National Defence Committee on Dec. 8th, 2016

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I would like to resume our study on the Royal Canadian Navy, naval readiness in the defence of North America, the part the Coast Guard may play in those tasks, and how they intersect.

I would like to welcome, from the Department Fisheries and Oceans, Mario Pelletier, deputy commissioner, operations, Canadian Coast Guard; and Jeffery Hutchinson, deputy commissioner, strategy and shipbuilding, Canadian Coast Guard.

Thank you very much for coming today, gentlemen.

Mr. Pelletier, you have the floor.

[Mario Pelletier, Deputy Commissioner, Operations, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Thank you very much.

Good morning, everyone. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about the close relationship between the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard.

I would like to start by offering my regrets on behalf of Commissioner Thomas, who really wanted to appear today. Unfortunately, she was pulled away.

I am going to share my speaking time with my colleague the Deputy Commissioner of Strategy and Shipbuilding. I will speak about our mandate, the enforcement of the act, as well as search and rescue, and my colleague will speak to you about operations in the Arctic, and collaboration and training.

I will start with the mandate.

Our mandates include a lot of similarities. The Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Coast Guard work very closely together. It's a relationship by design. If you take a look at the mission statements that guide both our organizations, you will see that security features in each of them. The overlap is mutually beneficial; I believe that, especially concerning our search and rescue system—which I'll speak to in a moment—we've become indispensable partners.

Of course, there are fundamental differences between our two organizations.

The navy operates a combat-capable multi-purpose fleet to support Canada's effort to participate in security operations around the world, whereas the Coast Guard operates a multi-purpose civilian fleet that supports economic prosperity while contributing to the safety, accessibility, and security of Canadian waters.

We have a broad footprint, and we are present in many communities. As members of Parliament or any of us who have served at sea know, Canadians depend on the Coast Guard to facilitate the safe movement of goods in Canadian waters.

Enhancing the Coast Guard's security mandate has been a topic at this committee in the past. Previous governments have considered arming the Coast Guard and providing it with the authority to enforce federal laws in Canadian waters.

In 2010-11, we looked very closely at how armed coast guards in the U.S., U.K., Norway and Denmark operate, and discussed whether or not options could be developed to arm the Canadian Coast Guard.

Within the SAR environment, arming our vessels wouldn't make much of a difference. For other operations such as fisheries patrols, drug interdiction, and sovereignty patrols in the Arctic, it would be beneficial. Ultimately, however, the government decides the responsibilities and functions of the Canadian Coast Guard, and we operate within that framework.

Let's talk now about Canadian Coast Guard contributions to security organizations.

The Coast Guard currently acts as an enabler to security organizations. We work with five federal partners—the Navy, Canadian Border Service Agency, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Transport Canada—and contribute to those organizations in three areas: providing ships and helicopters to security and law enforcement agencies; using ship surveillance systems and expertise to identify on-water threats in Canadian waters and approaches; and collaborating with security partners to define priorities, identify gaps, and improve the domestic and international maritime security regime.

We also collaborate with MSOCs, or the Marine Security Operations Centres. Maintaining and strengthening marine security in the Arctic is a highly collaborative and integrated effort led by the government's three marine security operation centres. The MSOCs are staffed with representatives from DND, RCMP, Canada Border Services Agency, Transport Canada, and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, including the Coast Guard.

On the search and rescue front, the Canadian Coast Guard is the lead organization in the marine component of the federal search and rescue system. Across the country, we aim for a reaction time of 30 minutes, whether we are tasked at noon on Wednesday or at 2 a.m. on Sunday.

Achieving this ambitious target requires close collaboration with the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary and, of course, the Canadian Armed Forces.

When you look at the map and realize that our domain spans 250,000 kilometres of coastline across the three oceans, it's easy to see why the Canadian Coast Guard works so hard to maintain a strong working relationship with its SAR partners.

Going back to our reaction-time target, another important component I haven't mentioned yet is the joint rescue coordination centres in Halifax, Trenton, and Victoria. As the name implies the JRCCs are operated jointly by the Canadian Armed Forces and the Coast Guard personnel and are responsible for SAR monitoring, alerting, and emergency response.

If I'm painting a picture of mutual dependency between our organizations, that's a good thing. It's how the Coast Guard operates, especially when it comes to SAR.

With respect to SAR operations, joint task force commanders in the Atlantic and Pacific have the authority to task any and all resources from the navy, army, and air force.

