Fisheries Committee on April 12th, 2016

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

I will let you do that. Yes.

[Fred Moxey]

Thank you.

I'll be very quick.

You're talking about closing it earlier. What happened with the Kitsilano Coast Guard station was that the Coast Guard was getting so much negativity. They had a date well into the summer to close it. But in February a delivery crew came down to the station with senior management. They took everyone's cellphones away, had padlocks, and said you're no longer working here. They jumped on the Coast Guard cutter, locked the gate, and left. That was it. Everyone was told to go home.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Okay. I'll have to stop it there.

Thank you for those comments, Mr. Moxey.

Colleagues, we'll suspend for a few minutes while our next witnesses take their chairs.

The meeting is suspended.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Could we reconvene, please?

We have three officials from the department. Ms. Jody Thomas is the commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard.

Commissioner Thomas, would you introduce your colleagues?

[Jody Thomas, Commissioner, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Yes, I can Mr. Chair.

I'm here today with my deputy commissioner of operations, Mario Pelletier, and superintendent Brian Bain, who is the superintendent for MCTS in western region.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Thank you.

I understand there will be one presentation, and then we will have the normal question and answer session. We can now begin the presentation.

[Jody Thomas]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

It is my pleasure to be here today to discuss the planned closure of marine communications and traffic services, MCTS, in Comox.

I have introduced, but I'd like to again introduce my two colleagues. Canadian Coast Guard's deputy commissioner of operations, Mario Pelletier, is with us today. Deputy commissioner Pelletier joined the Coast Guard in 1985 as an engineering officer cadet and has served in various positions, including director general of fleet, as well as assistant commissioner for central and Arctic region before becoming deputy commissioner of operations.

Brian Bain has joined us from Victoria. Superintendent Bain is an expert in marine communications and traffic services in the western region. He is superintendent of the MCTS program, and he has spent his career in MCTS, beginning in 1988 when it was called Vancouver Coast Guard radio. I am pleased to have his operational and regional expertise here today. I don't believe there is a job in MCTS that superintendent Bain has not done.

My remarks today will cover the following themes: the role of our MCTS centres across the country, the history behind the decision to modernize and consolidate our centres, the steps taken to ensure employees have been well served, and the audio quality in our modernized centres. Following my general remarks, of course, we'll be happy to take questions.

The Canadian Coast Guard's MCTS centres play a pivotal role, as you've heard, in saving lives, protecting our waters, and assuring the safe and efficient movement of vessels for the smooth functioning of Canada's maritime economy. Navigation and communication technologies have advanced significantly in the last decade. In 2007 the Coast Guard began to make significant investments to modernize our MCTS systems to bring them into the 21st century.

The implementation of the new technology not only allowed for greater reliability of our systems, but it also allowed for increased efficiency of the overall MCTS program. We were able to merge 22 of our centres into 12 without changes in service to mariners. To date the Coast Guard has successfully consolidated nine MCTS centres and transferred their operations to newly modernized, state-of-the-art centres in locations across the country. The consolidation of MCTS Comox into MCTS Victoria represents the final element in this long-standing project and is on track for May 2016.

The work Comox has been doing will continue to be delivered in Victoria, and our newly modernized MCTS centre in Victoria is ready to accept this expanded area of operation.

Building on the lessons learned from success at nine other centres, we will continue to provide the high level of service that mariners and Canadians have come to expect from the Coast Guard. Modernization and consolidation is providing us with the tools that are cutting edge. We have systems that are not only more reliable, but flexible and adaptable. Due to these new systems we have the infrastructure in place to continuously modernize in the years ahead. I want to emphasize that consolidation does provide Canadians with a better, more reliable service.

When we talk about MCTS our focus is always drawn to systems, screens, cables, and wires, but I want to take a few minutes to talk about and recognize our people. All Coast Guard officers, including those who work in our MCTS centres, represent the finest in their fields. As the Coast Guard has undergone these changes, we recognize that the impact on employees has been significant.

