Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to add to Colville and Fort Good Hope for office space, I know Fort Good Hope in particular is on our list for the following year; however, for Colville, though, I’ll have to check into that facility there. I am aware and have visited that smaller little office in the centre of town. Their nice little place, no doubt, but going forward, again, I’m not aware of it at this point and I can look into that.
Just on fighting fires in the Northwest Territories, the Minister did identify there is very little difference here except, of course, we’re all aware of the access issues and where there are areas where the road system is in and it’s easier access, yes, we do take advantage of other equipment and we did use a substantial amount of heavy equipment this past summer in the southern part of the Northwest Territories. Of course, with that is a lot of reclamation work. We’re underway with the reclamation work and my understanding is that we’re very close here to completing working with the Lands department and completing the reclamation work and some of the work of the heavy equipment.
Also, I just want to point out on the command system and all the different angles and support and the processes that are underway, a lot of times a lot of people are not clear that eventually the people that put out the fires or when we call a fire out or under control that it’s our firefighters and as result of their work. I know there’s that misconception that’s out there that the tankers put our fires out. Well, they’re retardant aircraft. They retard the growth of the fires, and to get control and put the fires out it’s definitely our fire crews that do that.
On the capacity, we do have where we had 29 crews, one community felt that they couldn’t fulfill their contract, so we have 28 fire crews, but part of the review this year that we’re undertaking now is to assess whether that amount of crews or that configuration of five-man crews is the right mix here for initial attack and fire suppression, especially in light of the extreme season we had and we definitely have to look at that.