Thank you, Mr. Chair. Obviously, with this year’s firefighting season, I am definitely supporting the second part of this training of firefighters at the regional levels and including more and more of that for future years. We know over the next couple of years we are probably going to need more crews on the ground, and even the department mentioned it yesterday that we have these large craft that spread retardant but the actual fires are put out by the crews, by the staff, and I think that we need to make sure that we have a well-trained staff in the Northwest Territories. If we have an abundance of staff in five years, then that’s something that we can farm out.

Obviously, considering the 215s, I do think it’s an asset that we need to keep. I have been questioning the need for the 802s at this time, especially with the expenditures that we’ve been having. I know there are concerns with the fuels, yet we know there are thousands if not tens of thousands of planes that are currently operating under this fuel system in North America, and I think that the perceived perception that there is going to be a shortage of this fuel is one where we are predicting, or one we are convincing ourselves that this is a situation that needs to be rectified by purchasing these 802s, spending $27 million currently. I guess I lost that fight. I have been fighting to maybe delay this purchase of these units and try to actually do it between the two types of equipment. I think this is the compromise that would keep the 215s.

When we have demands in the Territories, we’re going to need all the assets that we have. We have heard from the Minister and the department that we will farm it out, we will get additional reinforcements from other regions. The problem being, if there are fires in every other province and they have their assets contained, we will have difficulties acquiring this. Typically, there is some region that is not fighting fires at the same time as us, but the scenarios are that we should be keeping… If we have an asset that the fuel supply hasn’t run out, and we have these assets and the parts for it, we know that they are effective in many ways, we should be keeping these assets in our inventory until the last possible minute that we can.

We’re not getting much for sale value. We know they are not much use for other territories who have upgraded to the 415s, the larger planes. What we know is our jurisdiction is smaller funded and we can’t afford 415s, so I think we should be keeping the 215s as arsenal in our firefighting capacity, so I will be supporting this motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair.