National Defence Committee on Jan. 31st, 2011

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Mr. Bartlett.

[Wilfred Bartlett]

One of the biggest problems I have with search and rescue--and maybe somebody can respond to this--is with the 30 minutes. When the people are there on site, it takes 30 minutes to get off the ground or you have a 30-minute limit.

I was talking to an ambulance driver out our way the other day, and if they go out in the night and make a call and they get home at 3 o'clock in the morning, they have to get somebody out of bed to put fuel in that ambulance before it's put back in the garage. So when the next call comes, it only takes five minutes and they're aboard the machine and they're gone. Now these are not people who are living at the garage. They're just volunteers like the ones you see around most communities. It's one of the things people are really questioning.

The other thing is, what is the price of a life? I went to Larry Parsons' funeral. I had to go and talk to his wife. Her husband died because it took that chopper 50 minutes to get off the ground. When the chopper got there--and it's in this report here, and don't ask me where I got it, by the way--they were responsive when the helicopter came on site. So you can imagine if it had gotten off the ground in 20 minutes--that was half an hour earlier--they'd be home now with their families today. This is the big issue I have.

When it comes to money to put it there 24/7, I think it is darn well worth it. If my taxes have to go up a little bit, I've no problem with that. I spent part of my life on the water. I know how dangerous it is out there. It's not like if you're driving your car and you run off the road, and by and by you get up on the road and hitchhike. Out there, it's a different thing altogether. A vessel can go down in minutes, as has been proven over the years. I could name some that people never had a chance to get a lifeboat off of. Some of them never even got their life jackets on. That's how fast the boat can go down.

In a vessel you have all kinds of water intakes coming into it, and it only takes one of them to break down in the engine room and all of a sudden that boat is half full of water before anybody knows about it. When you get so much water, it'll automatically sink or tip over, whatever the case may be.

So the response time to me is the most important thing, and it has to be 24/7. Find the money. Cut back on some other wasteful programs. I could name a few, but I won't here today. Find the money.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you, Mr. Bartlett.

I'll give the floor to Mr. Harris.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank the witnesses for coming this afternoon. Your stories are very moving, and particularly those of you who've lost family and friends in disasters.

For you, Priscilla, even though it's been 24 years, it's obvious that you still are extremely moved by what happened and motivated to bring us the message. I think we all take seriously that we have the ability and the responsibility to make recommendations here, and that certainly will be guiding my thoughts.

Thank you, also, Mr. O'Callaghan. I think there is a lot of knowledge at stake here in terms of how this all works.

Perhaps I can start with you. You were telling us that this helicopter, the Cormorant, was either designed or presented as a helicopter with a ratio of maintenance to flying of seven to one, and now it's 30 to one, meaning that it spends four times as much activity or time being maintained as was anticipated. Does that result in us, the people, essentially not having enough helicopters, or is that putting words in your mouth? Can you tell us what the consequence is of having helicopters that aren't available because they're having to be maintained four times as much as was anticipated when all of the plans were made?

[Sean O'Callaghan]

It definitely has a lot to do with serviceable assets. If it were a seven-to-one helicopter, it wouldn't be in maintenance as long as it was. But what they did was underestimate what we call “lifed components” and how quickly they would break down.

From our end, from an IMP organizational end, we've gone through a couple of hirings to rectify that problem, but we still find ourselves behind the eight ball as far as being able to keep up and maintain the Cormorant to the level that is required by DND personnel and what they'd like to see go.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

But as a consequence of that, are the three helicopters in Gander enough to do the job, in your view?

[Sean O'Callaghan]

I think the original procurement fell short. I think we needed 20, not the original 15. You always have to account for things not operating as they're supposed to. It's a mechanical piece of gear and very electronic and complex. That was the original problem.

So we're kind of stuck here now with....

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Okay, thank you.

Obviously the notion of planning goes into making decisions, and we've heard a lot of comments about the 24/7, 30-minute standby requirement. It's a position I support and have been championing for some time.

Some of you asked about the value of a life, or the cost. There are costs to doing different sorts of things, and I'll give you an example. It comes from a report prepared by the Department of National Defence in September 2004.

This is about procurement of fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft. They also studied what the standby posture--the 30-minute standby requirements--would do to the design of the aircraft in planning the program. I want to read what it said specifically, because it would affect the cruise speed of a fixed-wing aircraft. This is from the executive summary. The analysis is later on.