Since I have been commissioner, we have worked regularly with unions to ensure a smooth transition. All employees at MCTS Comox were notified about the consolidation in 2014 and were offered positions in Victoria or Prince Rupert. Anyone who opted to move to another MCTS location was offered relocation assistance. We have ensured that staffing levels and workloads at the modernized centres were appropriate for the areas they cover.

The new technologies will ultimately reduce workload for our employees, and we have added surge capacity at each centre to deal with peak periods and various crises. This is something we did not have at all of our previous centres.

As we have modernized and consolidated our centres, have there been technical issues? Yes, absolutely. Technical problems are expected in a project of this size. Have we tested the system rigorously? Have we worked to find solutions to problems as they were reported? Yes, absolutely. The excellent working relationship that exists between our contractor, Frequentis, and employees has allowed us to work together to find solutions throughout the consolidation project at each centre.

We understand this transition has been difficult for our employees. They are adjusting and adapting to many changes, and these adjustments take time. Change is difficult. I remain committed to an approach that ensures changes are implemented smoothly and successfully. In short, we all want this project to work. I believe it will. It is already working.

I would like to address statements made by Unifor about the technical issues in Prince Rupert leading to safety concerns for mariners.

Following these statements, the deputy commissioner of operations initiated a technical review of audio quality issues that had been reported in Prince Rupert. A team of technical and operational specialists from outside the region of B.C. were brought in to assess the quality of radio communications and examine how issues are logged, communicated, analyzed, and resolved.

The technical review allowed us to engage in a dialogue with staff and to understand exactly when and how these issues are occurring. Audio quality issues such as echoes, reverberation, static, and speaker feedback, were uncovered, similar to findings at every other centre when they were in the early stages of their modernization. I'm confident we will resolve the technical issues in Prince Rupert, as we have successfully done in other centres across the country in early stages of the project. In fact, we already have.

Management is working closely with staff to address how these issues are reported, so that we can support our employees in a timely way. MCTS officers are trained to handle situations professionally when there are reception issues, ensuring proper communication with the mariner. Many factors can affect the quality of audio, such as the vessel's radio and antenna, weather, wind and waves, electromagnetic interference such as solar flares, and the geographical location of the caller. These factors have always existed and are not consolidation outcomes.

There have been comments made about MCTS Victoria and Prince Rupert being located in tsunami zones.

MCTS Victoria is not located directly in Victoria. It is located in a sheltered bay west of Sidney. Nor is it in a tsunami planning zone for the province. It is situated some distance from the beach, with an elevation higher than four metres above sea level. A report made by the Capital Regional District, which includes Sidney and surrounding communities, indicates that in Sidney the maximum water level of a tsunami is projected to be two metres in height.

Like much of the coast, Prince Rupert is located in a tsunami planning zone; however, the location of the centre is sheltered, due to the number and location of islands at the entrance to the port. The MCTS centre is located at the extreme inner end of the port, and the largest wave in that area, produced by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in 2012, was less than 0.7 metres.

As we do today, Coast Guard's MCTS centres will continue to play a role in communications early warning systems for tsunamis and earthquakes.

Allow me to address the claim that visual monitoring is required for MCTS centres to carry out their functions. There are no instances in which line of sight is required today. Radars and other electronic surveillance systems such as an automatic identification system, or AIS, provide us with the eyes on the water. If MCTS centres required line of sight, they would be unworkable in a country frequently susceptible to rain, fog, and blizzards—sometimes all on the same day.

In conclusion, members of the committee, we will analyze the results of your study with great interest. As with any national, long-standing project that has been in play for almost 10 years, there have been lessons to learn and improvements to be made. There is no reason to delay the consolidation of Comox into Victoria. Delays will result in significant financial pressure and cost to the Coast Guard and will postpone key decisions for employees. To be specific, the operating costs of keeping MCTS Comox open would be up to $1.5 million a year, and the one-time cost to modernize and reopen the centre would be much higher.

I'm proud of the results of the project to date. From day one, the project has been rooted in the principles that there would be no change in existing MCTS coverage and services and no disruption to services as we transition into the new system. Our MCTS officers themselves have been integral to this project. Across the country and throughout the project, they have contributed their expertise in testing the new system. It has not been done in a laboratory; it's been done by employees in the centres to ensure that the systems meet their demands for what they know they face daily. I thank them for their efforts, and I know that this collaboration will continue as we near the final stage of the project.

