Fisheries Committee on March 10th, 2016

[Gregory Lick]

In this case, because of this particular consolidation effort and the time period in which it went through, those particular budgets were taken away or were let go. In this particular project, those funds have not been used elsewhere.

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

Are you saying in other projects they were? In this particular project, there was a reduction in overall budget, I take it, from what you're saying, but in other cases, were you able to provide better service?

I guess another question to that would be, would there have been reductions in services without the modernization and amalgamation of services?

[Gregory Lick]

It's a fairly general question, obviously. Certainly in many of our projects across the country we have been able to achieve efficiencies, but in many different areas other than marine communications. We've been able to move those funds back into the Coast Guard. I can't think of anything specifically at this point.

I'd like to point out, though, that we had been thinking about the modernization of our equipment even before we were thinking about consolidating. Consolidating was an opportunity that we saw because we have been able to achieve efficiencies through the more modern technology. In many ways, yes, those funds were removed, but in many ways they could have been used to go back into the Coast Guard, if necessary. It just didn't happen in this particular case.

However, I think the one thing I would like Mr. Ryan to actually talk about is in terms of the cost of maintenance of this equipment. Is it more or less than what we were seeing in the past?

[Sam Ryan]

I think, as Mr. Lick indicated, the equipment that we had was really near its end of life, so it's something that we were going to have to replace. It was a standard life-cycle management replacement. That's why, in the modernization, we had to replace all of the communication and control equipment at all the remote sites and all of the centres. It was so that we could have a service into the future for Canadians.

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

The modernization would then have cost more had it been spread out through the multiple stations that were there, and so on. Okay.

Does the new system allow for easier integration, should there be a system problem in one of the stations or should there be something that takes one of the control centres out of commission? Does the modernization of the new equipment allow for an easier access to tie in those systems?

[Gregory Lick]

I think this is where Mr. Ryan's expertise comes in. I think he can speak really quite well on the technology and the advantages it gives us.

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

Please, yes.

[Sam Ryan]

Thank you.

The new technology, as Mr. Lick has indicated, really has brought us into the modern world. From a network perspective, we're on some legacy telecommunication links, as has been highlighted. However, with this technology, in the future we can actually go on to modern communication links. This technology will allow us to change how we can offer services within the Coast Guard.

With the old technology, we did not have those options. We were very limited, because it was installed in some of the centres 20 or 25 years ago. Now we have brand new modern technology, so we can make use of and exploit the new telecommunication networks that the different telecommunication service providers are offering to us.

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

Since I have just 30 seconds, I'll defer, unless one of my colleagues has a 30-second question.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Based on that advice, off we go to the next person.

Go ahead, Mr. McDonald, please, for five minutes.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I'd like to thank the gentlemen for joining us here today to share in our common goal, which is to provide an efficient and reliable safety network for our mariners from coast to coast to coast.

My questions are for Mr. Lick. If I run out of material for questions, Mr. Chair, I'll share the time with Mr. Morrissey.

First off, I'll relate some of this to my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. When Newfoundland and Labrador were undergoing consolidation in 2015, you were quoted as saying, “We were already going to invest in it, but the investment in new technology has allowed us to become more efficient and consolidate into fewer centres saving taxpayers quite a bit of money.”

How does the Coast Guard, from a marine safety perspective, measure these expected increases in efficiency of its delivery of services resulting from the modernization of its infrastructure and the consolidation of the MCTS centres?

[Gregory Lick]

Thank you.

There are very simple measures of efficiency in terms of the number of our staff and the amount of funds we expend on a particular operation. They are simple measures of our efficiency, and those we can provide in detail to the committee, if you prefer. Those are measures of efficiencies and very simple measures of efficiency.

In essence, the denominator hasn't really changed. The types of services we provide have not changed. The infrastructure, in terms of towers and radar installations, has not changed. The denominator hasn't changed, but the personnel and the centres that provide those services have. It's a very simple measure of efficiency.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Thank you.

Again, I'll quote another Coast Guard official, Assistant Commissioner Wade Spurrell of my Atlantic region. When Newfoundland and Labrador were being consolidated, he stated, “We've been clear from the start that we wouldn't be switching over until we were very confident in the new system.”

I would appreciate it if you could explain how this modernization of the Coast Guard's infrastructure enables consolidation on the west coast, as it did on the east coast.

[Gregory Lick]

Mr. Spurrell was certainly talking about the rigorous manner in which we took the systems from the contractor and evaluated them before we put them into service. That happens with any particular IM/IT project. It's a testing procedure to ensure that we're not going to put into place a system that would be unsafe for the mariner.

