Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In regard to the reduction of the contract for fire crews and fire crews in general, I’ll start with the government crew, which is the Inuvik crew. Three of the five positions had been vacant for the last two years. We had extreme difficulty filling those particular positions.
In regard to the nine contract fire crews, three of the crews had approached ENR to take back the contracts in various regions. I won’t get into the particular locations. But for various reasons — either their corporation got themselves into some type of financial difficulties; they couldn’t find manpower…. In fact, a big one that’s growing more and more is…. The GNWT — when our fire crew is no longer the employer of choice, they’re moving on to some of the areas in the resource development sector. So we had three crews that had come back to us.
We also, in our review of the whole forest management process and the fire-management operation, took a look…. We actually had two crews who fought two fires the entire fire season last year. Another crew went on one mop-up last year. So we were experiencing tremendous difficulty with a lot of the crews, for a number of reasons. It was not only us; the contractors themselves were experiencing a lot of these difficulties. Many of the decisions ENR didn’t even have to make. The contractors made them, because they approached us. Mr. Chairman, I hope that helps a little bit.