail on the negotiations, so perhaps the Minister, if he doesn't have it with him, could commit to get the information to committee members about the details on the negotiations.

Thank you, Mr. Dent. Mr. McLeod.

Mr. Chairman, I don't have the proof that the Member is asking for in terms of documents, so I would have to commit to providing that at a later time.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll take that, but I think the criteria that I have here is I want to see that Yellowknife and the Northwest Territories is within range of the requirements that are being imposed on airports across Canada.

A couple of other areas in here have to do with the timing of this. Of course, so much of this was forced by the tragedy of 9-11, but that goes back three years now. Now we have this accelerated plan. The government was caused to approve a special warrant on June 30th, four months ago. I would like to know when did the planning and the scoping really start in earnest for this project, and when do we have to have all this installation completed? What's our planning time frame here to completion? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Dent.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In terms of when this was initially started, the Minister already said today that we were advised, and he believes in December of 2003, of the necessity to add the equipment. I suspect that the department, over a period of months, developed a more detailed plan when they came to understand just how much space that equipment was going to take up in the existing building. The deadline to have it in operation, or else all airplanes leaving Yellowknife may not land at another national airport, is the beginning of January 2006. So we have just over a year before flights from Yellowknife would not be allowed to land at other national airports unless this system is in place. For instance, what's happening right now is that the work is already underway for the parking lot. The annex for the air terminal building tender will close on October 28th, so that's later this week. The passenger terminal improvements and hold bag screening construction tender closes on November 9th, and the apron construction will be tendered later this year. So in order to meet that January 2006 deadline, a number of parts of the project have had to be advanced, and again that points to the reason for the special warrant rather than coming to this session of the Assembly to present it. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

What kind of communications or information flow has there been with stakeholders, the tenants at the airport, passengers or anybody else who is involved with this? What kind of a program of information has been put out on that to date? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Perhaps I could ask the Minister of Transportation to answer that.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. McLeod.