This project has allowed the Canadian Coast Guard to continue in our unwavering commitment to provide reliable, safe, and vital services to mariners in Canadian waters.

Thank you. We are pleased to take your questions.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Thank you very much. You're right on time.

Mr. Finnigan is the first questioner, for seven minutes.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Ms. Thomas, Mr. Pelletier, and Mr. Bain, for protecting the people who are navigating upon our waters. We appreciate it very much.

I have a few questions.

Coast Guard officials have indicated that staffing levels and workloads at modernized MCTS centres are appropriate for the area they cover, even as the level of traffic has marginally increased. Given that one of the benefits of implementing new technology in the centres is to reduce workload, can you tell us how modernizing the centres would result in not meeting traffic workload requirements?

[Jody Thomas]

I'll ask Superintendent Bain to speak specifically to what we're doing on the west coast. We did a workload study in 2009. We had outside resources help us develop the methodology for the study.

The number of stands or desks that manage a particular area or particular task in the MCTS centres are unchanged. They're still commensurate with the workload levels, the volume of traffic. If we had two in one location and two in another, and we merged them, the number of stands, people managing that traffic, would be what is required based on this study for the volume. That's scalable, of course, as volume goes up and down.

If we see a huge increase in traffic, we would start to staff, to prepare to add people to the station. Victoria is our largest station in the country and it's sort of our baseline level. The number of calls, the amount of traffic, that they have to manage within that station is absolutely within the norm of this study.

I'm not sure if Superintendent Bain would like to elaborate.

[Supt Brian Bain, Superintendent, MCTS Western Region, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Yes, when the 2009 workload study was conducted, Victoria was considered to be the threshold centre, meaning that this is the workload that we would set as a standard across the country at a maximum.

When we have eight operational positions in Victoria, four of those will be what we call the vessel traffic positions. Those are the ones that act proactively to ensure that commercial shipping remains safe. If there's any risk of conflict or if there is an incident that's reported to us, then the idea is to ensure safe passage for these larger ships. Those operating positions will not be touched. They will be identical to the way they are now in terms of their areas of responsibility.

There are four more positions that we call the safety positions. Those are the Coast Guard radio positions and there are four of those. Right now, in the structure that we have, there are three from Victoria and Vancouver together. There are two at Comox. One of those will be reduced, so we'll have a total of four rather than five.

I wasn't the one who did the workload application; however, my understanding is that because of the automation of the contiguous marine broadcast, which is a weather service that we provide on behalf of Environment Canada, it will allow us to combine those five positions into four.

There are some other positions, supervisory, managerial, administrative assistants, and one operating position that we call the regional marine information centre that are also going to be reduced. The supervisory positions are going to be absorbed into the one left at Victoria. Will that create extra workload for the supervisor? Yes, it will, but with the regional marine information centre, that was the one I had the greatest concern about when I first looked at the study.

When I looked at the whole coast, there is one aspect called offshore reporting that we gave to Prince Rupert. That's operating now and there are two more. One was the alerting service which is for environmental response and another called notices to shipping. Those were more difficult and I identified those as two that should really go either somewhere else or have some additional support.

That went up to national. They heard that and now those two services are going to what we call the regional operation centre. That concern has been addressed in my mind. What we end up with in terms of operating positions are the four traffic positions remaining intact, the Coast Guard radio positions reduced from five to four, and the administrative positions reduced as well.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

I have a follow-up to that question and I'm referring to the earlier presentation. Apparently, nobody wants to stay at Prince Rupert and it costs $100,000 to train an employee there. How is money going to be saved by transferring the workers to Prince Rupert?

[Supt Brian Bain]

We have had retention problems at Prince Rupert for those who come from outside of Prince Rupert into the centre. Those who were born and raised in Prince Rupert have no problem staying there. That can be a problem with national recruitment. If somebody comes from, say, Peterborough to Prince Rupert, then it's not going to be too long before they are going to want to transfer out. That creates a retention problem.

