Thank you, Mr. Chair. I will not be supporting this motion. I think retaining this fleet would be, unfortunately, equivalent to deciding to keep an albatross around our necks. This is currently an investment liability with increasingly low returns on that investment.

We know what maintenance costs are and they’re increasing. We know we have to maintain a huge parts inventory, and these are the sorts of commitments we’d need to retain this as a potentially useful tool. I mean, this is just for standby we’re talking here and the years such as this when we would take any help we can get. Of course, the Minister and others have mentioned that we can patch into those other resources nationally as required and very efficient use of fleets across Canada. It enables jurisdictions to do what they can without having to try and cover all fronts.

As a member of the Economic Development and Infrastructure standing committee, I was able to participate in a review of this and ask a lot of questions, and I was satisfied with the responses I heard. The sorts of things I’ve heard during the debate so far here with ENR and this session is these aircraft are costly to maintain. They’re old. As the Minister said, they’re almost as old as I am, and that’s pretty old. Those costs are both direct through maintaining the aircraft and indirect through maintenance of a very large inventory of parts which is required, as we know. I think of Buffalo Air and I’m sure they have a huge inventory of parts to keep those aircraft in the air, and that is an ongoing cost.

While they carry a larger payload of water, and that’s attractive, they are significantly limited, as we’ve heard, in several ways. Just to go over a few of those: maneuverability. They’re not able to get into small water bodies, so they have to go quite a ways. They’re not as precise in delivering the load exactly where it’s needed. Fuel requirements, very restrictive. Avgas, as we know, is becoming more and more limited in its availability across the NWT and across the North. Of course, that means they can’t be stationed where they need to be without a huge investment to transport fuel rather than relying on commercial supplies that have larger volumes and lower costs. There is also something I haven’t heard people mention very much, if at all, and that’s the personnel requirements. The 215s have double the personnel requirements of the 802s, and to have them on standby, again, I think, is a significant part of the costs. I’ve mentioned the maintenance and precision of delivery as an additional couple of things.

I’d just like to relate, very briefly, an experience I had. I think it was last summer. My wife and I were

out at River Lake and woke up to a small forest fire not too far away. After foolishly trying to fight it ourselves, we found out my wife’s cell phone worked, so we were able to patch in and within 20 minutes the 215s were there. It was great. There were two of them and they dumped six loads for that tiny little fire, but each time to reload they had to go all the way to Prosperous Lake, whereas the 802s clearly would have been able to dip right there into that significantly sized River Lake. That’s an example of the sorts of and, again, very precise, delivery.

Pollution kits, I think I heard Mrs. Groenewegen talk about those, and those are of interest. I would think they would certainly be available on a modern aircraft and we should include that in our purchase if that’s the case for the 802s.

Currently, I think there is a modest bit of resale value for these aircraft and the very large parts inventory we have, so considering this potential investment recovery, as modest as it is, but also avoiding the increasing annual costs of maintenance, crews, insurance, and so on, all for this aging fleet, with all of the limitations that are listed in their performance really robs us of the funding and resources we’re seeking in the second half of the motion, which I do support very much. Partly I disagree with the first part of this and I see a conflict with the second part, which I do support.

Again, I appreciate this being brought forward and the discussion that it’s engendered here, and I certainly hope we don’t forget about the second part. Again, I will be not supporting the motion, but I do appreciate the discussion.