Evidence of meeting #6 for Fisheries and Oceans in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was comox.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Director General, Integrated Technical Services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Can I ask you to repeat the question? I am not sure I quite heard.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada has recommended that there be a communications infrastructure audit and that it be undertaken to identify local capabilities and specific gaps in coverage. I am wondering if this has been done.
Assistant Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
I will also ask Mr. Ryan to speak to this, but from the Canadian Coast Guard's perspective, we are a continually learning and evolving organization, particularly with marine traffic patterns and with areas of risk. One of the things we have to understand here is that we are not a static organization. We will evolve with.... If we find gaps, we will address those gaps. In the case of the Canadian Coast Guard across the country, not just in the western region, we would certainly welcome any particular audit that helps us to identify gaps and risks.
I am not sure if Mr. Ryan has any other particular points with respect to that.
Director General, Integrated Technical Services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Really, just to reiterate that, I think the last slide in the presentation showed the number of radio towers and radar towers. Before and after consolidation modernization, there is no change in the coverage, whether it is radio or radar. From a service perspective, this is a different question, but the modernization and consolidation had nothing to do with the coverage itself.
Assistant Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Maybe I could just add something from a regional perspective. I am not familiar with the audit from that perspective, but in B.C., because of the great focus on earthquakes— and you'll probably be familiar with the provincial Auditor General's comments about catastrophics—we have been doing a lot of work with not only Public Safety Canada but with EMBC, Emergency Management British Columbia, to make sure that we have the networks inventory and that we understand how we might cover each other off and respond to a more complex scenario as the partners that we have to be.
NDP
Rachel Blaney NDP North Island—Powell River, BC
I have 20 seconds.
You talked about evaluating how the workers are feeling about this. I am wondering what the process is about asking the people who are actually using the services on the water how they are feeling about modernization.
Director General Operations, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Certainly there is a regional.... We do have advisory boards, as an example. We have a National Marine Advisory Board. More specifically here, that concerns mainly commercial traffic. Each region—and Mr. Girouard can speak to his specific region—has advisory boards that advise on that.
Liberal
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before asking my questions, I am going to let Mr. Serge Cormier, the parliamentary secretary, ask a question. I am going to share my question period time with him and I will let him begin.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Thank you very much for being here today.
We talk about the consolidation of the centres across the country. I just have a couple of questions about that.
When the consolidation of the centres started.... I know that the guests talked about the myths about the centres regarding coverage, technical problems, and line of sight. Regarding technical problems, I think there was an interruption of service on February 21 at the Victoria centre. There were a lot of people saying that it was due to the new technology, which was not working well. Can you explain what really happened there, when there was an outage for 35 minutes? I think it was on February 21.
Thank you.
Director General, Integrated Technical Services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
Thank you very much.
I think my colleagues have spoken about the different outages and sometimes the different reasons behind the failures. The outage that you are referring to was a human error. There was an interruption in a signal. It had nothing to do with the new technology or the old technology. It was the communication line that was bringing all the information into Victoria. It was a human error and had nothing to do with the technology. As you indicated, it was quickly fixed, within half an hour, and then everything was back up and running. Again, that outage had nothing to do with the new communication control system technology.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
When did the consolidation of all the centres across Canada begin?
Director General, Integrated Technical Services, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It was approximately one year ago when we did the first consolidation in the southern centres. Actually, it's modernization, then consolidation. We started in Halifax with modernizing MCTS Halifax, and then it was the consolidation of MCTS Saint John into MCTS Halifax.
Liberal
Serge Cormier Liberal Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I have one last question. Can you explain a little bit the line of sight so that we understand when you talk about it?
Assistant Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
There are two aspects, visual and radio or radar signal. It is exactly that. I have a radio tower, and it can project a wave to a location. Radio signals don't tend to bend around corners. Radar is a little more malleable. That is why we have the number of towers that we do to provide the coverage.
Liberal
Assistant Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
It's the technology that gets it to the operator, and that isn't line of sight, necessarily. It moves in a different way.
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
Okay. Information that I received and that was shared shows that most of the workers are nearing retirement age. That's not a reflection of you guys—I'm not here to do that—but that's what we're hearing.
Do you have a plan to make sure that the knowledge and experience will not be lost and that there won't be a gap before we get up to speed?
Director General Operations, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans
We're all experiencing age. Joking aside, it is a challenge not only for our organization but for many organizations within the government and across the country.
To start from the very beginning, in terms of recruitment we have a continual recruitment program that gets people in the door. It gets them started on what we call the ab initio program, which is the program at the Canadian Coast Guard College to get them that base level of training. Then they move into the centres to get their on-the-job training, get checked out, and actually get into the stands and working on the system.
Yes, we are making big recruiting efforts to be able to do that, and it will remain a challenge for some time. Those recruiting efforts are reasonably successful, I would say, in this type of environment and this type of market, so we will continue with that approach.
Liberal
Liberal
Pat Finnigan Liberal Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB
With the modernization technology that you're implementing with your new centres, has that cost anything to the water users? Have they had to modernize—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Scott Simms
Thank you, Mr. Finnigan. That's it. I'm sorry, I'm trying to play it tight here. I'll give you literally 10 seconds, maybe 20 seconds, to respond.