Navy warships are frequently asked to provide primary SAR readiness when operating in Atlantic waters.

Air force aircraft, particularly the rotary-wing Cormorant and Griffon helicopters and the fixed-wing Buffalo and Auroras or Hercules are also very active within the maritime SAR system.

[Jeffery Hutchinson, Deputy Commissioner, Strategy and Shipbuilding, Canadian Coast Guard, Department of Fisheries and Oceans]

Good morning, everyone. My name is Jeff Hutchinson. I am the deputy commissioner for strategy and shipbuilding at the Canadian Coast Guard. As I start, I just want to say thank you for having us this morning. We're always happy to speak about the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard is sometimes referred to as the senior federal partner in the Arctic because of the length of time we spend there and the number of services we provide. Our coverage is from east to west in the archipelago, and ranges as far north, as many of you would know, as the North Pole.

We support and work with many other federal departments in a large scientific community, and sometimes we work with foreign vessels as well in the Canadian Arctic. We have operated in the north for over 50 years. Cumulatively, our captains who operate in the Arctic have hundreds of years of combined experience in those waters. We have a proud history of serving in the north, and we provide a range of services, including icebreaking, resupply to remote communities, aids to navigation—which are things like radar, buoys, and telecommunications systems—and, of course, traffic services. All of that is in addition to what my colleague has already described.

Canada is a coastal nation, a marine nation, and a trading nation. We have the longest coastline in the world. Safe and secure shipping, of course, is crucial to our economic development. The Arctic is no exception in that regard.

Most recently, we provided advice and participated in planning meetings and training opportunities and exercises in advance of the August 2016 voyage of the Crystal Serenity. This included the Northwest Passage tabletop exercise, which included several Canadian federal departments and also the U.S. Coast Guard. We wanted to evaluate, through those exercises, the inter-agency collaboration and dependencies, and we wanted to make sure that the best planning possible was in place for a ship that represented new, novel risks for everyone involved.

As traffic in the Arctic increases, we anticipate that our close relationship and interoperability with the navy will be increasingly important. The Canadian Armed Forces has been ramping up its presence in the north since about 2002, and each year the navy deploys patrol ships that accompany Coast Guard vessels during its annual Arctic patrol activities.

The addition of six ice-capable Arctic offshore patrol ships to the navy's fleet is welcomed by the Coast Guard. I'm not sure whether it was Commissioner Thomas or Rear-Admiral Lloyd who first said it, but now we all say that nationally our organizations operate as two sides of the same coin. This is most true in the Arctic. We are working side by side with the navy to plan for a future in which Canada's Arctic sea presence is significantly augmented by the Harry DeWolf-class vessels.

One notable contribution to maritime security that the Coast Guard makes is the implementation of the long-range identification and tracking system. LRIT, as it's commonly called, allows the marine security operations centres to identify and monitor 1,000 vessels each day from a distance of over 2,000 nautical miles.

The MSOCs came out of the 2004 national security policy, and they've been successful in providing the navy and the Canadian Coast Guard with an enhanced level of awareness throughout the maritime Arctic domain, and over all Canadian waters.

The opening of Arctic waters, combined with a dynamic global security environment, requires constant communication and information-sharing between Coast Guard and the navy. The threats that exist in our Arctic are too large and too complex to handle without close co-operation and collaboration with our partners, notably the Royal Canadian Navy and the United States Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard participates in a number of conferences, namely the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, North Pacific Coast Guard Forum, the North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum, and the Canada-U.S. Coast Guard Summit.

Many if not most of the Coast Guard partners we work with internationally are paramilitary organizations. Although there isn't always a navy presence at those events I just mentioned, the Coast Guard represents the interests of the navy by proxy.

Privately and publicly, it is very important that the Coast Guard's interest and the navy's interest in messaging align with one another and with those of our allies, especially on matters that generate a lot of attention, such as Arctic security.

In October, the commissioner spoke at the Maritime & Arctic Security & Safety Conference in St. John's. Canadian Armed Forces and U.S. Coast Guard representatives were also there, including Brigadier-General Nixon, commander of Joint Task Force North, and Rear-Admiral Steve Poulin, U.S. commander of the first Coast Guard district.

The Coast Guard communicates with the Navy and our domestic and U.S. partners before attending conferences like MASS or similar forums. We all recognize that maritime security in the Arctic requires a team approach, and it's important for the public to hear a clear, congruent voice on how to address the broad range of issues that fall within that topic.

