Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the request that has come forward for land in that area has come forward to the city for residential development. Our involvement, as the Member knows, was to grant access for some geotech work in that immediate area. There was an additional request that has come forward to do some legal surveying of the properties in that area. We have refused that request as we felt it was premature for us to consider that, and that's something that should be dealt with through the city. So the city, right now, has not provided us any information on the application that has come forward. Our discussions with my officials here have been around Transportation's desire to develop on the west side of the airport and increasing our land reserve, and developing the information and engineering and all the information that's required for that area.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Mr. Ramsay.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I know the Minister has to, and if he hasn't had this discussion with his officials then I think this is something that has to happen. His officials have to be telling him what type of impacts will be felt by residential developments in that close a proximity to the Yellowknife Airport. If they aren't telling him that, and I'm sure they have, I mean, they spent how many hundreds of thousands of dollars on this airport master development plan and there has to be an impact. You don't have a residential neighbourhood next to this airport. I'm wondering what type of discussions the Minister has had with his staff regarding that type of development being that close to the airport. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Ramsay. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, the area that the Yellowknives Dene have expressed interest in is along Highway No. 3, a ways from the airport development plan that we have. There are no conflicting overlaps at this point. There is residential that's probably closer that's already there. So I'm sure if that's a concern, it would be a concern to the residents who are living in that area. Aside from that, we have not seen an application come to us. We have had a discussion in terms of our needs and this does not conflict with it.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. Next on the list I have Ms. Lee.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I just wanted to make some general comments. I haven't made comments on this department in a while, it seems. I want to make comments on the bridge, on Highway No. 3, on the airport, and the Kam Lake access road.

With respect to the bridge, Madam Chair, I have been a strong, enthusiastic supporter of this bridge from day one and I know that the Minister has been, as well, from the beginning, supporting this. I think we are very close to seeing the completion of this project, so I am interested in knowing what the latest development is in that area and when we should be expecting to be, or if we are still expecting to be, turning the soil on that this fall.

Highway No. 3, Madam Chair, was in really rough shape five years ago. I spoke in favour of getting that completed for a long time, but I haven't lately because I had received commitments over the years that it is almost close to being finished. But for some reason, I thought that the last part of Highway No. 3 was to be done by this fall. But I think the construction completion date is now next fall. So I'm just wondering if there has been a change in that plan. The last time I drove over that was in December, and we are pretty close to getting it done. There is still the last 30 kilometres or so left. So I'd like to know if there have been any changes to that, or if it has always been that way. I seem to recall that it was going to be done about a year after the last election.

The third one is to do with the Kam Lake access road. I really think that it is becoming an urgent issue that we have to somehow create an access road that bypasses the Old Airport Road. It's becoming really dangerous between 8:30 a.m. or 8:15 a.m. for that 20-minute or 30-minute rush hour in the morning, and in the afternoon it's just bumper to bumper from almost the airport turnoff to the residential area. We had an accident on the other side of the Highway No. 3 turnoff. It has to be difficult for the trucking industry to be operating when they have to wait for a long time to turn off on that road, never mind the safety questions to the drivers of small cars. But for the truck drivers, it's not very convenient for them either. They have to negotiate and sit there and wait for an opportunity to turn, especially in winter months. Maybe during the winter months the department could look at creating a winter road access, at least in the meantime, where the Kam Lake bypass could be, if that came to reality. Maybe we could have a winter road access there in January and February when the truck traffic is at the highest. I realize there are lots of layers of issues involved in this, but the use there is great and it requires action on that road.

