Thank you.
If you will allow me, I would like to begin by stating for the record that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard are fully committed to the letter and spirit of the Official Languages Act and to implementing all requirements flowing from the Official Languages regulations and policies.
Like my colleagues, I would like to express my deepest sympathy to the families and friends of those involved in the capsizing of L’Acadien II. The issue has been raised on a broader scale about whether the Coast Guard delivers consistent bilingual search and rescue services. I would like to take a few moments to put this concern to rest.
It may be useful to begin by stating for the record that the Official Languages Regulations require the Coast Guard to deliver bilingual SAR services at offices or facilities where, over a year, there is at least a 5% demand from the public for services in English or French. The Regulations also state specifically that bilingual services be delivered in the Halifax SAR Region. I want to assure the Committee that we meet those requirements.
Mariners will most often use their radio to engage the search and rescue system. In a limited number of situations, they will also use automated signalling systems to communicate. However, for the majority of mariners who make a radio call, they will contact one of the coast guard's 22 maritime communications and traffic service centres. Nine of those centres offer bilingual services 24 hours a day, seven days a week. All positions in these nine centres are designated bilingual at the BBB level. One is located in Newfoundland, two in the maritime region, four in the Quebec region, and two in our central and Arctic region.
If a call is received at one of our non-bilingual MCTS centres, a conference link is established immediately with a bilingual centre. When one of our MCTS centres receives a call from a vessel, it maintains communication with the party on the other end while critical information is relayed immediately to the most appropriate joint rescue coordination centre, or JRCC, that General Dumais spoke about, or to one of the two marine rescue subcentres run by the coast guard.
All JRCCs are staffed, as General Dumais noted, jointly by DND and the coast guard, and offer services to the public in both official languages at all times. The two coast guard subcentres, one located in Quebec City and the other in St. John's, Newfoundland, also offer access to bilingual services at the B level.
Access means that where and when bilingual service is not available at a centre, and that would be the case in our St. John's centre, callers are immediately connected by conference call to the MRSC in Quebec, where French language services are available. While it is part of the standard operating procedure for the centres, I want to emphasize that this does occur very rarely. On average, our MCTS centres field about 950,000 calls a year. Generally, about 10 of those calls on average are relayed to the maritime rescue subcentre in Quebec.
Overall, we respond to some 8,000 marine search and rescue incidents a year. Of those, on average 3,000 lives in those incidents are at risk, and we save about 2,900, a success rate of about 97%.
Once a request for assistance has been received by a joint rescue coordination centre, a response is launched as quickly as possible. All available possibilities of assistance are used, including any vessels of opportunity. That could mean that commercial vessels, fishing vessels, or recreational vessels, whoever happens to be closest to the scene, will be tasked to respond and assist.
Our success as a service organization depends heavily on our developing and maintaining strong links with the community we serve – whether that community speaks French or English. This is very important to us, and why we are committed to fulfilling our obligations under the Official Languages Act.
I would now like to turn back to Ms. d'Auray to continue with her remarks.