Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague for his questions.
When we were in British Columbia and toured practically every station along the coast, we heard basically the same story at all of them, a story completely opposite to that which we heard from the regional director's office when we stopped over. Members might say that they were telling us stories behind management's back, but that was not the case because we had management officials with us who were undoubtedly sent to make sure that nobody spoke out of line. The people in the stations were so fed up with the situation they did not care who was there. They were laying the truth on the line.
In relation to training, there were a couple of major concerns. Our sites on the west coast, and undoubtedly those on the east coast, were so tightly manned or so undermanned that quite often they could not find time to let people off on leave to go for training. When the opportunity arose only a few could go. As the member said in regard to the training centre in Nova Scotia, the principal of which, by the way, is a good Newfoundlander and it is certainly not his fault what is happening, because of the way the work is dictated people are coming from all over the country and all over the world to be trained, as they are in other parts of the country.
We have so much potential in relation to ocean technology and naval possibilities it is unbelievable, but we are not taking advantage of it. Very few people can get training. We have an aging population of people with the expertise in manning these sites. Unless we can train young people, who are so ready and willing to go, we are going to lose this expertise very quickly.
The other thing we found at a lot of these stations, with examples given to us, was the concern about near misses of large ocean liners because they could not be detected, with sites down, with areas that were not covered by radar, along with weather conditions when the weather deteriorated and loss of visibility and such. Actually in one case the person telling us the story had tears in her eyes because of the impact it had on her.
It is no pleasure to work in the Coast Guard because of the responsibilities. It would be a little bit better if they were not, as we say in Newfoundland, overworked and undernourished.