Deputy Commissioner Pelletier spoke earlier about the different ways the Navy and the Coast Guard are working together at the operational level, and I'm sure you know that we continue to look for areas for further co-operation.

The Navy and the Coast Guard are in a similar situation with operational readiness and the availability of assets. Both organizations are working hard to keep our aging vessels maintained and active, while our future fleets make their way out of their respective shipyards.

There's a requirement for senior leadership to find efficiencies to provide Canadians with high levels of service within our shared domain. To do that, our organizations initiated something called Staff Talks, which is a forum for our organizations to work strategically at the highest levels. From 10,000 feet our senior staff examine everything from logistic support to leadership training, recruitment, shipbuilding, and maritime domain awareness.

The navy and the Coast Guard also held a workshop at the end of the summer to develop a joint concept of operations specifically for the Arctic. This joint meeting was aimed at ensuring greater interoperability and sharing of knowledge to improve operational delivery and outcomes.

On the shipbuilding side, the navy and the Coast Guard are working collaboratively as part of the national shipbuilding strategy. We are exchanging information-sharing best practices and working with Vancouver shipyards to advance our respective projects. We work together and train together, and within Canadian waters we have a security mandate that seeks the same ends.

Navy personnel attend courses at the Coast Guard College in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and as of 2013 naval reserve personnel are eligible to work in the Canadian Coast Guard's inshore rescue boat program and operate our rigid inflatable vessels.

This year, the Coast Guard was proud to be invited by the Navy League of Canada to participate in Navy Day, an event that recognizes the important work performed by Canada's sailors and that celebrates this country as a maritime nation.

Additionally, in June 2017, the Coast Guard and the navy will be hosting a maritime gala to honour and celebrate 150 years of maritime service to Canadians. The Coast Guard's involvement in these events is symbolic of the increasing ties between the two organizations.

The navy and the Coast Guard are united by common interests through shared challenges. I'm not referring only to security concerns that continue to emerge in the Arctic and elsewhere, but also to common budgetary, operational, and logistical challenges unique to operating in the maritime environment.

The navy is and will continue to be a deeply valued and indispensable partner of the Canadian Coast Guard.

With that, I'll finish, and I welcome your questions and comments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

Thank you very much to both of you for your comments this morning.

I'm going to try to save a little time for the end, so that we can go through some committee business and talk about our subcommittee report we had on Tuesday. I expect that will take about 15 minutes at the most.

Having said that, I want to yield the floor to Mr. Fisher.

You are first in the seven-minute round of questions.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, gentlemen, for being here. I appreciate your comments. I appreciate the knowledge you have shared with us today.

I'm thinking about some of the comments both of you made. You talked about the close relationship. You talked about the fact that it's a relationship by design—I think Mario said that—and that the overlap is mutually beneficial.

Jeff, you said it's increasingly important to expand this relationship and to look for further areas of operation. You also talked about the fundamental differences but you didn't talk about the differences as much. It seems as though there's more overlap than there are differences and that they are more in line other than that one's combat-ready and one is about civilian ships.

I want to bring this back to talk about defence spending and our commitments to spending around 2% of our GDP to meet our NATO commitments. The Coast Guard has its own budget separate from DND's; I believe that's the case. In the States it's different; everything is under the umbrella of defence. Is that correct?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

It's not exactly correct. While the Coast Guard in the U.S. is a military organization, it's part of the national Homeland Security department. Its funding comes through NHS, rather than through the military.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Both have separate budgets in Canada, right?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

That's correct.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Can you paint us a picture of whether there have ever been those discussions about us being so similar, sharing so much, and overlapping so much?

I think you spoke about the movement of goods. The Coast Guard protects the movement of goods in international waters. I believe the military does that through DND as well. Is that correct?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

It doesn't to the extent that we do. It's not involved in a direct way.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Yes, exactly.

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

With respect to goods coming in and out of Canada, its presence has more to do with security concerns that may be related to a specific vessel.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

I get it. Okay.

Is it fair to ask you to give me a little bit of a briefing or an update as to whether there has been any discussion about bringing the two groups together under one umbrella of National Defence?

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

Thank you for that question. It won't surprise you to hear that it's a question we are asked from time to time. I was recently asked by a professor whether the navy should maybe just get out of the Arctic and we should do the job up there.

My answer may sound a little bit cute, and I don't mean it that way at all. I hope you'll accept that sincerely.

