Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members.
Search and rescue has helped define the people of Gander since the Newfoundland Airport officially opened in January of 1938, long before the Town of Gander even existed. The challenge of locating and retrieving downed flyers was a very necessary and all too frequent part of airport operations throughout the Second World War, continued through the subsequent development of commercial aviation, and today remains a key part of daily life of our community as long-time host to 103 Search and Rescue.
It's a field in which we are perhaps uniquely experienced, having learned first-hand the trade through both necessity and invention and, more recently, advocating seemingly year after year on behalf of the SAR professionals we have the privilege of hosting in our community.
Before we discuss the critical and often emotional issue of SAR response times and level of service, allow me to reiterate the position consistently held by current and previous town councils of Gander: that we fully and unequivocally support the staff, both military and civilian, at 103 Search and Rescue Squadron and their counterparts across our country. We share their dedication to providing the best possible services to Canadians within the constraints of infrastructure and resource allocation, and we appreciate the opportunity to address the committee towards that end.
In particular, the issues of response times and SAR resource allocation have been raised repeatedly in recent years, mainly in direct response to marine or aeronautical incidents resulting in the loss of life. These incidents include the involvement of the Ryan's Commander, the Melina and Keith II, the Check-Mate III, and, most recently, the Cougar crash involving offshore oil workers in 2009. Most often, the ensuing discussion involves the proposed transfer of SAR assets currently located in Gander to a base in St. John's or the establishment of duplicate SAR services in St. John's.
Numerous studies commissioned by the federal government have examined this question and have consistently found that Gander is the optimal location not only for a Halifax SAR base but also for a fixed-wing SAR aircraft base, which is currently located in Greenwood, Nova Scotia.
In terms of additional protection for offshore oil workers or the perceived neglect of offshore oil workers in SAR resource allocation, the Town of Gander takes the position that this sector not only has equal access to our military SAR services, but has an additional advantage of industry-supplied SAR services offered under contract by Cougar itself. Improvements specific to this sector could best be achieved by legislating minimum industry SAR standards to include at least one dedicated SAR helicopter and such SAR-trained crew as required to provide 24/7 operational readiness.
Search and rescue operations throughout eastern Canada, whether they be aeronautical, marine, or land based, are coordinated by the joint rescue centre in Halifax. The 103 Rescue Squadron is charged with providing search and rescue capability to the Halifax Joint Rescue Coordination Centre 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. They are responsible for covering approximately 4.7 million square kilometres, of which 80% is covered by water.
The number of SAR cases in Newfoundland and Labrador is twice the national average, making the squadron one of the busiest in the country. On average, 103 Squadron responds to more than 100 calls on a yearly basis. The majority of its missions are marine based. SAR crews routinely find vessels in distress or overdue and evacuate sick or injured seamen.
The squadron's 92 military personnel and civilian employees operate three CH-149 Cormorant helicopters. The Cormorant can carry 12 stretchers, or a load of 5,000 kilograms, and its ice protection system allows it to operate in continuous icing conditions. Meanwhile, Gander is the only SAR base in Canada operating without fixed-wing aircraft. Cormorant missions from Gander are instead supported by the Hercules aircraft, which is currently based in Greenwood, Nova Scotia.
In terms of operational readiness, 103 Squadron maintains its 30-minute standby posture 40 hours per week, and a two-hour standby for the remaining 128 hours, typically nights and weekends. The optimal allocation of SAR resources should provide for the fastest possible response to the greatest number of incidents. This is achieved through the analysis and periodic review of the geographic locations of historical incidents and also the number of people at risk as a result of those incidents. Within the Halifax SRR, maritime incidents comprised the vast majority of missions--approximately 75% in the period from 2002 to 2008--with aeronautical incidents accounting for less than 7% over that same period.
People potentially at risk in the SRR include: aircraft passengers, both domestic and international, and passengers carried by Marine Atlantic between North Sydney and Port aux Basques, North Sydney and Argentia, and the Island of Newfoundland and ports along the Labrador coast, as well as local ferry systems, resource harvesters, including hunters, fisher persons, loggers, and miners, and oil industry workers.