My fourth issue has to do with the airport. Last fall, Mr. Chairman, we had lots of discussions about this airport expansion plan and I know that the Minister revisited this plan. A new proposal went out with some amendments. I'd like to know, I guess first of all, what the expansion will look like, and then go from there. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Lee. Mr. McLeod.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. There are a number of questions there. In terms of the Deh Cho Bridge, the concession agreement has been worked on over the last several months. Also the environmental assessment was done and that has gone to the federal government with a recommendation to approve. The design has been worked on for some time now. It's down to a couple small issues. We're hoping to have agreement on that issue fairly quickly. The Deh Cho Bridge Corporation indicates to us that they have their lenders in place. With all those issues in mind, we're anticipating that we probably could have a concession agreement signed in the next couple of weeks, maybe even sooner than that. We are hoping that we will have a final agreement on the concession agreement once everything is in place, and that is targeted for some time this spring. The current schedule is still something that we're hoping to see followed through, with construction starting some time later on this summer, with a completion date of 2006. So those are the targeted dates and things seem to still be on line with the bridge negotiations and discussions.

Highway No. 3 is targeted for completion, including the pavement, for fall of this year. We had accelerated this project when we got new dollars from the federal government. That seems to be going on schedule. The last contract was broken down into two phases, so everything seems to be falling into place and we should have everything completed by fall of this coming fiscal year.

The Kam Lake access road is a little more complicated. We have been talking to the city for some time. We are in the same position as the city; we'd like to see the road in place. There are safety issues. There are noise issues. There is a lot of traffic coming down the road in terms of the resource development that's happening in this area. We are working on an MOU. We have had the first draft brought forward by the city over to our department. We are reviewing it. We are going to be adding our comments on the draft very shortly and have those discussions continue. We also have not, as a department, done an evaluation or any engineering work on this project. There is an assessed estimation brought forward by the city. It's a $5 million project. We are committed right now to do the portion that would allow us to get access to the west side with our project for the development of that area. The city wants us to expand that. We're looking at what it would cost. We're looking at doing some engineering work, some estimations, and having further discussion.

With the winter road portion, we have not really had a lot of discussion around that issue. We could do that. It was not raised by ourselves or the city, so that's something we'd have to commit to doing. We certainly could follow through with that. It might be a solution for the short term, anyway. We will commit to having that discussion with the city.

The airport expansion is going ahead. We have all our contracts tendered out and allocated. There are a couple of issues that we've managed to resolve. We had done a study. We did some questionnaires. We talked to the people that were using the terminal facility. We talked to some of the people that were in the facility. We did a number of things. We had a consultant do a whole study for us. They came back with some new recommendations, some options for us, especially in the area of the restaurant. They came back and recommended to us to leave the facility where it is located and made some other suggestions. We're following through with that. The parking lot has been done. I think most of the work there has been completed. The site clearing and preparation began last fall for the apron. The contractor has been working on this project. We're anticipating that portion will be done by late 2005.

The contract was recently awarded in December for the passenger terminal building. The actual work will start in April of this year. That includes the CATSA portion. The CATSA reimbursement agreement, I should point out, has also been signed and we are also working on the other portion, which is the annex. That has also gone out to contract in December of this year. That annex portion will be done, I'm told, the summer of this year also. So overall, the project completion is scheduled for the fall of 2006.

Thank you, Mr. McLeod. I have Mr. Braden next.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The two topics that come to my radar screen with this department I think have already received some attention here, and I will continue on with a bit more information about the implementation and rollout of the cost of the Yellowknife Airport expansion and how that is going to be administered or managed by the department; more specifically, Mr. Chairman, whether the department has, at this point, any more of a detailed plan on how these costs are going to be passed on to the customers at the airport. The last bit of information that I had was that the $6.6 million project cost that the GNWT was going to assume responsibility for was going to be passed on entirely to the customers through increases in landing fees, and that was to be done over the next 10 years. So that is the last information that I had. Has anything further been developed in just how the traveling public will be affected? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, the cost recovery on the Yellowknife Airport expansion project is going to be through a couple of ways. We are looking at incorporating two new fees starting 2006-07 and that would be in the form of increasing the terminal fees by 100 percent and we're also looking at increasing the landing fees 33 percent. This will result in a recovery of $616,000 a year over a 10-year period.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Right. So both of those fees are due to take effect on the 1st of April 2006. Okay, I'm seeing nods yes confirming that. I've been talking to some of the airlines, Mr. Chairman, who are the principle customers, the tenants, if you will, of the airport and the terminal building, and of late they were just getting this information and beginning to incorporate it into their fee schedules or having a look at how they incorporate it, seeing whether or not there was something they could absorb. Of course, I'm not going to ask the department to speak on behalf of the airlines; they can do this on their own. The department must have some kind of a pro forma forecast on how this is going to affect the traveling public. Both the flying passengers and I would also suggest the freight customers. So what kind of speculation or information

