Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I thank my colleagues for speaking in favour of the motion. I’d like to thank Cabinet for their opinions.

I believe what we’re talking about here, Mr. Chair, is an experiment that’s gone wrong, and we want to bring it back again. Fundamentally, we cannot be doing that as a government. That’s the definition of crazy, by the way: it’s where you keep doing the same things over and over and expecting different results. This is a case we’ve proven is wrong, and we just cannot go down that road again.

I’d like to thank Mr. Krutko for bringing up the fact that it does operate as a regional airport in that west section of our Northwest Territories. It services all the communities down there and up the valley as well, toward Norman Wells.

Although Mr. Minister speaks about apples and oranges, it’s still the same thing. You can take the spots off a leopard, but it’s still a leopard once again.

To me, Mr.

Chair, in all the discussions with

everybody I’ve talked with and all my colleagues and with committee, we talk about the Premier wanting to go down the road of fiscal restraint and

reallocation of funds for strategic investment. But I keep saying that it’s strategic to keep what we have, especially something that’s working. It’s going well, and there’s good reason to keep it. There’s no good reason not to keep it. That’s what we’ve seen, and that’s what we keep saying over and over.

Mr. Minister asked for suggestions and options, and that’s what we’re telling him. That’s our suggestion and our option: you keep that airport staff and you keep that airport running at the level of service that is provided for the traveling public out there.

Above all, it’s been said it’s for the ’09–10 budget, but you brought us down this road. You’ve mentioned it in our committee; you’ve sent the letters out to the employees. You told us to wait for business plans, but we cannot do it, because I know how government works. Silence is assent, and we’re not silent and we’re not assenting to this.

With that, Mr. Chair, I’d like to call for a recorded vote.