As you will all be aware, the Coast Guard has been going through a very deep dive on our finances. We've been in critical financial straits for several years now, and we were invited, through budget 2016, to undertake a comprehensive review of our finances.

As an organization, and as the senior leadership of that organization, we believe that our priority is to become financially stable. This will allow us to have the resources to do the recruitment and the training to maintain the assets that we have, which, in terms of priority, are of an order of magnitude higher than discussions about machinery or where we sit within the construct of government.

We have very effective partnerships with the people we need to have partnerships with. That certainly includes the navy, Transport Canada, the RCMP and CBSA. There are different discussions that come to our ears about, “Well, wouldn't you be better off in Public Safety or wouldn't you be better off in the navy?”

We don't talk very much about where we live; we talk about what we do, and we think that the resource issue overshadows the machinery issue. That said, if we were to look at the feasibility of combining those organizations hypothetically, I think we would urge whoever was considering that, including this committee, to keep in mind that we don't have a military culture. We don't truly have a para-military culture. We don't have military training, although some of our training verges on para-military.

Regarding the prospect of the organizations merging, from a realistic perspective, you're talking about a fundamental change to the Canadian Coast Guard for it to be able to fit into the military or within the DND context. I don't think we could suggest that by any measure that would be a short-term transition. It would have to be measured in years, possibly a decade or more. However, as I said, we're not discussing this internally. We're discussing getting the organization on its feet to provide the services Canadians expect from us.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you for that.

Has it ever been considered before from the perspective of combining the budgets for a percentage of our GDP for defence spending? Has that ever been discussed? I'm just curious to see whether it would put us up to 1.3% or 1.4%, or whether it would put us up to 1.5% or 1.6%. Obviously, we would get somewhat closer to our commitments if the budgets were aligned.

[Jeffery Hutchinson]

I've been in the Coast Guard for three years and we haven't had any kind of extensive discussion on that analysis while I've been there.

Mario, I'll turn to you to answer.

[Mario Pelletier]

The only one that I can remember was in the mid-nineties, for which actually the Coast Guard came over to Fisheries and Oceans. There was a look at all the fleet in Canada and then my understanding is that the decision was to merge the civilian fleet, so the DFO fleet and the Coast Guard fleet, but after the announcement, the military was left on its own.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Okay.

[Mario Pelletier]

There hasn't been any recent discussion.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thanks, gentlemen.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Stephen Fuhr]

I'm going to move over to Ms. Gallant.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

When a fishing boat either is reported missing or sends out a distress call, with respect to the search and rescue timeline, generally speaking, what takes the most time—searching for the vessel or the actual rescue?

[Mario Pelletier]

Thanks for the question.

Normally when a distress call is heard, it's through our marine communications and traffic services centres, and it gets relayed to the joint rescue coordination centre. They gather the information, analyze, and determine that it's a search and rescue call. Then the tasking is issued to both the air unit and the marine unit, and a vessel or patrol ship may end up being there.

From that time on, from the Coast Guard perspective, our reaction time is 30 minutes, and I can say that in the last five years, the average reaction time has been just over 10 minutes.

We then have to get to the scene, which depends on the weather and where it is. Depending on the case, if it's a vessel in trouble, it's easily identified, communication is ongoing, and so there's no search. If it's somebody who's lost at sea, then there's a search pattern that needs to take place. So, it will vary a lot.

I can tell you that, on average, our reaction time has been 10 minutes. I would say that 80% of the time we're on-site within an hour.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

I'm really not referring to reaction time. I want to know specifically about a fishing vessel, for example, that does not have a beacon and that is not required by law to have an EPIRB or whatever kind of beacon. When a shipping vessel like this goes missing, what proportion of the search and rescue time has to be spent on the search? Does it tale longer to do the searching than to do the actual rescue? Does it take significantly longer than it does if they have a beacon?

[Mario Pelletier]

Obviously, if they have a beacon, we have a position to work from. We have tools, such as a search pattern, whereby we can say that the last known position was there, and that it's been three hours. We look at the weather, sea conditions, and everything, and we establish a drifting pattern. This is how we can search. So, yes, having a position does reduce the search time.

When it's simply somebody calling to say that a fishing vessel should have been back 12 hours ago and isn't, the first step is to confirm that the fishing vessel is not somewhere else, because it could have come into a different port. Once this is confirmed, the search and rescue operation starts.