Increasing the number of hours that the SAR standby posture is 30 minutes represents another obvious manner in which the minimum cruise speed can be reduced. The analysis estimated the 30 year cost of various increases to the current 40 hour per week allotment of 30 minute standby. In particular, it was found that the cost of maintaining 30 minute standby 24 hours per day, 7 days per week for 30 years would be in excess of one billion current year dollars. These costs were deemed too prohibitive in light of the fact that the budget for the acquisition of the [fixed-wing search and rescue] aircraft is $1.2 billion.

So $1 billion over 30 years sounds like a lot of money, but when you divide it by 30 years, it works out to $33 million per year for a national program.

I wonder if you'd care to comment on those numbers. This is for fixed-wing aircraft, not helicopters. There may be a different analysis and a different number. But does that number strike you as something that should be regarded by the government as prohibitive if it comes to trying to change to a 24-hour, 30-minute standby response?

Does anyone want to comment on that?

[Johanna Ryan Guy]

You have to advance; change is inevitable. We know we have problems. It has been pointed out here the number of different problems that have arisen from just these hearings alone. So you take the knowledge given from all aspects. In a perfect world we'd get it all.

Jack, you'd get one in St. John's. We'd keep the one that's here in Gander. But for God's sake, the 24/7 is the biggest issue for Newfoundlanders, for families, in my opinion, and that's why I'm here. If you don't speak out, it's always about dollars, but everything is about dollars. What do you fix first? It's like having an old house. Where do you start? You know it's going to fall apart if you do not put money into it, and wherever you look there's a requirement. So where will your money be best spent? Money is money. There's never going to be enough money in the government. Look at the deficit.

So I don't know the answers. That's hopefully why we've got you guys--and I would not want to be a politician for that reason. Where do you spend the money? How do you spend the money?

[Wilfred Bartlett]

They probably wouldn't want to go out on the water either.

[Johanna Ryan Guy]

That's true. Well, I would. I'd rather be out squid-jigging than sitting here, believe me.

Figuring out where the money is best spent...from a family's perspective, I'm probably not going to find exactly where this is.

“Newfoundland and Labrador families slam internal search and rescue report”. I know I'm not supposed to pull something out like this, but this was actually dated October 7, 2008.

Families in Newfoundland and Labrador who have lost fishermen at sea said they are upset about a recent military internal report that recommends search-and-rescue squadrons should not be staffed round the clock.

[Me] Johanna Ryan-Guy lost two brothers when the Ryan's Commander capsized on the rocks near Cape Bonavista in September 2004.

[I]...said the internal report is “a tough pill to swallow”.

The study reviewed all incidents rated as a Category 1—defined by grave or imminent danger requiring immediate response and assistance to prevent the loss of life, between 2000 and 2004.

In those years, there were 1,054 Category 1 cases, and in nine of them, the department determined that reaction time of the search-and-rescue crews might have been a deciding factor in the victim survival.

At the heart of the study was the question of the viability of staffing crews at the squadron to hasten reaction time.

Guys, this is 2008. We're sitting here and this is 2011. I've had it up to the ying yang with most of this stuff, to be honest with you. But I know there's a lot of red tape and I know it takes time.

Status quo is a two-hour reaction time during the nighttime, when crews are off shift, and on call from their homes. During regular staffing hours, search-and-rescue crews have a 30-minute reaction time.

The report showed there would be little benefit and huge costs to reducing reaction time for nighttime shifts. The document also showed that keeping crews on 30-minute posturing times, 24 hours a day would cost [at that time] at minimum $200 million more per year.

I said that I was discouraged by the report. I'm still discouraged because we're still scrabbling at the same issues. Not much has changed. That boat went down in 2004. This stuff that we're talking about, Jack, that was an issue then and it's still an issue. And if it's 10 years from now, there are still going to be issues. You talk about money. I'm not rich but I'm not poor either. Do you think that money would make any difference to me with regard to Dave and Joe's lives? I understand that you cannot save everybody. Not even God can do that, okay? But whatever resources you do have, it can't always be about the money. What's right to do with the money that you do have?

Priscilla, how many years have you been up to the ying yang with this? Go for it.

[Priscilla Boutcher]

Well, I guess it's been ongoing, but I think with all the tragedies that we've spoken about here today, surely God we've learned enough from them that we have the ability. I think everybody has the ability. I think the politicians and the federal government have to take more responsibility to ensure that we don't have these ongoing tragedies. Whether they're small or large, one is too many.

