National Defence Committee on June 15th, 2009

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Mr. Payne.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Davidson and Colonel Drover, for attending today. The information you're providing is obviously very important to us.

There are a couple of things I would like to find out. First of all, Colonel, we've heard about the potential of a crash in the north and getting there. If in fact that did happen, can you ever be close enough?

[Col P. Drover]

It's difficult to presuppose where you should be at any given time in this business. This is a no-notice operation we're dealing with here. You may be fortunate to find your assets are in the proximity and you can respond faster, but most likely that's not going to be the case.

I think that speaks to what we talked about in terms of where we are based. In fact, those basing locations put you where the activity is most likely to occur. Now, I agree, it does not address the idea that you're not in the north, but assets in the north right now would be terribly underutilized or would have to come south, as we discussed. So it's difficult to predict where it would have to be.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Also, Colonel, could you maybe expand upon the capabilities of the coast guard and the coverage it has?

[Col P. Drover]

I'd prefer not to describe at great length the coast guard capabilities. Other than that, I did mention that we are co-located with coast guard personnel in the RCCs, the rescue coordination centres. I think it's significant that with the coast guard in a controlling agency with the military folks, they are in the very good position to decide what coast guard assets might be available, where they might be available, and how to use them. They have primary SAR vessels, but I would defer to them to describe their vessels.

Be assured that in our coordinating centres, the coast guard representatives will be able to decide the appropriate coast guard response. It's a very robust and coordinated system they have.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

The other thing is Mr. Bachand asked you a question regarding the Alenia. Maybe you could just actually respond to that question, and maybe save yourself from writing a report on it.

[Col P. Drover]

Which question, the fixed-wing SAR base? You mentioned aircraft, but I knew you were referring to the fixed-wing SAR basing. Again, I'm not familiar with the program. As it stands, my understanding is that we were replacing certain fleets, the Buffalo and the Hercules. I would assume that probably the basing plan would remain the same, because it's the replacement of an aircraft, not changing the capability, not increasing or decreasing the level of service.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Do I still have time left?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You still have one minute.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay, excellent.

I have a question for both of you. I'd just like to go back around the training that's required. How often do people have to upgrade their training, both on the volunteer basis and also as part of the SAR personnel?

[John R. Davidson]

Well, from the volunteer side of it, we're typically training every month. Our members are out there once or twice a month, going through the certification process and the re-currency process. As I said, we maintain our records on our CASARA management system. It allows us to program each and every member's training requirements so that he maintains the currency needed to be active. We will not task any of our members if they're not current. We will send the current members on the actual tasking; training is something else.

[Col P. Drover]

From a military perspective, there is a fairly significant training build, and it starts with the operational training units, where they actually convert from their other aircraft, whatever they've flown--or in the SAR techs from their schools--into the aircraft that will be their SAR platform. And it only starts there. The recurrent requirements are continuous. To hone all those skills, the night hoist of a vessel that's tossing, with night vision goggles, is something that has to be constantly.... The other point I would make is that we also need to upgrade the folks. They don't stay in the business for their whole career. Some of us would like to fly more than be staff officers, but that's not the way it works, unfortunately.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Now I will give the floor to our last member, Ms. Neville.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

I don't know whether I have five minutes' worth or not, but let me just ask you about MAJAID. Mr. Hawn referred to it as the only one in the world. I'd like to know how often it's been deployed, where it's been used and in what circumstances, the tenure of it, how long you will use it for. And does it have applicability in situations other than search and rescue?

[Col P. Drover]

Excellent questions.

The good news, I think, is that we have never deployed it operationally, and that means we haven't had a situation requiring it. That doesn't mean it wasn't available. The last time that I'm aware we had it on alert and preparing it was Swissair 111, which is the aircraft that crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia. We were prepared to launch the MAJAID and then it was determined that this was a marine recovery, as opposed to a rescue operation, and it didn't have any impact.

You bring up a very good question, in that I did not mention other applications, but this has applications beyond strictly an air disaster. If a marine ship runs aground and you've got 1,600 folks on a cruise vessel that goes aground and is floundering and you get all those folks off on to some permafrost or rugged environment, it will take you a long time to evacuate that many people via the helicopter or whatever means. The MAJAID is a fly-away air-dropable capability. Each kit has tentage, for instance, for 80 people, and we have four kits. So to get this into a sparsely populated area.... And it doesn't have to be the Arctic, either; it can certainly be any part, because there are parts of a lot of northern provinces that would be equally applicable. It's scalable, so you don't have to have the whole exercise.

We also have a 12-man army paratroop team that are trained to go with this, so they can provide assistance on the ground, survival techniques, and our SAR techs, of course, who have medical capability. So it has more versatility than strictly one-time in the Arctic.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

So you're saying it's never been used. I see.

What are the various components of it?

[Col P. Drover]

The kit itself is about 11,000 pounds of tentage, with heaters and generators. So it's a very capable winter shelter with medical supplies, provisions, food, and some other things you need in a survival scenario. Once it's parachuted in with our army paratrooping team, they can set up a sheltered, heated facility very quickly.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

Just as a last question, how long can it be sustained?

[Col P. Drover]

Sustainment is not a problem, once we get this on the ground, and there are anchors, so it's not going to blow away in the Arctic gales and things. The whole notion is this is the first step in bringing somebody, especially the injured, to a medical facility. The limiting factor there may well be the lack of helicopters because of weather or whatever, but we have the capability of air-supplying sustainment, and we can air-supply medical expertise. It would probably not be too difficult to keep it running for quite some time.

[Anita Neville, Liberal, Winnipeg South Centre, MB]

My mind is working in a number of ways.

What is the cost of using it for a given period of time? What I'm hearing is that it could very well have civilian use as well.

[Col P. Drover]

In terms of cost, I have no idea what the dollar figure is to stand it up. There's a maintenance cost to sustain just the capability, to make sure it's primed and ready to go. Once deployed in a real-world scenario, a lot of the materials would not be recovered, so I don't know about that aspect.

In terms of application for another interested party, I've never seen any interest in that sort of thing, so I can't answer you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I'd like to thank our witnesses, Colonel Drover and Mr. Davidson, for taking part in these proceedings. As you can see from the members' questions, your work is very important to us. We appreciated the opportunity to talk to you this afternoon. Thank you very much.

I will now suspend the meeting for a few minutes. We will continue with an

in camera session two minutes from now.

Merci bien.

[Proceedings continue in camera]