What we did last year was say, okay, we recognize this. It would make a lot of sense for us to hire in Prince Rupert for Prince Rupert. In fact, in the early stages of this, we thought we could even marry this with the employment equity program, so that we could look at aboriginals in the area and offer employment to them as well. They are in Prince Rupert; they want to stay in Prince Rupert; and it just happens to tie into some larger government objectives with Aboriginal Affairs and elsewhere.

We went through that process. About halfway through, we ran into a little snag, because our employment equity gap had gone from negative 1 up to plus 18, which created a problem for employment equity, but it didn't create a problem for local recruiting, so we went ahead with that. We've been able to hire three employees. They will be going to the Coast Guard College in July. Also, there is another process in place now, a national one, where any person who was not successful in that process could be given a second chance. That is the way we are going to address the retention problem in Prince Rupert for the long term.

[Pat Finnigan, Liberal, Miramichi—Grand Lake, NB]

We had a video of a tsunami, apparently from Fisheries and Oceans, that showed the tsunami going way up inland. I heard you say that there was absolutely no problem. What's the real movie? Which one is the right one?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Could you make a very short answer? You can elaborate for the next questioner.

[Jody Thomas]

I didn't see the video, but DFO does modelling all the time of various scenarios, whether they are the most likely or the most extreme. The models of Capital Regional District, which is responsible for the lower island—the south coast of the island—and that area of Victoria, say two-metre storm surge, two-metre tsunami surge, and we are at four metres above. We don't think it's an issue.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Robert Sopuck]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Arnold, go ahead.

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

I'd like to thank everyone for being here, including Mr. Hughes. I didn't get a chance to ask questions of him earlier.

I have a number of questions. The first few will be really to the point, and hopefully we'll get just a short answer, and then we can get into some of the others, which may need a little more detail.

Is this consolidation being done safely? Are there any safety concerns, from the Coast Guard's viewpoint on this, for public safety, shipping safety, and environmental safety?

[Jody Thomas]

We believe in the Coast Guard. Absolutely, this consolidation is being done safely. I say this and have evidence of it.

We intended to release the software in 2013 and start the modernization. As I said, Coast Guard employees tested the software. We received the software from the contractor. Our people, playing with the software and doing free play as you do when you test software, found a bug. We stopped all plans to roll out the software until we were satisfied, and they were satisfied, that this release of the software had corrected all the problems.

We would not put something into the public domain that is not safe. There are anomalies that occur. We have to continuously revisit the stations and ensure that nothing new has popped up—something in the hardware or in the station itself—but the software is working very well. I assure you it's safe.

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

Thank you.

Will this end up costing or saving money in the long run?

[Jody Thomas]

We had a $47-million budget for the MCTS program. We saved $7 million, and we've turned that over to the centre as part of the deficit reduction action plan, so that money is gone from the Coast Guard budget. Long-term, it will save money, based on the number of people we employ in the consolidated centres and all the associated costs of real property and having 22 locations.

It also saves us money because—as I am told by my technical folks—the system is future-proof. It works backwards compatibly with old hardware and old technology, but it's also ready so that, as new technology and new innovations come along, we can upgrade the system as it exists now. It's not a two-year or three-year system; it's a 10-year or 15-year system. That saves us money.

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

Earlier, I think we heard testimony that the operators are monitoring up to 80 channels at a time. Is there not a dedicated distress channel, a mayday channel, that emergency calls come in on? Have there been any problems identified with those emergency calls on those dedicated channels?

[Supt Brian Bain]

There is a dedicated channel, channel 16.

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

Okay, channel 16.

[Supt Brian Bain]

It's an international calling and distress channel. Anytime there's a boat on the water that wants to call another boat on the water, they call on channel 16. If there's a distress call, that happens on channel 16 as well, but everybody else has to keep quiet. If they don't keep quiet, the Coast Guard radio, MCTS, will tell them to keep quiet. It will be seelonce mayday, which is an adaptation of the French expression. It's the message that everybody who has taken their restrictive operating certificate will understand to mean, “Keep quiet. Mayday in progress.”