Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Sept. 24th, 2026

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Thank you.

It's been six minutes. I think we're over.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Are you over? I'm sorry. It's just by a bit. You were about 45 seconds over. I'm sorry about that. I thought you had 45 seconds left.

All right. We're going to Philip Earle.

You have five minutes.

[Philip Earle, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Hi, Mikey. Thanks for coming. I know that there are a lot of things you could be doing this morning.

I come out of your industry, and I couldn't be prouder to be here at committee with you and talking about the north. I'm from the north, as you'll see with a lot of the MPs on the committee. I have northern roots and represent northern people.

I view you, as the airline, as the last link in the supply chain. Things originate in the south and you make sure they get to people in the north.

Talk to the committee about measures you take as a business leader in a family business to aid in reducing costs for northerners.

[Mikey McBryan]

Rate is aircraft type. At Buffalo Airways, we're very unique in the different airplanes we have. We have everything from a Twin Otter to a 737-300 and everything in between.

You have to be kind of like a Swiss army knife to be able to react to what the customer wants. It's not what the pilots want or the owners want. It's always what the customer wants. Having diversity in everything, in every aspect of the business, is why we've lasted 56 years. Most airlines don't. There are a lot of airlines that haven't lasted the length of this conference. They come and go like crazy.

Yes, the thing is to get through the day and have availability. The way I look at it is that it's like a convenience store in a small town. You have to do everything. You have to change the oil, you have to cut the hair and you have to provide everything. That's what a northern airline has to do. It's to be as diverse as possible and really answer what the customer wants, because at the end of the day, it's just the customer.

[Philip Earle, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you for that.

I think what I heard you say is that you're always looking for efficiency, whether it's in the payload, the fuel burn or the cross-utilization of aircraft and those types of things.

My colleague talked about airport infrastructure. To the extent that you can, talk to the committee about the importance of having modern airport infrastructure, whether that's cargo holding or temperature control. I like what you had to say about airports and asphalt, and how that allows for a diversity of aircraft to get in. Expand on that a bit more for us if you can.

Why is that so important to a business serving people who live in the north, and how can it reduce costs for the people who live there?

[Mikey McBryan]

For sure. You know spoilage. Just like any of you, anybody who's spent any time at a grocery store can see spoilage. As you go north, it gets worse and worse. Having facilities that can quickly move food, because food needs to move quickly.... A lot of food that doesn't need to move quickly isn't necessarily the most healthy. The healthier it is, the more volatile it is, so you have to move it quickly, which means you have to have really good infrastructure. Again, that's expensive. You have to bring everything in, and it's this self-fulfilling thing.

Yes, it's very important. Everything's important. In the north, it's miles.... Think about it. If you're on Mars, you have to get everything there. This is the exact same.

[Philip Earle, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you.

As you know, we're part of the same fraternity. I know how difficult it is to attract skilled labour. Aircraft maintenance engineers, whether they're coming from SAIT in Alberta or the College of the North Atlantic in Newfoundland and Labrador, are very important. You've heard that our government has set aside and budgeted $6 billion for an apprenticeship program, which aircraft maintenance engineers and other apprenticeships would be able to apply and qualify for.

How important is it to your business, running it in Yellowknife with some of the sub-bases you have and taking care of those water bombers, to have those apprenticeships for people to become licensed engineers and be able to work for you?

[Mikey McBryan]

It's huge. Managers are a dime a dozen. Anyone can be a manager, but not anyone can fix airplanes. It takes a lot of skill, labour, time and education to do it properly. Sometimes, yes, it's tough, but you have to be able to keep the ones you have. It's generational. There are a lot of people who are third-generation aircraft mechanics now.

[Philip Earle, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

How has it been a challenge for a northern aviation company to find those licensed AMEs to be able to turn wrenches and maintain the aircraft so that they're serviceable for that eight o'clock in the morning flight?

[Mikey McBryan]

It takes everything short of kidnapping them, really.

[Philip Earle, Liberal, Labrador, NL]

Thank you very much.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Thank you very much, Mr. Earle.

I actually want to quickly mention that we have a few new members around the table, so welcome to our new members.

Congratulations on your by-election win. Nicely done.

We have another questioner. Go ahead, Madame Gill, for two and a half minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. McBryan, we spoke about transportation and all the related challenges. Still, we have competition when it comes to choosing between food, equipment or human beings. The enormous cost is an issue. It's becoming almost impossible for us to leave the north given the high cost. However, people obviously need health care services, for example. Some people can't even attend school in the north. They really need to leave and go to other places. Do you see any solutions to this?

I can even give you an example that really affected me, the one concerning Randy Jones. I believe that my colleague, Mr. Earle, knew him as well. Randy Jones passed away. He was unable to board the plane, and his family wonders what might have happened if he had been able to board the plane. He was a heavyset man who was denied boarding because of regulations. I understand that there are regulations. However, I still wonder whether they could be adjusted.

