Thanks, Mr. Chair. Yes, I will try to leave some time at the end for the Minister to reply.
I don't want to repeat all of the arguments of my colleague from Kam Lake, but I do have some additional items, as well. I think it's fair to say that this proposal for Bill 7, it was not part of the mandate. This was not an initiative that I knew anything about. It was not part of the mandate, so what was really driving this? I think the motivation was the fiscal reduction targets set by Cabinet to try to get this $4 million contribution from our government off the books, quite frankly. That was the motivation, in my opinion, for this move. Because, if it had been such a great idea, this should have been done years ago, so I don't understand the timing of this. It's not just coincidence that it's being introduced at the same time Cabinet has their fiscal reduction strategy.
I think it's also fair to say that this proposal has been characterized by some rather poor communications. MLAs, we first heard about this because of media reports of staff from the department briefing Yellowknife City Council on this before we had received a technical briefing or even information about this. Also, when the legislative proposal was brought forward to committee in May, at that point, committee had asked for detailed information about how this was going to be rolled out in the form of a business plan. That business plan was not put together and provided to committee until September. It took months for the department to get this together. I know that there have been some remarks in the past about how committee is delaying this. That is completely untrue. It really goes back to, I think, the poor communications from the department in bringing this forward and providing the information to the standing committee.
Now, I want to go on to some other points here. Committee and members of the public, in fact, and committee members had asked the department to consider a phased-in approach to the fees. We felt that that was a more reasonable approach to take. The answer, though, from the department, from the Minister, was no, they were not prepared to consider a phased-in approach. I will have some questions for the Minister about that to see whether he might be willing to reconsider that. As my colleague, the honourable Member from Kam Lake said, I find it very inconsistent that on one hand this government has resisted a carbon tax with incredible fortitude in light of potential cost-of-living increases, but, on the other hand, cost-of-living increases related to increases in fees for users of the airport, that is fine because we can get that money off of our books. So I just find that inconsistency a little bit too hard to swallow. I will be looking for a much stronger approach in terms of carbon pricing from our government when it comes to cost of living. They do not see that that is going to be a big issue, so I look forward to that from our Cabinet colleagues.
Like the previous speaker said, I think part of the issue here, too, is to try to get our federal government to invest in our gateway airport into the Northwest Territories, and I don't really see a sufficient effort on the part of our Cabinet to do that, and perhaps by previous governments, as well. We do have a federal engagement strategy, and investment in the Yellowknife Airport I don't think is even mentioned in the federal engagement strategy. I will have questions for the Minister in terms of what we are doing to try to tap federal funding programs for investment in the Yellowknife Airport and whether indeed we can or should be adjusting the federal engagement strategy and our requests under various funds that are provided to seek more investment into the Yellowknife Airport, perhaps even above and beyond roads to resources, one of the favourite investments from Cabinet.
Why investment in the Yellowknife Airport is important is because it can help promote tourism, and tourism is sustainable. That is why I think that we have to go back and look at how we are approaching the federal government to seek better investment in the Yellowknife Airport.
I want to move on to the Economic Advisory Committee. This is the thing that causes me the greatest amount of concern and my greatest issue with this proposal. There is nothing really changing with the governance of the airport. All that is happening is that the revenues from this are going to go into a revolving fund. It's still going to be a DOT operation. They just won't have to provide any money for that because it will be the users paying for it, but nothing else is really changing.
What I have heard from constituents and the community and the users is that they would like to have a more meaningful say in what happens at the airport. So we pushed the Minister on this, and we asked about what this Economic Advisory Committee would be, and his response has continually been that we are looking for business leaders that already have an interest in the airport and that want to promote the airport, and that is what this Economic Advisory Committee is really all about.
Well, that does not meet the test of independence, representativeness, accountability. Having this committee appointed by a deputy minister rather than by the Minister, himself, I just do not understand how that creates confidence in what this committee can and should be. Pardon my terminology here, this is going to be essentially an "old boys' club" rather than a committee that is going to provide any kind of oversight.
I guess the example that I want to give, and we raised this with the Minister at the time, was that, under the Waste Reduction and Recovery Act, there is an Environment Fund established by Environment and Natural Resources. There is provision in that act in basically one clause of the act, section 2, that gives the Minister the authority to establish an advisory committee. Mr. Chair, I served as the chair of that committee for five or six years, and I served on it for five or six years even before that. That was a representative committee. It provided sound advice because there were people from the municipal order of government, people from the retail sector, from shippers. People from the electronics industry came on later, but it was representative. It had a terms of reference that were sound and where they had the ability to provide advice and some oversight on the Environment Fund, and it worked very successfully. That is not the model that is being proposed for the Yellowknife Airport. What we have is an advisory committee that is going to be an "old boys' club." I can't really see how they are going to provide any kind of meaningful oversight, and they're certainly not going to be representative.
I also would encourage the department to do some kind of metrics reporting as this proposal moves forward so that we can actually see that the funds invested are improving wait times and things like that as we go forward, as part of their public reporting. I have probably gone on enough, Mr. Chair, for now. Those are my opening comments, but I will have questions for the Minister as we move forward. Thanks, Mr. Chair.