National Defence Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

You'd certainly need more than that.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you, Mr. Simms.

Mr. Bachand, please. You have seven minutes.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome, Colonel Drover.

Colonel, in your document, you describe the actual weekly workload in the Canadian Forces. However, why didn't you talk about the National Research Council study, the one that isn't at all consistent with what you're saying?

First of all, have you looked at that study?

[Col Paul Drover]

I am familiar with the report, sir, but I haven't read it in detail. Again, the fixed-wing replacement is not part of my responsibility, but if there is a pertinent question that I can help you with--

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

In its analysis, which was spread over three years, the National Research Council noted that 17% of incidents occurred between 0800 and 1600 hours on weekdays.

Does that coincide with what you are telling us in your presentation?

[Col Paul Drover]

Again, I'm not familiar with the years of study that they were using for that.

To be clear, in my statement I didn't say our hours were perfectly aligned with a majority of the cases. I suggested that there are a number of cases that occurred during that period of time, but there are other reasons that we hold that particular standby for those periods of time.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Perhaps I expressed myself poorly. I'm going to read you the sentence in English, rather than translate it. That will be easier.

Based on this analysis, for 1677 of 1775 incidents that occurred in the three year study period for which time information was available, 17% occurred during the period of 0800-1600h on weekdays.

Most of your troops are on the job between 0800 and 1600 hours during the week, but only 17% of incidents occurred during those hours.

Shouldn't the schedule be changed, in view of the fact that 83% of incidents do not occur between 0800 and 1600 hours on weekdays?

[Col Paul Drover]

I fully understand your question, sir. Again, as I said, there are a number of reasons we've chosen those hours to hold our standby. Indeed, if we move them, we may have larger than 17% captured in a given eight-hour period. To go beyond eight hours in a 24-hour day, you're into resource applications.

The other one I would suggest to you is that of the majority that fall outside of that 17%, how many of those incidents would be critical to the standby posture? We go back to our incident time, and I would suggest that in the majority of those, as we described earlier, it doesn't make a difference if you're on a half hour or two hours.

Also, maybe I'll take the opportunity to echo that the normal response reaction time is better than two hours by a substantial amount. So really the difference is 45 minutes.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Would you think it would be an advantage to have an additional 17 fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft? Would that be a significant or major asset?

[Col Paul Drover]

Part of our departmental resource planning is to replace the Buffalo and the Hercules. If we are to maintain the level of service that we provide, which I would argue is a very, very good level of service for the people of Canada, then we would need a number of fixed-wing aircraft, absolutely. I think it is important that we do this.

As I said, right now we are maintaining that level of service with our Hercules and Buffalo aircraft, but in terms of our procurement plans, as with every other piece of equipment, I'll take you back a few years when we replaced the Labrador, which is a very good helicopter, with the Cormorant, which is state-of-the-art and performs the role we require.

[Claude Bachand, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

It's also clear that, with the new fleet, the Buffalo and Hercules aircraft would probably be retired. You mentioned that earlier. The maintenance costs for those aircraft are now extremely high and we have to consider purchasing a new fleet so we can do away with maintenance costs that perhaps even exceed the long-term acquisition costs of a new fleet.

People increasingly talk to me about privatizing or contracting all of search and rescue to the private sector. That's done elsewhere in the world.

What would be the reaction of the armed forces and the air force if the government decided to privatize search and rescue? Is that an option? Do you see any disadvantages to that? I'd like to know your opinion on the privatization of that service.

[Col Paul Drover]

Sir, the privatization discussion has been with us for a number of years. It's a very complex question: what elements of the search and rescue system would we be discussing? Is it the provision of rotary-wing or the full SAR response capability? Would it include our rescue coordinating centres?

There are a number of advantages, I believe, that the federal government, using military delivery of SAR, gives you in terms of efficiencies, depth of equipment, just the fact that I give you a search and rescue crew for a 24-hour period. These individuals don't get compensating time off to the same extent that anyone would look at in private enterprise.

We have not done, or been asked to do, any extensive studies. Those would be required. There's nothing that I'm aware of that would prevent a private consortium from delivering SAR. I think it would be...at what expense? What would it cost? But certainly it is a question that's deserving of study.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you.

Now we'll give the floor to Mr. Harris.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Colonel Drover, for presenting to us once again.

I'm treating your presentation as background for the commencement of our study.

Forgive me if I don't accept some of the assumptions that are inherent in what you say. When you tell us that, for example, according to an estimate, the total annual cost of the current service is approximately $339 million per year, that appears to be totally contradictory to the Chief Review Services report dated January 2008, which is an evaluation of the Canadian Forces/DND component of the national search and rescue program, produced by your department.

