Mr. Speaker, last Friday during question period I asked a question of the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. The question was taken by the Deputy Prime Minister. My question was in regard to maintaining the rescue diving capability of the Vancouver based coast guard rescue centre.
The possible cancellation of this program had been a news story on Vancouver television for five nights running. Yet the Deputy Prime Minister had to take the question under advisement.
The Minister of Fisheries and Oceans announced the end of the program that very same day and informed me by letter, because of the lack of response I had received during question period.
Then early Sunday morning Paul Sandhu ended upside down in his car in four feet of water in the Fraser River right across from the coast guard station. They were on the scene within a minute of being called. The coast guard crew were only allowed to provide lighting because the rescue diving program had been cancelled. The car containing the body of Mr. Sandhu was pulled out by the RCMP one half hour later.
Much has happened since then. The minister stated to me in the House of Commons on Tuesday that services would continue to be provided by the Department of National Defence. It is now clear that it will not work to drop the coast guard rescue diving in the Vancouver area and substitute DND from Comox or Esquimalt on Vancouver Island to do the rescue diving.
The Vancouver coast guard rescue diving program record over the last six years demonstrates that the vast majority of calls were responded to within 20 minutes. For example, mobilization and flight time for DND from Comox is one and a half hours and it is worse on nights and weekends.
The minister is saying that these are equivalent services when they are so obviously not. Then on Wednesday the minister issued a statement that his department would review all of the facts surrounding the response to the tragic accident that occurred on Sunday. Until this review is complete and a final decision is announced, the rescue diving pilot project will remain suspended.
The decision to cancel the rescue divers has all the earmarks of bureaucratic bungling and bad advice to the minister. I have been here before with the coast guard initiative to de-staff all light stations on the B.C. coast. This was finally overturned.
The minister is now in a face saving posture. He must respond to public pressure to reinstate the rescue diver program. He does not want to alienate those few in his department who gave him the bad advice he used to authorize this ill-conceived decision. None of this is a valid enough reason to expose the public to further risk by maintaining suspension of service.
This brings me back full circle to where I was on Friday when I asked if the minister would stop this wrong headed, bureaucratic initiative now. While a review is under way, the common sense approach would be to reinstate coast guard rescue diver capability rather than leave the opportunity for another tragedy. Every day is important.
I would like an explanation as to why the minister will not reinstate the program immediately, even though the review is pending.