Thank you.
Not all residents in northern B.C. get around by road. There are many residents in coastal communities that depend on boats and float planes to get to where they need to go, and related to that, there's a serious problem with the network of weather stations that your department is responsible for maintaining.
In 2022, there was a float plane crash off the northern end of Vancouver Island that killed three people. The owner of the company that owned the float plane that was involved had been writing to the transport minister with concerns about the condition of the Sartine weather station, which hadn't been working for two years.
In the riding that I represent, Holland Rock is a weather station just off Prince Rupert, right at the mouth of the Skeena River. Every winter it seems to become non-operational, and mariners on the north coast have expressed serious concerns about their safety, because they can't get vital weather information that helps them make decisions about navigation.
I've raised these concerns repeatedly with your department. I'm in touch with your office about this issue. What I'd like today is for you to commit to making the investments necessary to ensure that there are zero outages in the weather station network on the B.C. coast this winter.