could the Minister provide on how they think this is going to increase the cost of air travel? Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, we have also been talking to the air carriers. We have had numerous discussions I guess over the last while with NATA and we informed them that we were going to do this formally in December of this year. We've also been consulting with the air carrier consultation committee that we've been talking to in the last while. So the industry knew and has known of our plans. How they impact will be felt by industry I guess is dependent on how the carriers pass on those costs. We're assuming it will be passed on to the traveling public, and our estimation is that on average we will probably see tickets go up by three or four dollars.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I won't ask the Minister to speculate anymore on what the direct costs are going to be. We'll see how the airlines choose to manage that in due course. But, the department chose, as far as I know, Mr. Chairman, to pass on 100 percent of these costs to the public and, unless I'm wrong, we're not absorbing any of these whatsoever. It's a bit of mantra of mine, Mr. Chairman, that whatever this government does to increase the cost of living and the cost of doing business in the Northwest Territories must be something that we consider very, very carefully. That is where I'd like to ask what other options do we have, Mr. Chairman, other than simply passing off 100 percent of these costs to the traveling public? Is there no other venue or avenue that we have to help absorb this? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. Mr. Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, yes, we did have a lot of discussion around this issue. It wasn't our first preference to incorporate any new costs to the traveling public. However, in this case, we needed to have additional resources to invest in the expansion that's required in this facility. Out of the $11.2 million that this project is costed at, the Government of the Northwest Territories' portion is $6.6 million. We did look at a number of ways that we could raise that revenue. We considered an airport improvement fee and we had some discussion around that. We did not think that at this point it would be appropriate for us to move forward. It is something that we are looking at maybe the possibility of reviewing the Airports Act to consider that for some time maybe in the future as part of other issues around that.

The Member mentioned other avenues. The other avenue would have been to have the Government of the Northwest Territories pay for the whole Government of the Northwest Territories' portion and we did have that discussion. However, it was felt that because our fees, general terminal fees and landing fees, were significantly lower and will continue to be lower than other jurisdictions that we could use that avenue to raise some revenue to recover some of our costs and we had agreed to that.

Thank you, Mr. Minister. Mr. Braden.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Here is an area where I have to take exception with the department and at times other areas of our public service as well that we make comparisons with other jurisdictions and that is a very legitimate part of our job. We should know what we're doing in relation to the rest of the world, but it does not for me, Mr. Chairman, and in all cases all the time justify whether we do something in a certain way just because this is what the landing fees are in Ottawa or Halifax or Saskatoon because they are airports that may have a similar number of landings or air traffic movements or passengers or this kind of thing.

Mr. Chairman, the point is that we can't just be compared across the board all the time with these other jurisdictions. We are not in the same operating environment. We are in an isolated place. We don't have the options of rail or perhaps multiple road connections or sea or all of these kinds of things. Our dependence on air travel and the amount of money that we put out for it professionally in our businesses and personally is quite high. For that reason I just really downplay, I don't reject altogether, Mr. Chairman, but I downplay these ideas that if this is what happens in the rest of Canada for an operation of our scale, this is what we can do up here too. I don't buy that. Let's do what we need to do to serve our needs. Whether or not it jibes with the way someone else does it doesn't really matter. This is where I go back to my point that I don't believe the Department of Transportation has really looked hard enough or pushed all the buttons hard enough to give the traveling public these other options.

I've gone over my time here, Mr. Chairman. I'll stop now with that point. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Braden. That was more of a comment. I'll go now to Mr. Hawkins.