National Defence Committee on March 30th, 2010

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

I will make a quick comment as an update of my position, which I've had for a number of years, to make sure nothing has changed. Then I'll have a couple of questions. The first part is not your problem, so you don't have to answer.

Obviously our fleet of search and rescue planes are in dismal condition. For years you've asked for their replacement, and they haven't been replaced yet. The minister has promised it's coming, but they're not there.

As you know, my particular interest, as we've discussed before, is the lack of fixed-wing aircraft--and I believe helicopters, which I'll ask about later--in the northern half of Canada. In fact, since the planes are along the border of the southern half, their range is useless anyway, which is a waste. It is more critical in the north, even though, as we've discussed, there are obviously fewer incidents. It's far more critical because of your short time to die in hypothermic conditions in those temperatures, and there are fewer people around. The Arctic Ocean is cold.

A plane in the north wouldn't have to change its load to be specific to the Arctic. They could make adjustments before they take off. Sometimes I think we should put the people making these decisions in the Arctic Ocean and tell them it's okay, a plane is coming--but it's coming from Winnipeg.

Here is my first question. To deal with this abysmal problem in the north, I understand that you may be coming up with a good solution and negotiating with the private sector and CASARA to do a more comprehensive initial response and maybe deal with that problem in a way other than by putting fixed-wing planes north of 60. Is there any progress on that front?

[Col Paul Drover]

I believe there is, sir. It is very timely that you ask that question.

First of all, although I didn't mention it in my briefing, CASARA is our federally sponsored voluntary organization. They are more prevalent south of 60 by virtue of the number of private operators of aircraft. The problem we face in the north in terms of CASARA is that there are fewer private owners and operators of aircraft that can participate in CASARA activities, so recently we've looked at initiatives to involve in some kind of formal manner some of the commercial operators that operate in the north.

It's interesting. Meetings were held this past weekend in Whitehorse. One of my staff members has not returned yet, but the indicators are that there is a very high level of interest among the commercial operators, so I think this is indeed an incentive that has some traction and I think we'll see some developments in that regard. I can't report any more details at this time, but I'm looking forward to being able to say very shortly that this looks like a successful venture.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Good. It sounds like an excellent initiative to maybe solve this long-standing problem.

Can you tell me about search and rescue helicopters? I assume it's the same as with fixed-wing aircraft, that no helicopters are permanently stationed north of 60.

[Col Paul Drover]

You are correct, sir. With current basing, we do not have any helicopters that far north.

If I may point out, though, the helicopter that we do have, the Cormorant, has a lot better capability to operate in poor weather conditions than the Labrador, the helicopter it replaced. Since we've introduced that helicopter, we've had occasions where we've been able to get it fairly far north in one day's operation. It's not a rapid response, for sure, but at least it's a capability that has improved our SAR forces.

I think it's important to note that during the incidents in the north, our rescue coordinating centres will deal with the incident in terms of what the required response is to the incident, in an appropriate manner. If there's an incident out of Yellowknife, they will probably contract a commercial helicopter operator, if that's the first responder.

So there is capability there, but a dedicated search and rescue aircraft is just not resident in the far north.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Are there plans to put a search and rescue helicopter onboard the patrol boats, or were they downsized so they no longer fit?

[Col Paul Drover]

I'm unable to speak to that, I'm sorry.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Do you know if there were any plans to talk about helicopters on the coasts?

[Col Paul Drover]

I really don't. I don't know what the coast guard's...or whether it's a combined ship.

I don't know what the program is, to be honest. My current SAR posture doesn't include that, for sure.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

However, I thought you said you'd talked with other agencies and organizations and coordinated things. Would you not have heard of those coordinated meetings?

[Col Paul Drover]

Those comments referred to international cooperation. At least the question I answered was dealing with international cooperation.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

So you just cooperate internationally but not with Canadian departments.

[Col Paul Drover]

No, not at all. We have an interdepartmental search and rescue committee that I participated in as well. I'm just not familiar with what was planned or programmed.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Okay, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

I will give the floor to Mr. Braid.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Colonel Drover, for being here this morning.

To start off, I'm curious to know if there are any situations where you decide on an ad hoc basis to extend the 8 to 4 time period in which you have a 30-minute response. In what circumstances would that happen?

[Col Paul Drover]

We do cater to special activities, such as the herring roe fishery on the west coast, where there's an opening period of vulnerability for a number of vessels responding. We have changed our posture to accommodate that.