We spoke about adjustments in the housing sector, but I'm also thinking about adjustments in air transportation. What can be done to ensure that everyone gets what they need and that we don't have competition in our area? If there's transportation for Canada Post, we would rather have transportation for people than letters. Drugs and food play a role in all this. What can we do to ensure that everyone gets what they need?

I know that you operate on a larger scale, with cargo planes. For us, it's a different matter. However, I'm sure that you can suggest some possible solutions. Obviously, there are also other issues for the workers.

[Mikey McBryan]

The medevac system, the government thing in place for moving people around and stuff like that, is very important, but a lot of the stuff we do falls outside of that. There's a TV show going on that.... Actually, I signed an NDA on that.

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Mikey McBryan]

There are problems that are outside the government. We have to send airplanes to go and save them and all that stuff. The medevac thing is a cornerstone for airlines in the north. When you have those contracts, that is something you can build upon. There are two airlines in Yellowknife that have been built on those medevac contracts. They're very important. There are backups in the north too. There are different aircraft types. You can expand and do that kind of stuff.

Yes, it's hugely important. I could talk for hours on this, really, but I don't want to spend someone else's time.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

You have 10 seconds left.

[Mikey McBryan]

Again, it's super important. Medical travel is hugely important. It's a tough thing because it needs funding. It's very hard to do privatized, because when people are hurt and sick.... I got a message yesterday about a community member in Cambridge Bay who needed to get to Edmonton. Their daughter was in the hospital and they didn't have commercial service out. It's heartbreaking. As a private company, it costs tens of thousands of dollars to send an airplane up.

Competition is great—I shouldn't say that, but it is—for the end-user. The more competition, the better, but it's also important for medevac to be government-funded.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Jamie Schmale]

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Next up is Tako Van Popta for five minutes.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses for being here. I'm new to the committee, so this is all very interesting to me. I'm a southerner, being from metro Vancouver and right on the U.S. border, so this is really enlightening.

Lynne, my question is for you, but my preamble relates to evidence given by Shannon and Lorne. Shannon made the point that while natural gas might be cheap or inexpensive, the delivery thereof is not. I think Lorne made the same point, but probably talking more about fuel. It's 50¢ a litre if it comes by barge and five dollars a litre if it comes by air transport. You know, that's not unusual at all. Even in big cities like mine, when I look at my Fortis bill, the cost is broken down. Half of it is for delivery, even though we have a lot of infrastructure for natural gas delivery.

Lynne, you talked about perhaps some other alternatives that might be possible for local development. I think you talked about wind energy. I don't know if you mentioned solar energy. For a good part of the year, there isn't a lot of sunshine. Will local infrastructure be part of the solution? Perhaps you could talk about that.

[Lynne Couves]

Thank you for the question.

More local infrastructure needs to be part of the solution. When energy is more locally generated, it is more secure. We have many examples of this already. You mentioned wind. Yes, wind does tend to be quite successful in many parts of the north, as does solar energy. When we talk about energy systems and about secure, affordable and reliable energy systems, we want to see what we call “integrated” energy systems. These are energy systems that have multiple sources of energy and aren't relying on just one source of energy.

Some of the challenges around that can be the economics. It requires some rethinking about the economic status quo of relying on one source of energy for all of a community's energy needs.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Understood. Is this something that can be expanded in a cost-effective manner, keeping in mind that the competition is delivering natural gas, which is very expensive, or electricity, which is also expensive?

[Lynne Couves]

I do think we are starting to see more examples of regions being able to bulk-purchase wind turbines, for example, rather than doing one-off, one-off and one-off, which does tend to be quite expensive. If an entire region is looking at making a bulk purchase of solar panels and getting them distributed, or a bulk purchase of wind turbines, that does help reduce the economies of scale.

The power of economies of scale in remote communities is currently being explored in different regions. That's something we are following and looking to learn more information about in order to understand what that cost benefit might be.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley Township—Fraser Heights, BC]

Thank you.

Mr. Browne, do you have anything to add to that?

[Lorne Browne]

Yes. Thanks for the opportunity.

I think, in terms of energy security, it's displacing fuel with renewables such as wind and solar, and maybe on the backside of that, looking at renewable fuels and biofuels, which have technical challenges in the north but I think more work can be done on that. What Shannon was referring to, in situ resource utilization—so, using local resources—is pretty important too. As Lynne mentioned, that does provide energy security.

Here in the Northwest Territories, I can give one excellent example. Fourteen kilometres south of Tuktoyaktuk, there is a well that we refer to colloquially as M-18. It is in the process of being developed through the Inuvialuit energy security project—I hope I got that correct. They are seeking to pull natural gas out of that well and chemically crack that gas into a synthetic diesel product, which would supply the region, essentially, for, I think, more than 20 years.

Ideally we would pipe natural gas to all the communities that Shannon referred to, but that is prohibitively expensive. Storing LNG or CNG is also prohibitively expensive. They've chosen to take the route of creating a liquid fuel from the gas. That will provide energy security, and we're also hoping that it will reduce costs considerably. Therefore, in situ resource utilization is an important concept.