I'm not here today to challenge the communities, because that's not my job. I want fairness. I think the powers that be should have a response put in place as minimal as possible for time, whether it's in Gander or St. John's. They have to be responsible people. I know that sometimes politics are involved, but I think this is too important.

Going back to the Ocean Ranger, someone at that time should have had some responsibility. These boys, or men, or people should not even have been working that night. We all knew it was the worst storm in history. And surely God, ahead of time, I hope we've improved, and we know that even if it's a small disaster, these men of ours—fishermen or whoever—should not be out in the Atlantic working.

It wasn't fit. Anyone who was out in that never had a chance of survival. But it hurts when it happens, I'll tell you.

I think some precautions could have been taken. Let's learn from these tragedies. Communication to me and my family failed more than 100%, and I never want for a family to get as little communication as we received. I still hurt over it, because there was none, absolutely none. I fought with search and rescue on the plane to tell me what happened. They couldn't tell me.

Like I said, I had to phone my clergy for him to find out what was the truth, 12 hours after, and with everybody in Newfoundland knowing. I think it's because I was remote from the area; I was not in the city and the communities around the north shore and all those places. It was just me in Corner Brook and I had no one to turn to. I was getting horrible answers.

Like I said, I think that money.... What's a life? I mean, we have to communicate, and as for safety, in my books it was unsafe for these people. Training is a must. I don't know about now, but there were fellows on that rig who weren't trained and took responsible jobs. I hope my son wasn't one of them, because he was trained in some fields.... He took less of a trade waiting to go somewhere else and it cost him his life.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

[Priscilla Boutcher]

And as for those dollars, like we've all been saying today, what's the value of a life? Surely God, let's improve what we have. We've been working at it over the years to make things better for everybody. We're proud to do--

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Briefly, sir.

[George Feltham]

Yes, Mr. Chairman.

In response to Jack's question, no, the $33 million is not too much. I've been fishing for 32 years and I know what it's like to be out there. I've fished offshore and I've fished inshore. Right now, I'm fishing inshore. But when you've been looking at four- or five-day forecasts.... To put it in perspective, yesterday in Eastport they called for a few flurries. We had 20 centimetres of snow. That's how reliable our forecasting is.

When you have vessels going out there that depend on four- and five-day forecasts, they're either leaving in storms or coming in storms. It's unavoidable. It's not only the fishing industry, but you can imagine what my wife and my kids are going through at home. I'm not downing the people, but they don't have the response time from the coast guard, from the search and rescue, that should be there.

I have a son who's on the tankers right now. I know what it's like out there. I know what it's like with 13-metre seas and 55-knot winds. I don't care if you're on an 800-foot boat or what, I'll tell you, you think about where they are and about how if something happens what response is going to be there for them. No, Jack, it's not too big a price....

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

I will give the floor to our last member, Mr. Hawn, for five minutes.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to all of you for being here. The sea is obviously an incredibly dangerous place. Everybody's heart goes out to people who are lost at sea, and obviously to their families, and we thank you for sharing your stories with us.

Ms. Ryan Guy, you made a couple of statements that I think are true about money best spent, money spent where it can do the most good.

[Johanna Ryan Guy]

It's not the business side of it--

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes. But it's very practical and it's very realistic, because realistically there aren't unlimited resources, so we do have to put the resources we have.... We should always try to do more, obviously, but we do need to focus them on the things that will hopefully make the most difference. I know that in the 103 and in every outfit, when something happens, they do try to learn lessons, obviously to make it better the next time--if there's something to be learned.

I do want to talk, Mr. O'Callaghan, about a couple of things you mentioned, at the risk of inviting more dryness--

[Voices]

Oh, oh!

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

--but it's important because it goes to ability to maintain the level of service and so on that we have and perhaps improve it.

We chatted this morning with Major Reid and we asked the question: what would it take to increase the response time to 30 minutes 24/7? His basic answer was double the aircraft and double the people. Would you concur with that?

[Sean O'Callaghan]

I would definitely concur with that.

Just looking at the logistical end of going 24/7, it's a fairly massive undertaking.

[Laurie Hawn, Conservative, Edmonton Centre, AB]

Yes.

[Sean O'Callaghan]

And if he wants to double his resources, you'd definitely have to double your people. That brings in time for a new hangar. The logistical end of this is big.