Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Often this afternoon I've heard about 30 minutes and two hours--the difference in the required response times--but we've learned over the past couple of days that in practice the actual response time from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. is 19.5 minutes, and in practice outside those hours it's 50.7 minutes. It doesn't actually take the two hours, and they are working very hard to get those numbers down as well.
You talk about having an extra place, an extra chopper unit, in St. John's. That gives me great anxiety. Here we had the situation with the Cougar, and the people in Gander couldn't deploy anyone because they were all on training. It's not just a matter of money; it's a matter of human resources. They don't have the people, so if we split them up, it's going to be even more diluted. I'm concerned that if this sort of approach is taken the response times would be longer.
It's a rare individual and a rare group of individuals who will get into a chopper in a storm like we had last night, over seas, and then have someone go down the rope and try to land on a ship that's rolling in the waves. It's those rare individuals who we are in dire need of, and again, with the private sector now trying to get our people, who are intended to help all Canadians, to help just the oil industry, that makes it even more difficult.
In Ontario we have inland seas, the Great Lakes, and it would never occur to any of us, even up in the Ottawa River, to count on the coast guard to come and help us. We have our province that actually has its resources deployed, and not at the same time; it might be one part of a river, or one lake, or another river on a given weekend. But we pool all our resources. Even the municipalities put boats out, so that it's a community effort.
I know that it would be ideal to have the federal government be there in the 30-minute response time 24 hours a day, but in practicality, we do have to pool our resources. Just as the oil companies are starting to pitch in because they're profiting from the resources, so too, perhaps, should the province think about the benefits that it is obtaining economically from that sector and figure out a way to pool our resources, federally as well as provincially--and from the private sector.