Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I’ll go through the list and I apologize if I missed anything. To the issue of are the 802s up to the task, we’ve battle tested these planes now, not only us but other jurisdictions, but we’ve seen them firsthand in the Northwest Territories. It’s our third season, and they’ve handled everything that Mother Nature and forest fires could throw at them. They are nimble. They can operate in turn and maneuver very, very well. They are powerful. They have the distinct added advantage that they can go to shallow lakes that the 215s currently can’t.

Whereas a 215 may have to trundle off 20 minutes down the way or half an hour down the way, there are many, many times when the 802s are already back in action picking up water, hitting the fires, picking up water, hitting the fires, because they have that capacity to operate in shallower lakes.

The issue of VFR versus…instrument flight rating versus visual flight rules, sorry, it’s very rarely that it has ever been an issue. Of course, one of the key factors is the good fortune, I suppose, that during fire season we have just about 24-hour daylight, so it very seldom gets dark, and if, in fact, the visibility is bad enough because of the smoke, then nobody flies because of the risk. I’ll point people back to the ‘70s, I think it was, in Smith, as a matter of fact, where we had a collision in mid-air of water bombers and there were about four people killed, and they were in circumstances where there was almost no visibility, so it’s very problematic.

The issue of private ownership versus public ownership, we’ve laid it out for committee. The dollars, the math is very clear that in the North if we were going to look at using northern business and we wanted the northern business to pick up the $30 million and bill us back that we would pay a premium in the millions of dollars over the life of a contract so that they can, in fact, the private owner could go to the bank and get money knowing that they have a 10-year contract and over that 10 years we would have to pay back, for example, the $30 million. We demonstrated, we showed that we’d save literally millions of dollars in interest payments by us buying the planes and then putting it out as we do now, by tender or contract, to maintain and operate the aircraft without the burden of having to pay the interest payments and the paydown in the principal cost to the airlines of the airplanes. So we were of the opinion if by that approach, then every northern business that’s up here that can bid would be in a position to bid and not disqualified because it had to carry the burden of $30 million costs as part of the contact that would disqualify potentially a lot of northern participants.

If you’re going to buy a new 415, it would cost you $40 million. I don’t disagree with the Member that if money was no object we might have two 415s and four Air Tractors or some other configuration, but the reality is we need to look at the economics and how do we best protect the interest of the people of the Northwest Territories in a way that’s affordable. We believe, after extensive work, that the 802s are the best way forward and then if we have greater needs, we look at using the capacity under our MARS agreements, our mutual aid agreements with all the other jurisdictions, to bring in other aircraft as required.

In terms of the land-based aircraft that we have, for example, we’ve been leasing aircraft, as the Member suggested, because the northern aircraft

haven’t been available. So the DC-6 Electras, which are a critical land-based component, we have two built into the contract. We’ve been making arrangements to try to lease those from the South until we can get our own northern land-based planes operational and that is a very expensive proposition, but those are critical missing pieces at this point from our northern arsenal.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe I’ve touched on most of the issues. Thank you.