Thank you very much. Merci.
I do want to thank the committee for the opportunity to present to all of you.
Before going on, I want to particularly thank Mr. McDonald for having the courage to sit here with us today.
I felt a responsibility to present to this body--not because I'm going to say anything different, I don't think, from what you've been hearing, but every perspective brings something new. One of the things that impelled me to come before you, as I did before Commissioner Wells when he was holding his inquiry, was my experience as a person who was working with communities at the time of the Ocean Ranger disaster. My goal was working with communities with regard to the impact of the new development that was happening in the offshore of Newfoundland and Labrador, and what impact the development of oil in the offshore was going to have on our communities and on our people. Then we had the disaster in 1982.
For three years I worked with the families of the 84 men who went down when the Ocean Ranger went down. I came to have a very good understanding of the impact on families of such a disaster.
I think from the experience we've had here today from Mr. McDonald, we also can imagine, because we now have this very concrete example, what it is like for somebody who survives and what it's like for the families of those who survive as well. We cannot impress upon ourselves too much the seriousness and the impact of what it means to have these disasters at sea.
I'm here as the leader of the New Democratic Party of Newfoundland and Labrador, so as a politician I speak to you as a peer as well. I may be at the provincial level, but I think we're all peers. And as a peer, I say to you that I cannot overestimate for myself the responsibility I have as a politician to make decisions that are for the people of this province, that are for the people who work on that massive ocean we sit in the middle of; or the responsibility we have for people who have died, for people who have been through disasters yet survived, and for people who will continue to be in those situations.
We cannot think of things in any other way but our responsibility for their safety. Just as we think about our responsibility for the safety of the people in any workplace, or for the safety of people who are in a burning house or who are in an accident on our streets, we have a continuing responsibility for the safety of the people who are working out on that water in whatever capacity they work there.
We can't say that the responsibility begins or ends at a certain time of day, or a certain time of the week, or a certain time of the month. It's 24-7. I think I heard Mr. Hann say the same thing when he presented, that we don't say, oh, the fire halls can shut down at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. We don't do that.
I don't care how much money it takes. I don't care what we have to do with legislation to make things happen. We have to do better than what we're doing. The standard that we have in Canada is completely a disgrace. It's unacceptable. You all know the figures. I'm not going to repeat them all. I've heard them here already today.
But if we have places that are working under exactly the same circumstances that we are, that massive North Atlantic or the North Sea, and they can have wheels up in 15 minutes, and they can do that 24/7, and they can manage to survive as countries economically while doing it, then we have to be able to do it as well. We have no choice but to do it, because it is our responsibility. We have to keep people safe.
And I don't care if we couldn't have saved anybody on the Ocean Ranger. It's true we couldn't have, but we do not know that we couldn't have saved somebody else from the Cougar helicopter.
We've heard from Mr. McDonald about how lives could have been saved from that fishing boat. It doesn't matter that there may have been one we couldn't have saved; we have to think of the ones whose lives were lost when they shouldn't have been lost, and we have to maintain that.
I just don't understand how we can be bringing dollars and cents into this. When it comes to federal-provincial, give me a break. We've been through this all before. We all know the federal government gets money as well from the offshore. The federal government has the responsibility for what happens in that water out there.
If you have the responsibility that allows you to get royalties from that water, then you have the responsibility to save the lives of people who work on that water as well. I'm focusing a bit on the oil and gas, but we also know that we are talking about those in the other marine industries, especially our fishing industry. We benefit from it, and therefore we also have to take our responsibility very seriously.
How can I be less passionate than I am around this? How can you be less passionate around it as well? Let's not hide behind “Oh, it's complicated”. It's not complicated. It's being done in other places. Let's make sure we say to the people of Newfoundland and Labrador that their lives are just as important as the lives of marine workers in Norway, as the lives of marine workers in the U.K., as the lives of marine workers in the U.S. Their lives are just as important.
We do that concretely by putting in place the best possible regulations that we can with the resources to make them happen. Yes, if doubling the number of people and doubling the number of resources is how we have to do it, then we have to do it. It's only common sense, even if you do nothing but visually look at the map of Newfoundland itself, because it's the island we're talking about. Just visually look at it and look especially at where the oil and gas installation areas are.
It doesn't take very much to put two and two together and say, for example, that not only do we have to have what we have in Gander--we absolutely need it--but we also have to have something in St. John's as well, even visually. It makes absolute sense.
I agree totally with the example that Ms. Payne used. We're concentrating on the wheels-up time. We also have to think about the distance they have to travel to get to where the disasters or the accidents are.
One thing they do in the U.S., which I think is extremely important, is not just talk about the wheels-up time. They say they have to be able to get out to an accident or a potential disaster within 90 minutes, which includes the wheels-up time.
We have to take into consideration the distance that's travelled. It's not just the wheels-up time. It's also how far you have to go. That was why the Hickman report, after the Ocean Ranger, said that you had to have something in St. John's because of the oil and gas installation, because Gander was too far away. It was just common sense. That was repeated by Justice Wells as well.
How often do we have to say it? I heard others on the first panel say this as well: how often do we have to say it? How many more years do we have to go on saying this has to happen? It's a no-brainer, to use that common expression. It really is a no-brainer when we're dealing with people's lives.
Whether or not the fixed-wing SAR should be in Gander or here, figure that one out. Maybe let the people who do the search and rescue figure that part out. As for having it based in St. John's, there are reasons why that's been recommended by two commissions.