Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all to witnesses.
I'm going to focus on the coast guard end of things. I had a great opportunity, a couple of weeks ago now, to be in Victoria and meet with the folks on the Sir Wilfrid Laurier after they returned. I'll just say quickly, “Congratulations to the great folks working there”. They did a wonderful community outreach right on the Sir Wilfrid Laurier itself, brought school groups in, and were able to talk to them directly about the discovery of the Franklin, which was a really exciting moment in Canadian history, an exciting chapter for the Canadian Coast Guard, with wonderful contributions on their part.
They should certainly be acknowledged for the great work they did involving the local school groups in that program. I think it's just a wonderful outreach opportunity by the department and by the folks of the Sir Wilfrid Laurier.
I had the opportunity to talk about two specific things with them. One was their excitement around the helicopter procurement and the new work they were doing. They were pretty clear that there's a lot of work that's done when I talked to them about the coast guard helicopters from the search and rescue mission that occurred during the time of the Franklin. The pilot, in fact, was ultimately responsible for finding the first pieces of the Franklin on the beach that led to the narrowing down of that search position.
At the same time, they were involved in assisting the mapping services that were going on. There were three very diverse and distinct events that they were participating in, in a very short period of time. They talked about the role of the helicopter on that vessel and were highlighting, of course, the need for new helicopters.
I'm going to ask for a little bit of further background on the role that this procurement will play, why it's necessary, and how this $20-million allocation is going to assist.
If you have time, perhaps you can touch on the additional investments in terms of the side sonar scanning technology that's available for the mapping that's going on and what other additional roles, such as the discovery of the Franklin, will play a factor, and why the investments in the supplementary (B) estimates are important for those two things.