I'm not entirely sure, but I believe that in Ontario in the summer months, we'll modify our standby posture to cater to later times in the day, which speaks to a number of other activities.

That said, we have the flexibility. There are no rules governing when that half hour should be. It's a matter of how we can fit in the training and also provide that additional service in the most beneficial window, I suppose.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Sir, in my riding of Kitchener—Waterloo, we had an incident a couple of weeks ago where a SAR aircraft was dispatched from Trenton and the incident ended up being a false alarm. This was publicly reported. I think it was a beacon from an old aircraft in the trunk of somebody's car in a garage.

What processes or procedures do you have in place to help identify potential false alarms like that? What lessons were learned from that incident?

[Col Paul Drover]

I didn't mention the false alarm in our briefing, but I mentioned the number of SAR incidents. They all start off as an alert, a warning. Until all the information is available, we are not certain whether it's an actual distress signal or a false alarm. Moreover, there are various degrees of false alarms as well, but the most prominent is when these beacons have been inadvertently activated when no distress is involved.

However, we will respond; we don't wait for full information to determine whether or not there's an incident. So if there is a suspicion there may be an incident, we will launch a SAR resource. Again, it may not be from the base in Trenton, but it could be one of our CASARA members who goes out, if they have the homing equipment to locate the beacon.

The RCCs at the same time will also do an extensive or exhaustive search of communications facilities, police facilities, and air traffic control to see if anybody is reporting maydays. Air traffic control will be contacted to see if there are any overdue aircraft. So there's a lot of information being correlated at the same time the aircraft is going out to hunt down the false ELT.

Normally we will put somebody on the ground or communicate with the folks on the ground and ask them to disable their equipment. Beyond that, if it's inadvertent and not criminal in nature, then we take no further action.

Part of aviation and boating education and information concerns the proper maintenance of this type of equipment to ensure it's functional, but also that it is not going to inadvertently activate. There are periods during each hour where you can test the equipment and these sorts of things. That's ongoing, but certainly, some of our resources are used to respond to false alarms.

However, I think the comfort is that we will respond, as opposed to waiting to confirm there is something happening, and that speaks to the timeline as well.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Great. If I have any time remaining, I have just one final question to ask.

I'm looking at the map on page 4 of your presentation. Do you have a breakdown of the percentage of responses by location across the country?

[Col Paul Drover]

We do, but I just don't have it with me. I'm sorry.

I think the last time I was here I did present a dot plot, and not surprisingly it showed the responses as being predominantly along the southern border. That's where the majority of the population is, so you have more aviation activity and boating there. That's where most of the incidents are.

Statistically, we deal fairly consistently with about 8,000 to 9,000 incidents a year, and they're evenly spread in the three regions, even though the size of the regions is substantially different.

[Peter Braid, Conservative, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Great. Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Maxime Bernier]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Paillé, go ahead, please.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I'm going to share my time with Mr. Bachand. I may ask one or two questions.

According to your statistics, has there been an increase in the number of incidents? Could we say that the situation is improving today, in 2010? I am thinking perhaps about technology.

Do you have any figures or statistics showing whether there's been an increase or decrease in the number of incidents?

[Col Paul Drover]

There has not actually been a tremendous change in the number of incidents. In 2004, we recorded 7,500. In 2006, we recorded 8,500, and in 2008-09, we recorded 9,000. So there's been a little bit of growth, but in some years it also fell somewhat.

What we have found with the technology and the 406 beacon in particular is that a number of our operations have been a lot shorter, and therefore the number of people whose lives we have saved has increased, because we've been able to respond with precision and current data by using the technology of the 406 beacon.

So I think overall the technology has driven a more efficient and capable system, but the incidents continue to happen at about the same rate.

[Pascal-Pierre Paillé, Bloc, Louis-Hébert, QC]

I have one final question to ask before handing over to my colleague. I believe I previously asked this when you came to meet with us, but I'm going to ask it again all the same.

As we are continuing a study on the Northwest Passage, I would like to know whether the Canadian Forces are equipped well enough for a potential rescue operation. Since the Northwest Passage is increasingly accessible, there are rising numbers of cruise ships going through the Northwest Passage.

Is there an action plan? If not, do we have enough members on strength to conduct a rescue operation involving a large number of individuals? A cruise ship is not an aircraft in which there are 5 or 10 passengers. So I would like to know what the current situation is in the event large numbers of individuals must be saved?