Thank you, and my compliments on your research as well. I'm glad you were following my work.
Yes, the search and rescue challenges are increasing almost exponentially. Yes, there are more than 100,000 people who fly over the Canadian Arctic each day on flights from Los Angeles to London or New York to Beijing. At some stage, unfortunately, there's a statistical risk that an accident will occur. If one of those planes were to crash-land in an area remote from any community in the middle of the winter, it would not be just an issue of the people onboard—and one would feel terrible for them in that situation—but also of the enormous embarrassment to Canada as we scrambled to respond with search and rescue helicopters based on Vancouver Island and in Nova Scotia to a situation that would be almost half a world away, many thousands of kilometres.
The issue of shipping is the exact same thing. I've travelled through the Northwest Passage a number of times on Russian-owned and -crewed ecocruise ships in Canadian waters with Canada's permission, with more than 100 ecotourists onboard in some very remote and challenging places. These navigators, as Professor McRae said, are very competent, but inevitably some kind of challenge will occur. In 2010 we had three ships run aground in the Canadian Arctic.
Yes, we need to be ready for this. The activity is increasing. Then there's all the mineral prospecting and everything else that's occurring. Iqaluit is one of the busiest airports in Canada during the summer months.
How do we deal with this? We need to understand that it needs to be a priority, even though relatively few Canadians live there. The fact that there is no large urban centre is not an excuse for not having world-class search and rescue. Do we position a search and rescue helicopter in the Arctic during the summer months? Yes, I'd like to see that. Do we prioritize the acquisition of new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft for the Canadian Forces? Absolutely. Do we prioritize the re-capitalization of our Arctic fleet, which is currently made up of icebreakers that are as old as or older than I am? Absolutely.
With all respect to the government, there have been some really good promises, but the delivery has been slow on this. The contracts for the Arctic offshore patrol ships have not yet been signed, and that's seven years after the Prime Minister made his initial promise on this. The fixed-wing search and rescue situation is that procurement has been under way for almost a decade, and again, no contract has been signed.
My message to the government is that you're making all the right noises, and you have for some time, but what really matters is being able to deliver. If that massive, tragic accident occurs and we're not ready, it won't impact on our sovereignty, but it will impact on our credibility as an Arctic nation.