A comprehensive study on the impact of offshore oil operations on the east coast SAR by the Centre for Operational Research and Analysis, released in December of 2000, provides perhaps the best data set to date on the issue of response times. Its various conclusions have since been referenced and supported by other federal studies, and it concludes that Gander remains the best possible location from which to save the most lives in terms of incident coverage, transit times, on-station times, accounting for the number of persons at risk in various scenarios, weather limitations, and even the impact of extending the range of the Cormorant helicopters.
As recently as March 12, 2010, the National Research Council observed that basing fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft in Gander would immediately improve coverage for the region. In discussing the statement of operational requirements for fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft, the NRC was critical of constraints imposed within the SOR that severely limited options for replacing Canada's fixed-wing SAR fleet.
Specifically, the NRC's final report noted the constraint that the current four main operating bases remain unchanged. I quote:
...it is clear that the existing bases of Greenwood, Trenton, Winnipeg and Comox do not represent the best option for SAR response. In particular, basing aircraft in Gander rather than Greenwood would have had a significant positive impact on the response time to a vast majority of the incidents examined as the range required to respond to 90% of historical incidents reduced from 653 nautical miles (nm) to 533 nm. The analysis shows that “the greatest reduction in cruise speed that can be achieved by moving a single base arises when the Main Operating Base (MOB) in Greenwood is relocated to Gander.”
The mandatory requirement for aircraft range was derived based on an incident in the mid-Atlantic...with response from Greenwood and a refuelling stop in St. John's. However, a Gander base in lieu of Greenwood, had it been considered in the SOR, would have impacted the range requirements of a single aircraft solution slightly by requiring an increase in the range requirements for a new aircraft by 45 nm...while the response would be greatly improved as a transit leg from Greenwood to St. John's plus a 1-hour refuelling stop would be unnecessary.
Given the existing SAR role of the Cormorant in Gander, and the improvement in response time of a platform based there, it is unfortunate that such a basing option is excluded due to this constraint.
While many of the issues related to the positioning of military SAR resources have been studied and debated for years, any discussion of increasing allocations today must also address the attrition of trained and experienced SAR personnel from the ranks of the military, which cannot currently compete with the wages and benefits offered in private sector SAR operations. This attrition already threatens to degrade the existing level of SAR services and must be addressed immediately to prevent serious impacts on our overall capacity.
In a presentation to SAR professionals in October 2003, Brian F. Stone, superintendent of Maritime Search and Rescue, Canadian Coast Guard, Newfoundland and Labrador division, said:
In many industries safety has become a game of money, numbers, and statistics. A company can now decide an appropriate expenditure per life saved, calculating safety decisions mathematically. While it is vital that a corporation consider the statistics of risks to workers along with the costs to protect them, the goal is to protect the lives [of] each individual worker. Just because a company can financially handle the loss of a worker does not mean that it should not do everything possible to protect workers from injuries. Safety is not simply about numbers; it is about lives.
As a nation, we have the knowledge, skills, experience, and technology to provide the highest standards of search and rescue services available anywhere in the world. The level of service we ultimately offer is limited only by the priority we assign to this service and the investment we are willing to make in its provision.
The Town of Gander recognizes that SAR response times can be improved through any or all the following changes to current resource allocation and/or policies, and we urge this committee to give full and fair consideration to each of our five recommendations: one, upgrade 103 Squadron to a 30-minute operational readiness posture 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, or extend the current 30-minute posture to such days and hours in which the highest number of missions has historically been recorded; two, assign one or more dedicated fixed-wing aircraft to Gander to extend the range and on-station times in the critical stages of search operations; three, assign an additional Cormorant aircraft to Gander to help eliminate periods when maintenance, repairs, or training missions mean that no aircraft is immediately available in the event of an emergency; four, ensure that routine maintenance and training be scheduled such that at least one aircraft and crew are always available to respond from Gander in a timely manner; and lastly, address the growing issues of the recruitment and retention of military search and rescue personnel.
Thank you very much for your attention this afternoon.