The Coast Guard has embarked on many studies over the years—it could be concerning light stations—and certainly they have looked at MCTS in earnest ever since our last consolidation, which was our union members' initiative—to go from 44 to 22 back in the 1990s to save about $14.7 million a year. We're not opposed to consolidation, but it has to make sense.
The Coast Guard did a study in the early 2000s. They called it the least cost analysis—LCA, we called it. It was studied. They went to their integrated business management unit at the time, and the response came back that three centres was the least cost solution, and it was just what you suggested. Vancouver obviously had a high least cost, at $800,000 for that building at Harbour Centre and least cost as well on the roof for the antennas. Closing that and moving it to Victoria obviously financially made sense.
Prince Rupert is a problem, because nobody wants to live there. We hire officers, and as soon as they get in, they try to get out as fast as they can. If they're not successful in the MCTS world, they leave. When we talk about least cost, we have to factor in everything. It costs $100,000 to train one of our officers, over the course of about eight months. When you have 40 officers go through that centre in a period of 12 years and the staffing complement is only 30, you have a retention issue, and it's because of where it's located.
We wouldn't want to expand or exacerbate that staffing situation up there. The simple operation would be to put a microwave link in to send Tofino over to Comox. Through access to information I obtained information that part of the decision-making process was that the assistant commissioner at the time didn't feel there was adequate space for one more desk in Comox. That centre was built for expansion; this was always something that they studied. Then in the early 1990s they knew something was going to come to consolidate things.
There's plenty of room in that centre for another desk. It's a desk with some monitors.