I'd like to thank the chairman and the group for coming here today and giving me the opportunity to appear.
My name is Wilfred Bartlett and I'm a retired fishing captain.
For the last 10 years, I fished. I fished on the Labrador coast up as far as Maine, which is 750 miles from my home port.
I live on an island surrounded by water.
I have been a member of the Canadian Marine Rescue Auxiliary—they got the “Marine” dropped out of it now, so it's the Canadian rescue auxiliary--from the time it started in Newfoundland and Labrador, approximately 30 years ago. And that crest, I'm real happy to wear that, I'll tell you.
I have been lucky enough to never have used the service of search and rescue, except a couple of times when I was stuck in ice, and then we were not in any immediate danger. But I have been involved in rescue operations in very dangerous situations, both for the people to be rescued and for me and the crew. The main one was on September 4, 1980, off the coast of Labrador, when a Portuguese ship with 64 people went ashore in a storm in Black Tickle, Labrador. I'm happy to report no loss of life. You all saw the thing I passed around.
I live on the northeast coast of Newfoundland, which is prone to storms and a lot of lost lives of people who make a living from the ocean or who just use it for recreational purposes or travel. Out around where I live, it's more important to have a boat than a car, right? That's your enjoyment.
We have a search and rescue service operated out of Gander by the Department of National Defence. And while the location of Gander is the ideal place for this service and should never be moved, my complaint with this service is that it's being operated on what we refer to as bankers' hours, and therefore it is not providing a very good service.
I did not criticize this service until I lost a friend of mine, Captain Larry Parsons, on the Check-Mate III. I found out that it took 50 minutes for the helicopter to get in the air and that these two crew members appeared to be alive when it arrived on the scene. That was really a shocker. Fifty minutes in the North Atlantic Ocean in November is a lifetime. In fact, a minute could be a lifetime when you're out in the North Atlantic floating around in the suit.
I am using the following three incidents as examples of what I am talking about. They were mentioned earlier by the Town of Gander.
The first one is the Ryan’s Commander. I'm familiar with that boat. In fact, she was built in my hometown out there, and three of my family members, immediate family members, worked on the construction of that boat.
On September 19, 2004, Ryan’s Commander was lost at sea, and two people died. At 18:42, a National Defence Cormorant helicopter was tasked and left Gander at 19:42, 60 minutes later.
On September 12, 2005, Melina & Keith II was lost at sea, and four people died. The Department of National Defence at Gander was tasked at 16:50. It left Gander at 18:10, 80 minutes after the call came in. Captain Shawn Ralph has been going back and forth to court ever since, because somebody has been trying to make him pay for what happened. It wasn't his fault at all.
On January 31, 2008, Check-Mate III was lost at sea. On board, my good friend Captain Larry Parsons and his friend, Christopher Oram, lost their lives. The Department of National Defence helicopter at Gander was tasked at 21:50 and left Gander at 22:40, 50 minutes later. Both were reported in water and responsive, and the helicopter at that time made no effort to retrieve them.
These are three examples at sea in recent years where if we had had a quicker response time from the Department of National Defence helicopters stationed at Gander, the outcome could have been very different, and more lives would have been saved. In fact, I believe they all would have been saved in these three incidents.
Response time: Melina & Keith II, 80 minutes; Ryan’s Commander, 60 minutes; Check-Mate III, 50 minutes. That's quite a long time to get a helicopter off the ground, especially for rescue at sea, when sometimes minutes or seconds are the difference between life and death. Remember the Spanish vessel that went down on the Grand Banks last year, in perfectly good weather, when the crew didn't even get a chance to properly dress? They were lucky that the coast guard vessel was standing by. In fact, they were standing by to board them at that time, and we all believe she was scuttled.
The purpose of this presentation is to point out the dangers of trying to make a living from the sea. I have spent a large part of my life on the ocean, and my most happy and satisfying time has been doing that. While the ocean can be so kind and provide us with the bounties of life, it can also be so cruel, as our history has recorded.
If we had ambulances and fire trucks that took this time to respond, the general public and the politicians would not stand for it. Why is it still allowed to continue? We have a rescue crew in Gander on-site from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I believe, five days a week. Even on-site, they have a response time of 30 minutes. After hours, response time is up to two hours. In the three examples I am using, these accidents happened after hours. The people on the ocean don't stop working at 4:30 p.m. It's a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week job. We have much more traffic on the ocean these days because of the oil and gas activities.
My purpose in appearing here today is to put pressure on our government to get public support for a rescue helicopter in Gander on standby around the clock, and also to cut the response time down to less than 30 minutes. I believe that is far, far too long. Hopefully, we will save more lives in the future.
I'm not criticizing the people on the ground in Gander. I am criticizing the Government of Canada for not providing this valuable service 24/7, 365 days a year, so that the people who get in trouble on the ocean can have hope that every effort is being made to ensure that they will be rescued. In 2009, in a two-week period, we lost four people in three different incidents in the bay that I live in, Notre Dame Bay, but at that time it wouldn't have made any difference. It's just that there was no call that went out. The helicopter wouldn't have made a difference. But when you're on the water, it's nice to know that when a call comes out they're going to respond faster.
Gentlemen and ladies, thank you.