Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Civil Air Search and Rescue Association, or CASARA, was established in 1986 as a Canada-wide volunteer association dedicated to the promotion of aviation safety and the provision of air search support services to the national search and rescue program. Our volunteers use their own aircraft or vehicles to provide this service and are reimbursed for their expenses.
CASARA is funded by a contribution agreement through Treasury Board and managed by DND. The contribution agreement is a five-year agreement outlining the services to be provided and the funding authorized for those services.
CASARA provides annual financial statements reviewed by our auditor. To date, all financial statements are unqualified and without opinion. This speaks very well of a volunteer organization that is managing public funds today.
We have member organizations in every province and territory. Our membership this past fiscal year was approximately 2,997, and members have contributed approximately 124,701 hours in volunteer time, training, and hosting safety seminars. Across this country, our volunteers have also participated in 254 actual SAR missions and 137 air and 117 ground taskings, involving some 4,577 volunteer hours.
These volunteers actively augment the Canadian Forces primary search and rescue assets during SAR missions by supplying spotters from military search aircraft and by providing pilots, navigators, spotters, and aircraft when called upon to do so by any of the three joint rescue coordination centres in Canada. We also aid local police and emergency management organizations with humanitarian assistance in looking for lost persons.
CASARA is managed by a volunteer board of 13 members. They are elected from each member organization in the country. This board is responsible for setting policy, managing our financial responsibilities, and setting training standards. The board meets twice a year to fulfill these responsibilities for our day-to-day running. The four-member board executive that is charged with the responsibility meets four times a year or as otherwise needed.
CASARA has developed our own training programs based upon the national SAR manual. Along with these training programs, we have set training standards and currency standards that our volunteers must meet before being authorized to work on actual SAR missions. We have developed certain training courses for each of our pilot, navigator, spotter, and search coordinator roles.
In order to be successful, CASARA uses a structure that breaks each member organization into zones and areas as needed. CASARA has approximately 104 zones across the country. A zone is the level at which all operations occur. Our certification, training, currency, and crewing all occur there. To ensure that each zone is compliant with our training certification and currency requirements, DND evaluates each zone. Our CASARA liaison officers assigned from the SAR squadrons are given this responsibility. On average, we successfully pass our zone evaluations approximately 97% of the time, and the other 3% are successful with immediate retraining.
We have developed an electronic computer-based CASARA management system to retain all of our data regarding our volunteers, their training records, and their currency status. As we work with a rolling 365 currency period, our volunteers' currency is continually being monitored, and training is adjusted to match the training needed. Appropriate courses are scheduled to ensure that everyone is provided the opportunity to maintain their currency.
All CASARA volunteers are certified to ensure that a high level of service can be provided to the Canadian Forces, but also to ensure that those in need have high-quality professionals searching for them. CASARA volunteers willingly agree to participate in searches where environments are challenging.
One of CASARA's greatest contributions to the Canadian Forces SAR assets is the local knowledge that pilots, navigators, spotters, ground personnel, and coordinators have of their respective areas. Our members might know of an airplane in an area, so that if an emergency locator transmitter alarms, we would have a good idea of where to look. This local knowledge may have the effect of quickly ending a search or allowing Canadian Forces aircraft to not participate, thereby reducing the workload on the SAR squadrons.
CASARA has developed an insurance program to provide protection for our volunteers. This program covers liability, accidents, injury on duty, and secondary aircraft hull insurance. This program will ensure that our volunteers are not left to their own resources, should they be injured during the course of their missions.
Complementing our insurance program are workers compensation boards. In almost all provinces and territories, our volunteers are recognized as emergency services workers, thus allowing the WCB in a province or territory to provide financial support should an unfortunate incident occur. We are still negotiating with one or two provinces or territories who are still reluctant to provide this coverage, even though the federal government will ultimately cover 75% of the cost of any claims.
The chief of review services, DND'S internal program auditor, has recently completed an audit of the CASARA program within DND. The chief determined that CASARA is a cost-effective program that saves both funds and scarce DND equipment and personnel resources. For example, since 2005 the cost of CASARA in support of SAR has been $85.20 per hour in the Halifax search and rescue region; $65.82 per hour in the Trenton search and rescue region; and $447.51 in the Victoria search and rescue region.
CASARA is involved in approximately 25% of the SAR cases, and we were reimbursed approximately $1 million for these efforts. However, if DND had performed these operations without the benefit of our CASARA volunteers and their aircraft, it would have cost about $30 million. These figures alone demonstrate the value the CASARA volunteer program brings to the SAR program. The cost of the CASARA program is 1.9% of the DND program costs for SAR.
Throughout the report, those interviewed rated the CASARA program as either indispensable or very relevant, which is a very positive endorsement of a civilian volunteer organization.
In fiscal years 2005 to 2009, we participated in 32 actual SAR incidents in the Arctic and Northwest Territories, 11 of them on the ground, for 1,250 hours of volunteer time; in Nunavut, in 20 air incidents, two of them on the ground, for 1,400 hours in total; and in the Yukon, in nine air incidents, four of them on the ground, for a total of 226 hours.
So we are available. We are out there and can provide any assistance that DND or emergency measures organizations request of us.
Thanks for the opportunity to present the story of CASARA.
Your questions will follow, I assume.