Certainly we have seen issues as we've done that, and we've addressed them as they appear. I'd like Mr. Ryan to talk about the one issue we did have that was relatively significant and that we got from the contractor, and how we addressed that with him. I think that's an important aspect of your question.

[Sam Ryan]

I think what Mr. Spurrell was making reference to is that when the contractor first delivered the equipment, or the first version of the software, we installed it in one of our labs in Halifax-Dartmouth. We determined that there was an echo problem. This was found in our lab.

We went back to the contractor. The contractor then did a software modification to address that situation. We tested it in their lab in Vienna. We tested it in our lab in Canada. We did not install it in any operation until it had been proven both in their lab in Vienna and in Canada, that there was no issue with the echo. Only after the version of software completely passed all of our tests did we go ahead and start the modernization and the consolidation of centres.

[Gregory Lick]

To get to the other part of your question, though, around how we're taking lessons learned from the east coast or from the rest of the country and applying them to the west coast, that's an important aspect. Recently when we looked at sound issues in Sarnia, as an example, Mr. Ryan's team developed a solution with the contractor that allowed us to deal with those sound issues. We tested them again in Prince Rupert to make sure that they did work before we fully applied them to the rest of MCTS Victoria.

That's the approach we take. It's a lessons learned approach with lessons learned from other centres. We apply a solution and make sure it works before we fully apply it in the rest of the centres.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

I have one last question. Am I out of time?

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Go ahead. You have 20 seconds.

[Ken McDonald, Liberal, Avalon, NL]

Okay. I'll ask the question really quickly.

From the perspective of coastline coverage—traffic, marine conditions, and technology—how do Coast Guard infrastructure and services on the west coast compare to those on the east coast, once all consolidation has occurred?

[Roger Girouard]

Let me hop on that and say that the west coast is different.

Our antennas are closer together, in the main. Our topography is more challenging, and our traffic tends to be a bit more concentrated, especially from Buoy Juliet to Vancouver and near Prince Rupert. That's obviously where we focused our level of effort and energies. We have some differences. The fact that we're microwave-intensive has been part of the challenge.

There are coastal aspects to this project that have emanated.... I'll come back to the point that when the echo, or the time delay, manifested itself in Rupert, it generated some frustration there. We put the brakes on moving into Victoria because of that, and we worked very hard to essentially put in a time delay from antennas so that the echo would no longer be apparent.

It was a technological change. When that was resolved to the satisfaction of my operators, we then decided we could make the shift.

[The Chair, Liberal, Scott Simms]

Thank you, Mr. Girouard.

Sorry, but speaking of putting on the brakes, I have to do much the same. I apologize. We're over five minutes.

Mr. Strahl, I understand you're generously giving your five minutes to Ms. Blaney.

Ms. Blaney, you have five minutes with our witnesses. Welcome to committee.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for being here today.

I concur with your analysis that the staff are incredible and they do great work, and I appreciate the amount of training that they do.

I'm curious. One of the things you mentioned was that there's a lot of study around geographical knowledge.

What did the training look like around local knowledge? As you know, most people refer to areas from their perspective and sometimes the slang can be unusual, so I'm wondering how you trained your people to know that information.

[Gregory Lick]

Certainly. I think Mr. Girouard and I will answer this one.

The training at the Canadian Coast Guard College is from a national perspective. It's about how to use the equipment properly. It's communication procedures and all of the technical and operational aspects of using the equipment and operating as an MCTS officer. That is what I would call the base training.

Then we get at the geographic training and how you operate in the area of responsibility that you'll take on. With that, there is a rigorous on-the-job training program that is done in the centres. It gets trainees to go through various aspects of those geographic areas and the peculiarities of those geographic areas. It is an on-the-job training type of approach. They are checked off in various areas, and they will not take on the responsibility for a particular area until they've been checked out, which in essence is pass the exam, if you want to think about it that way, for that particular area. Then they will be assigned responsibility for that area.

[Roger Girouard]

I'll just hop on and say, for instance, that as we moved the site's responsibility from Ucluelet to Tofino, we brought down Ucluelet operators to spend weeks at a time in Tofino, get to know the waters, actually manage those waters, in preparation for when the transfer of gear would occur.

The area has not changed geographically, but the console moved. To populate that knowledge, we brought operators down to look at the charts, to talk on the radio, and to speak to those areas and zones and deliver on that knowledge when they went back to Prince Rupert.

[Rachel Blaney, NDP, North Island—Powell River, BC]

Thank you.

I'm just wondering if a communications infrastructure audit has been undertaken to identify local compatibilities and specific gaps in coverage. I know this was a recommendation from Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.