National Defence Committee on June 15th, 2009

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you both for being here.

First of all, Colonel Drover, the air force refers to SAR as a no-fail mission. Is that a true statement?

[Col P. Drover]

Absolutely, sir.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

So failure is not acceptable.

On the privatization question—and I'll ask this of either one or both of you—can you describe the command and control challenge you would have with CASARA or a similar organization in trying to manage a privatized SAR capability? It doesn't have to be a long answer.

[Col P. Drover]

Thank you for the offer.

Actually, the whole privatization of SAR has been looked at before—some portions of it, all of it, none of it—and the way it's established right now, with the network of players, the coordination centres, the dedicated units, I would speculate that the private corporations could replicate some, if not all of it, but I think it would be prohibitively costly to do it that way.

One of the things the military offers to this kind of mission is that we have depth. We can sustain operations and it doesn't cost any more. It's an expensive proposition, the command and control aspects of it. Again, it's extensive and in-depth, and it's coordinated. It would be interesting and difficult to develop a concept for a capable privatized SAR that's less expensive than what we have right now.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

The preponderance of incidents, of course, happened south of 55, as you've said, with 67 incidents out of 8,500 north of 55. Can you comment on the impact on the 99% of incidents in the south that would potentially occur if we were to permanently station assets north of 55 to handle the less than 1% of incidents that occur up there?

[Col P. Drover]

There are two approaches to that. If we were to add additional resources, that wouldn't have much impact on the south, but it would have a significant impact on the costs associated with SAR. It's not inexpensive to establish a 24 and 7 operation given the training requirement and the crewing requirement.

If we're looking, instead, to move a base from south to north, then what you'll find is that the aircraft stationed in the north will be going longer distances to the south to respond to the same incidents that they are now capable of responding to. That's the fundamental premise for our basing: where we can get the most response to the most incidents in the least amount of flying time. It would increase the transit time in a number of incidents, more so than the ones that would be shortened.

If you look at the Arctic, there's no real good place that speaks to a logical place, because, if you notice, the dot plot puts it throughout the Arctic.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

There's some talk of moving resources from Gander--I'm talking Cormorants--permanently to St. John's. Can you comment on the operating differences between Gander and St. John's?

Also, I think some people may be under the impression that if you put on an airplane and a crew, you have 24 and 7 covered. What would it take to establish 24/7 coverage at a place like St. John's and what are the differences in operating out of the two places?

[Col P. Drover]

That's a reasonable question.

First of all, establishing any 24 and 7 operation requires 5.5 or 6 crew and several aircraft, because you have to do recurrent training.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Is that complete crews?

[Col P. Drover]

Absolutely. That's complete crews. It's just a function of how long a shift it is until you're time-expired and then have to do rests. There's leave and all those sorts of things. So it's not a matter of moving one aircraft to a location. Even seasonally, it becomes very difficult to come up with that.

Our basing study in 2005, the one we referred to, clearly indicated that Gander is a better location, and for a number of reasons. If you look at where the SAR operations out of Gander occur, you see that it's not predominantly offshore. It is throughout the island and up the north shore of the island.

Gander is by far a better weather operating base. In St. John's, you can have times when no air traffic is moving--“zero-zero”, we call it--and Gander very rarely gets that. So you could have cases, if you were based in St. John's and there was a fisherman in distress in Port aux Basques, where you couldn't launch. You couldn't take off.

Those are the basic reasons why we're comfortable that Gander makes more sense operationally.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

I want to re-emphasize a statement you made that Canada is the only country in the world with a MAJAID capability.

[Col P. Drover]

That is correct.

In fact, we do an international exercise called Arctic SAREX with Russia and the United States Alaskan Command. In the last one we did, we actually used MAJAID as the centrepiece, because they sort of identify this capability as unique and not unwanted. It's just that their structures are different from ours and they don't have it.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Is it safe to say that at CF and CASARA the whole SAR community is prepared to respond to changes, that if there is more traffic, if the situation changes, the CF will be prepared to respond? Is that a fair statement?

[Col P. Drover]

It's absolutely fair. I think it's part of our responsibility to provide the monitoring operational necessity. My mandate is to deliver a SAR service. It's our organization that determines there's a requirement to ship the resources or indeed to get additional resources. It's our obligation to present that to the leadership and take it from there.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Mr. Davidson, CASARA is obviously a great organization. You're in contact with similar organizations in the U.S. or other parts of the world. Are there similar organizations in the U.S., for example? And I don't mean Minuteman.

[John R. Davidson]

There is the Civil Air Patrol in the U.S. It is significantly different from CASARA, in that it deals with cadets as well. It has three major arms. One is education. One is cadets. One is the surveillance search and rescue side of it. They are a little bit different. They are an arm of the military, whereas we're not. We're a totally arm's-length, volunteer, not-for-profit corporation.

We're trying to develop closer ties with the Civil Air Patrol to exchange methods, improve ourselves, and help them if we can. And I don't see why we can't. I think we have a pretty good system.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much, Mr. Davidson.

I will now give the floor to Mr. Bagnell for five minutes.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank you for coming. It's a big help

Colonel, I think you put your finger on the problem when you said, in response to Jack, that there are no dedicated aircraft in the north.

I have a question related to incidents. A lot of searches are done by the RCMP, the rangers, and other local forces and services, such as the fire department. Does anyone keep track of all the search incidents that are actually done?

[Col P. Drover]

The statistics that we showed you are basically from our database, but it's the rescue coordinating centres that tabulate those. They are tasked with that. Each incident generates a SAR report, and it's all captured in there.

As I mentioned earlier in our briefing, sometimes it is the territorial RCMP's responsibility to go out and look for the lost hunter. We may, in our response, provide a Hercules because there are no assets available, or it may go to the provincial authorities. That is ongoing every day. I think that's really what makes our system very robust, in that our rescue coordinating centres have the authority, without going any higher, to make decisions. They can contract, and they have a network of contacts, such as EMOs, local police, and all sorts of things.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Are all those on the incident report, on this map you gave us?

[Col P. Drover]

Yes, sir, I would assume so. That's a representative thing over several years. But yes, if they recorded an incident, it's in the database.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

If the RCMP search for someone, or the fire department, or the rangers, then it's on one of those maps?

[Col P. Drover]

The exception is if it was a community activity that didn't reach our rescue coordinating centre for involvement. In other words, if it was something that was dealt with in the local area, it probably would not be, but if it was anything significant that had a federal resource, it certainly would be. When I say “federal resource”, I'm referring to our rescue control centre's involvement, which would be part of that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

The 90,000 passengers taking a plane every day over the poles are lightly dressed. How long do you calculate somebody would last at minus 30 or minus 40 degrees? How long would someone in a boat sprayed with water last in the cold Arctic temperatures?

[Col P. Drover]

In my personal view, not very long. I often wonder, when I'm flying in a commercial aircraft, what the chance of survival would be.