The recommendation I made a number of years ago was to station, on sort of a temporary basis, a C-130 in Yellowknife. The search and rescue requiring a C-130 on the west coast would originate out of Winnipeg. If you were to launch from Yellowknife, it would be about the same flight time to reach the west coast.
There were a number of incidents, when I was the commander, when C-130s came up from Trenton and Winnipeg to do search and rescue operations in the north. The transit time to reach the target area was very long. My point was that there is a shift now. International flights--Vancouver to New Delhi, New York to Hong Kong--are going directly over the Arctic. Even though the incidence of air disasters or air incidents is relatively small--about 98% of incidents occur either on landing or takeoff--the possibility of an incident in the north continues to increase. Given the climatic conditions.... You may recall the C-130 that crashed on Ellesmere Island. It took something like two and a half days before somebody was actually on site.