Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to touch on a couple of the issues, or concerns I’ll call them, that I’ve heard as a Member of this House. I’ve heard that this was going to possibly have an effect on tour operators. It’s not really affecting tour operators monetarily, but possibly affecting the numbers of tourists who would come. If it was at a higher cost, I’m pretty sure that the tour operators could essentially pass their costs on to the tourists themselves, but if it was too high, then you eliminate the percentage of the tourists. It could have some impact there, a possibility, so I certainly have a concern there about that particular item.
The other concern that I’ve heard frequently has been it would have an impact on the cost to air transportation companies. In that sense, it hits a little closer to home for me as a Member of Tu Nedhe-Wiilideh because one of my communities is affected with very, very high costs of living at this point, the fly-in community of Lutselk'e.
What happens there now is individuals in the community take full advantage of a trip to Yellowknife. If they have to pay for a ticket and then buy the groceries in Yellowknife and ship them in, the cost is significantly high enough that it just balances out if they can get a trip in for another reason. Many individuals take advantage of trips into the community, whether it be medical travel or travelling on other business that they have to do in Yellowknife or passing through here to do business elsewhere. They take advantage of the amount of weight that they’re allowed to have and paid on their ticket. Anything above that, they pay a certain amount. If that company is hit with high fees, then they would pass that cost onto the customers that they serve and that would be many of the Tlicho communities and even the Nahendeh communities -- or one community, I’m not sure about that -- but definitely Lutselk'e.
When the people come, they look and they see. They take this opportunity to buy groceries here and save a lot of money on their groceries, and then the savings will go down when they have to put it on a plane at -- I think -- I don’t know the amount, but it’s over a dollar per pound. It’s considerably over a dollar per pound. That will start to impact. This bill then -- if I look at this bill -- I would say yes, it would have. It may have an impact on people who are trying to lower their cost of living in the community at Lutselk'e because the Air Tindi is paying more than they are currently. They may have to pass that onto the customer.
I guess my question to the Minister -- I have three questions, actually. One is: has there been any discussion with the individual tour operators to see if there are ways where they could mitigate the impact on their operations? Number two: if there have been more discussions with the airline companies, especially the ones that serve communities where there is only fly-in, so especially when we have communities where they have to bring food in, just to keep the costs down. Food, of course, is an essential item, and that is one thing: even when the federal government taxes things, they don’t tax food. We know that, because everything is done to try to keep the taxes on food as low as possible. In communities where there are high food costs and there is an opportunity to ship stuff in, by having a reasonable freight cost, if this was to turn this freight cost from a reasonable freight cost to a high freight cost, then it would be, essentially, like our government is going to now not charge taxes on food for those communities with the highest costs, but actually charge fees to individuals who are trying to feed their families.
I guess the third question, which I haven’t even touched on here, would be: if there is capital, if this bill is approved and the money is there to do capital, one of the things that may eliminate a lot of those costs would be an extension of the airstrip. By extending the airstrip I don’t know how many feet --- 15,000 feet, or whatever, it may give an opportunity for tour operators to fly people directly from their countries right into Yellowknife with bigger planes, bigger loads, and less distribution of costs amongst the individual tourists, thus continuing to make it a feasible, attractive place for tourists to come. Thank you, Mr. Chair.