In that document, on page 3, it says as follows:

Annual forecast spending for FY 2006/07 for the federal component of the NSP has been estimated at $219 million. The CF/DND share of this forecast is reported as approximately $102 million or 46.6 percent of total Federal SAR forecasted expenditures. The CCG, a special operating agency reporting to the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, is a second significant participant in budgetary terms, forecasting $104 million in expenditures or 47.5 percent of declared expenditures for the federal component of the NSP.

Both of those figures can't be correct. This one is from the Chief Review Services, which I understand is the equivalent of some sort of internal auditor within the department, and your figures are estimates done by somebody else.

I wonder if you could put a copy of that particular report from Defence Research and Development Canada before this committee. Can you get us a copy of that?

[Col Paul Drover]

I can indeed.

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

Do you have any explanation for the discrepancy between what the Chief Review Services says and the estimate you're giving here?

[Col Paul Drover]

I know the figures I quoted in this briefing came from the study we did. It lists all the elements that we costed: the training, the personnel, the maintenance, the repair and overhaul, the facilities. I would suspect that CRS used different sources to calculate, or different parameters, so you would have to compare what's entailed in their figure and what's entailed in ours.

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

I guess we will, but the discrepancies are quite remarkable.

[Col Paul Drover]

They are, but I suspect they're not comparing apples with apples.

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

Well, we'll see. I guess we'll have a look at the report.

I have another question, and this strikes me as odd.

I'll use Gander as an example. In Gander, you have three Cormorant helicopters, and you told the helicopter safety inquiry in St. John's recently that you have between five and six aircrews. I'm wondering why the cost of having crews available on a 24-hour basis would require additional aircraft of any kind or additional crew. Can you explain how? According to your study, or the estimates that were provided here, you say you would need an additional 200 personnel to be able to change the posture and you would also need additional aircraft.

Can you tell us how that is?

[Col Paul Drover]

Indeed I can, sir.

The report I referred to is available as well to the committee, and it goes into great detail about what's involved in doing those calculations. Essentially, to go to a continuous 30-minute posture we'd have to increase the number of crews from the current five or six to nine crews. This, as you'll recall from when I briefed, is because currently we're able to use one crew for the whole weekend standby routine. If you go to a 24 and 7 posture, every eight hours a new crew will be coming to the base, and at minimum we would need nine crews. If you have more crews, there is a bigger training requirement, and with that training requirement, more aircraft.

The report I referred to is available and really spells this out in great detail. I think it would serve to answer your questions.

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

Concerning the third point of departure for our study, I'm looking here at a review of SAR response services that was issued by the director of program review of the National Search and Rescue Secretariat and approved by the Interdepartmental Committee on Search and Rescue, to which you referred, on June 30,1999.

That report says on page 7, in a synopsis of the report—and the key recommendation, I think, is under this item.... Item 14 on page 7 says:

The federal readiness-standby posture is determined primarily by resource availability, not by user demand. Additionally, all departments occasionally task resources that do not meet the training or equipment standards set by that department for critical SAR missions.[....]

Given the above findings regarding resources, cutbacks and the documented history of fruitless debate on program management and structure there is now a risk that the SAR program will become a public policy issue.

They also say in one of their key recommendations, recommendation 19:

Given an established policy and planning framework for managing such a program and given a renewed and committed leadership for developing SAR horizontal policy and plans, operational issues such as appropriate training of responders, standby postures, equipment purchases and resources have a far greater chance of being resolved.

That suggests to me, Colonel, that internally at least there is some concern that in fact the standby posture we're talking about is actually based on resources, not on user demand or need. That seems to me to be what they're suggesting here.

It seems to me to be wrong that we should have a posture based on resources as opposed to need. I say that particularly when we look at what other countries do, some with bigger areas than we have and some with less to deal with, in which the common standard seems to be 15 minutes to wheels up during a period from, say, 7 in the morning until 9 or 10 at night, and 45 minutes thereafter.

We have essentially an 8 to 4 operation. Why is that? Can you explain what the problems are here?

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

You have 30 seconds to answer.

[Col Paul Drover]

In Canada, the idea that we have a lot larger area of responsibility requires a different dynamic on the flight line to prepare aircraft for departure for SAR missions, so 15 minutes becomes a challenge. We have to keep our aircraft for a large part of the year inside the hangar so that they don't have to be de-iced, and 15 minutes might be unachievable at the best of times.

In terms of being able to respond to basically the whole array of SAR instances that we're talking about, we're not focused like some countries in just the coastal reaches; we have an overland SAR responsibility that some nations don't have. In terms of optimizing the resources we have available to provide a SAR service, in my opinion—and I will issue this opinion—this is a very capable service and comparable to world-class SAR services anywhere in the world.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Hawn.