Fisheries Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Gregory Lick]

I will come to that point, Mr. Donnelly.

In Sarnia I was able to hear those issues, but the point I'm trying to make is that with any particular project involving sound in a small room, you're going to have to tune both the equipment and the room. A lot of those measures in Sarnia have been in place. Something as simple as putting sound-dampening carpeting in the space has improved the sound quite dramatically.

What the officers have heard now in Sarnia is that the sound is much better. That's the same with any project where you're involving sound in a small room. It's not much different from the National Arts Centre having to tune the particular space for an orchestra.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I've heard some of these, and I'm not sure if the room is going to make a difference. I think it sounds like it could. On the transmissions, hopefully the committee can hear some of these, because I don't understand how the operators can understand them.

The time is short, and I want to move on.

I'm on the west coast, and I'm concerned about the west coast and Comox specifically. Could you tell me how many MCTS stations on the west coast are not in a tsunami zone?

[Gregory Lick]

I will ask Mr. Girouard to answer that one.

[Roger Girouard]

Both Rupert and Victoria are in areas where tsunamis are possible.

In the case of the Victoria site, if you look at the likely approach of a tsunami, it would have to take four left turns to get to that elevated site. I think it's fairly safe and secure.

Rupert and that entire coast have some vulnerabilities if they're hit with a tsunami. That's acknowledged, but I don't think that port is used very much, so it's a risk that we've judged as acceptable. The traffic will not be there if a tsunami hits.

As to Comox, mid-island on the inside is quite safe. It has some earthquake vulnerabilities and it's built on a high sand piece, so there are moments when I wonder what it would look like if there were to be an earthquake.

They all have some risk prospects, and the key isn't whether we lose a site but about how we back up and sustain the operation. It's about business continuity.

[Fin Donnelly, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

I'm going to ask a question on training, workload, and retention. We did hear about how important that is.

Could you comment on how long it takes an operator to be trained? Under consolidation, are you retaining knowledgeable staff who are capable of dealing with the complexity of moving ships through the shipping lane, keeping an eye out, and dealing with outages? I know Victoria and Vancouver have had outages for periods of up to 30 minutes. There's no power then, and training is critical on what to do, how to use backup systems, and the use of emergency systems.

Can you comment on the staffing capable of handling this situation?

[Roger Girouard]

I'll touch on that and I'll remind you that the Victoria site will not be just one operator, but rather a nine-person watch with the capacity to surge. There will be senior operators backing up junior operators on some of the more complex zones. It's a good 6- to 12-month learning process at the site. There's a long-term development process, and that's after the education at the college.

As for the Victoria transition, we've brought in a fair number of new operators through the closure of Ucluelet, and those folks will be on the screens, learning and developing now.

In the case of complex scenarios, that operator isn't just left there to handle it. The safety side, the supervisors, will back them up. The flexibility in the new centre allows the supervisor to readjust tasks and workloads. There's a surge console for something like a complex search-and-rescue case or trying to deal with a distant earthquake when we know we're moving assets. They have the capacity to bring extra people in.

The HR side is always a challenge. You'll probably know that some folks in Comox have indicated they're less inclined to relocate, and we're looking at how to deal with that. Right now, I think my HR equation is satisfactory for where we're going this spring.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Girouard.

Ms. Jordan is next.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you, and my thanks to the officials for coming in and bringing your presentation today.

Could you give me a Coles Notes version of the difference between a Coast Guard station and a marine communications traffic station? What's the key difference?

[Gregory Lick]

That's a fairly easy question to answer, so I'm glad you asked it.

When we speak of a Coast Guard station, we're normally talking about a Coast Guard search and rescue station. It's a relatively small building in which the crew live and work. They will also have a search and rescue lifeboat along with a fast rescue craft. They will maintain a listening watch. They have a radio on 24 hours day. They also have communications with MCTS centres and with the joint rescue coordination centre, which organizes the coordination of search and rescue calls. That's a Coast Guard station, in our parlance.

An MCTS centre is a critical link between mariners on the water and the shore. It coordinates and receives distress calls and makes sure they are responded to by the joint rescue coordination centre. They also transmit marine weather broadcasts and safety information to mariners. In certain areas of the country, they also organize and coordinate vessel traffic, mainly for commercial shipping.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

That leads, then, directly to my next question. If there was a spill or an emergency near the Comox MCTS station, where would the vessel be deployed from currently?

