Mr. Chairman, it is unfortunate that the minister will not allow himself to be cross-examined in the House. It would have made a marvellous contribution to the debate this evening.
Nevertheless, the fact is that there is a sorry state of affairs at the Canadian Coast Guard. Most of us who follow these issues are aware of the leadership and equipment deficiencies that have been visited upon our military and, indeed, in this instance visited upon our Coast Guard to no less an extent.
There is a huge lack of leadership that is troubling to the extreme. The lack of leadership is evident when there is a lack of clarity in the rules, when the people who are running the operation do not have the skills and marine rescue experience, but are merely armchair admirals. It does not make things easy for those people.
The other key issue, aside from leadership, is that budget cuts have undermined the Coast Guard and its ability to do the job. In 1996 the government spent $542 million on the Coast Guard. In 2002 it spent $440 million. That is a drop of over $100 million over the last six years. That is simply inexcusable.
The Coast Guard infrastructure is badly strained and it has been recognized by many, including the Auditor General. The Auditor General noted in his report in 2000 the difficulties that were faced by those in the Coast Guard. He noted that the Coast Guard fleet in the last few years had dropped from 189 vessels to 104. He said that the first major challenge involved the need to replace aging vessels. The department estimated the effective life for ships was 30 years. The average age of its 41 large vessels was 22 years. The Auditor General noted that these vessels were fast approaching the end of their useful life, at a time when funds for capital projects were not plentiful. According to the department's own 1999 estimate, the cost of replacing all large vessels amounted to $2.2 billion.
Mr. Adams, a coast guard commissioner, told the committee that based on a renewal of the asset base of 4%, the Canadian Coast Guard should be investing between $140 million and $150 million a year in capital funding. He further noted that the need for action was urgent and well recognized.
There are two issues that clearly bring into focus the funding and leadership problems at the Coast Guard. First, the tragic overturning and sinking of the Cap Rouge II this past summer in the entrance to the Fraser River; and, second, the failure of the Coast Guard to provide the essential hovercraft coverage that is required by Vancouver airport.
Nothing speaks as clearly of the rot that has so devastated the Coast Guard as the failed rescue attempts or the inability of the Coast Guard to adequately perform its function on that tragic day of August 13. The Coast Guard divers were on the scene in 18 minutes. The difficulty was that when they arrived there they lacked the air supply equipment that had been disposed of when the dive team was disbanded in 2001.
The House will recall that an executive decision was made back in 2001 to dispose of the dive team. Within days of the disbanding of that dive team the Coast Guard got rid of the surface to air facility that the dive team had. It was gone. When the dive team was reconstituted they were missing that vital piece of equipment. They were unable to effect the rescue or to even penetrate the hull safely on that particular day. If they had been able to get into the overturned hull of the Cap Rouge II with their limited air supply it easily could have cost them their lives.
When questions were asked as to why the divers had not attempted a rescue, the leaders in the Coast Guard, these bureaucrats, ghoulishly suggested that the divers could have entered the Cap Rouge II if only they had known the rules, the rules that we were talking about only moments ago. That is shameful because no diver should have to sacrifice his life for the incompetence of the Coast Guard commissioner and his underlings, yet that is the issue that was here that particular day. Those same leaders know that if divers had attempted that dive without enough air to return to the surface, they could very well have been on a suicide mission. There is no question about that.
When the team arrived on site they were not able to use the latest hovercraft that was available. They were forced to go out in the old CG-045 which was retired this past October 4. When it arrived on the scene it was unable to stay very long because the team had some mechanical difficulties with it. They were concerned about its stability and it had to return to base.
Things are not well in the Coast Guard. In the Cap Rouge II report that was written after the capsizing, Rear Admiral Fraser had some interesting words. He pointed out that there ought not to be a blanket prohibition on rescue dives as presently found in the fleet safety manual. He said the decision to enter an overturned vessel cannot be legislated in advance by regulations. That in fact is the case.
The second issue, which reflects poorly on the Coast Guard and shows the underlying problem here and the lack of resources, is the failure of the government to replace in a timely fashion the hovercraft, which retired this past October 4. The Vancouver International Airport Authority emergency plan requires the availability of two hovercraft in the unlikely event a large passenger liner puts down in the tidal flats as it approaches Vancouver airport. Currently there is one hovercraft available. That hovercraft obviously has to be pulled out of service for routine maintenance and so on. When it is out of service there is nothing there to provide backup.
Just last spring, when there were two hovercraft available, the Coast Guard based at Sea Island had to go out of service for a time and had to advise the Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria and the Vancouver airport that it was going out of service because both of the hovercraft that should have been available were not, and even the rigid hull inflatables at the station were not available. Vancouver airport was advised that it should contact a commercial helicopter operation so that helicopters could provide the necessary rescue service in the event it was needed.
A commercial helicopter is not an adequate substitute for a hovercraft in these instances. The extreme weather conditions that can be met off the end of the runways in Vancouver on those tidal flats and the water conditions all require the availability of a hovercraft. A helicopter simply cannot do the job. It cannot deliver the rescue platforms to a downed aircraft. It cannot be done.
The two issues that underscore the underfunding of the Coast Guard strike very close to home for us on the west coast. The response to the Cap Rouge II was feeble. It was not feeble because of the people of the Coast Guard. They performed an admirable job, as the minister stated so clearly, but the problem was that they were not provided with the equipment they needed. They did not have the equipment. The Coast Guard gave away the equipment they needed to do that job when it disbanded the dive team and it refused to resupply the team with the necessary equipment. That issue in a sense has passed. We want to see it corrected.
The real danger right now is the failure of the government to provide adequate hovercraft coverage off Vancouver airport. I cannot underscore too much how irresponsible that is of the government. It is beyond belief. It is an issue that has to be addressed.
