Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Mar 20/02) - While airfare prices continue to soar for the general public, BHP Billiton is offering deep discount airfares to employees flying south.

Under a deal negotiated with Canadian North, employees and contractors working at the Ekati mine may pay only $300 for a round trip between Edmonton and Yellowknife.

Full fare price is $1,700. With advanced booking, airfare is about $800.

"It's not a whole plane-load or anything like that," said BHP Billiton spokesperson Denise Burlingame.

Burlingame did not know how many tickets are being made available.

The company has three flights each week between Edmonton and Ekati, with a stop in Yellowknife there and back, according to an e-mail sent to Ekati workers and obtained by the Yellowknifer. The $300 trip to Edmonton is available to all Ekati workers including contractors.

Yellowknife MLA Bill Braden, who referred to the airfare deal in the legislature last week, said it is a product of the high cost of living in the North.

"I'd like to see BHP get off this program, but if they can't find enough Northern-based people to maintain production, what are they going to do?" Braden said. "In a sense we're fostering our own fly-in, fly-out economy."

In its 1996 socio-economic agreement with the territorial government, the company agreed not to pay the travel costs of employees travelling outside of the Northwest Territories on shift changes.

"We don't consider it a subsidy," Burlingame said of the airfare. "It is a low airfare we've been able to negotiate because of the large volume of air travel we do in the North."

The provision, which came into effect when the mine went into production, was aimed at encouraging people working at the mine to relocate to the Northwest Territories by partially offsetting the higher cost of living here.

There is a similar provision in the socio-economic agreement with Diavik Diamond Mines Inc.

Burlingame said there are currently 680 BHP Billiton employees working at the mine. That workforce is 77 per cent "Northern" and half of the Northerners are aboriginal.

The socio-economic agreement sets a Northern hire target of 62 per cent of the workforce at the mine, rising to 72 per cent as production increases.

The agreement gives the government no authority to verify BHP's employment numbers.