[Gregory Lick]

Well, certainly if there was a particular environmental spill, as an example, whether it is the old technology with Comox there or the new technology with a consolidated centre in Prince Rupert or in Victoria, the response remains exactly the same.

In this case, it could be a response from a search and rescue lifeboat station, depending on where the particular spill is. If it was a little bit closer to Prince Rupert, it could be a response from the environmental response group that's there. It all depends. The response has not changed anywhere across the country because of our consolidation efforts.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I just want to clarify, then. Prior to the change and after the change, there will be absolutely no difference in how the response is handled. Is that correct?

[Gregory Lick]

That's correct.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

You spoke earlier about there having been suggestions of blind areas for radar. Can you expand on that a little bit? I'm having a hard time with that.

I've heard that with the radars the way they are, there may be blind areas with the modernization. I'm trying to figure out how that can happen. If a radar is there, a radar is there. What's the difference if it's manned by MCTS Comox or not?

[Roger Girouard]

I'd just offer that there are no new blind areas in British Columbia. The radar sites are the same and the atmospherics for the radio towers are the same. B.C., with its interesting topography, has some channels and some inlets that aren't utilized much and don't have radar. In those places we depend on radio and AIS to keep track of vessels, but there's no change to that radar coverage.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

How is the Coast Guard supporting their employees through the transition, and what has the feedback been from those working in these new modernized centres?

[Gregory Lick]

As we've gone through this large change, we recognize that the impact upon employees and staff is tough. Any change is tough, and we've really tried to make sure that people who may be affected by this particular consolidation effort are provided with all the transition measures that are available to all government employees, either through training for a new career or moving toward retirement.

In the case of many of our stations across the country that are MCTS, most of the people have been offered jobs within the MCTS elsewhere. Some have taken them and some have not. That's a personal choice, in many cases, for those people, but the transition measures have been offered to all of them, and they've made a personal choice.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

What do the employees who are in the new modernized facilities think of that, compared to working where they were? Is there any feedback from that end of things?

[Gregory Lick]

Absolutely. Going back to Mr. Donnelly's point, though, in terms of change, we did see issues—we're not saying we did not see issues—and we worked with the officers to try to address those issues.

What we are finding, though, is that for something like the text-to-speech marine weather broadcast, if time is spent with both the contractor and the employees to actually work on getting it right, they really enjoy it afterwards, because it does take a lot of workload off a relatively administrative duty, and now time can be better spent on distress duties in times like that.

So yes, as you go through change, there's certainly been.... Some people say, “Well, it's not working”, or something like that, but as they've got to know the new technology, we've heard directly from a lot of staff that this is actually a better technology. It's more reliable, in some cases. For many, it's a lot easier to use, and there are many things like that.

I think Mr. Girouard actually has a particular point from one of his staff.

[Roger Girouard]

I think it's fair to say that the team saw the change with excitement and trepidation. Some of it's been challenging. It's everything from knobology and learning the button strikes to some of the sound transfer issues. They've helped us get through that.

I was in Victoria MCTS about two weeks ago, just after they'd gone through the modernization process, and the feedback from one of my more experienced, perhaps grizzled, souls was, “Better than I thought.” That's a high compliment.

It has been a challenge to a community that's undergone an awful lot of change and has suffered some change fatigue, and so their comments are tempered that way, but they are seeing this new technology as having the potential that it should.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you. Okay, so—

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Ms. Jordan.

[Bernadette Jordan, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Oh, no. I still had about 10 questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

We'll get to them, maybe, in time.

Okay, that's the first round. Now we're going to a five-minute round. We're going to start with Mr. Arnold.

Mr. Arnold, go ahead. You have five minutes.

[Mel Arnold, Conservative, North Okanagan—Shuswap, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you for being here today for questions. I guess my first question would be that I saw in your report, as you mentioned this afternoon, that you've recognized about $5.4 million in savings per year through this modernization process with no reduction in service, as again you've noted.

Is the Coast Guard able to redistribute resources because of these savings to provide better service in other areas, whether it's other areas of the country or other areas of service?