Just before I get to the issue with Deline and the runway extension there, I wanted to mention, also, that in Norman Wells we’re looking at the runway vulnerability assessment, and that is in response to Mr. Bromley’s questions, as well, on what we’re doing to deal with climate change. So we’re looking at the runway in Norman Wells and assessing that. The Member would know, as he travels through Norman
Wells quite often, that we’ve put grooves in that runway, as well, to help with the water, and that has been very successful as well. I wanted to mention that.
Getting to the issue with the extension in Deline, we did have a successful partnership with Fort Good Hope in the past. The extension for Deline, we continue to work towards updating the runway length study that we completed a couple of years ago. It’s not going to come with a small price tag though. If you look at even extending the runway to 5,000 metres, it’s going to be at a price tag of about four and a half million. Then if you went to 6,000 metres, that price would jump to seven and a half million. It’s not a small undertaking for the community. A community the size of Deline, how could they partner with us, you know. That’s a big amount of money. We’d be looking to continue to move forward, and I think we’re going to update the length study that we have.
We’ll continue to discuss with the community. I know the community is interested in getting some preliminary design, and we could provide that, a very rough estimate of that to the community so they have a better idea of the numbers that we’re talking about, and we can all be on the same page here, because I think the numbers that are there are substantial numbers.
Again, I think when you’re looking at the prospect of spending four and half to seven and a half million dollars expanding a runway in Deline, there has to be that economic driver, something that’s going to really necessitate the government spending that type of money on extending a runway in a community like Deline. But again, that’s not to say we don’t want to continue the dialogue, continue the discussion with the community. We will do that.