Debates of Nov. 6th, 2002

Canadian Coast Guard

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I know my colleague from Chicoutimi—Le Fjord and his sense of humour well. But had he caught the first minutes of my remarks, had he listened carefully, he would have realized that I was extremely positive about the Coast Guard.

I will say the same thing to my hon. colleague from Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok. What I am asking is for the Coast Guard to be provided with the means to act, to become a real institution and stop being mistreated. That is clear. That is what I am asking for.

Let it be a real institution, capable of providing services, and not a tool to collect taxes, as has been the case in recent years, since 1998. That is not its role. Its role is to provide services.

Let us stop relying on the Coast Guard to collect fees in an effort to make up for shortfalls in budgets. Let us give it what it needs to provide services to the public. Otherwise, what is the point of creating an institution and not being able to support it? It is pointless. The Coast Guard needs to be supported. It seems clear to me.

[John M. Cummins, Canadian Alliance, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Chairman, I want to compliment my friend from the Bloc not just on his speech this evening, but also on his work and that of his colleagues on the committee over the years. They have made a valuable contribution to the proceedings. Any fair reading of committee minutes will show that their contribution has been second to none, including when the committee was sitting on the west coast of Canada. I have, and I know my friends on the west coast have, very much appreciated the interest the Bloc members have taken regarding our difficulties. I have nothing but admiration for their contribution to the committee.

I believe it was in 1995 that the Coast Guard merged with DFO. That has caused considerable consternation on the west coast. There was a merging of resources.

The end result of that merging was that some vessels do not have adequately trained rescue specialists aboard. Others are tied up while they are supposed to be offshore on search and rescue status. Coast Guard vessels get seconded to do fisheries work when they should be elsewhere. It has created havoc, I think is probably the best word, and at times difficulty for crew members.

I would like to ask my friend if the same sort of difficulties have been experienced in the Quebec region.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Chairman, I will answer my hon. colleague very briefly. When the Canadian Coast Guard and Fisheries and Oceans Canada merged in 1995, we experienced the same kind of problems as those experienced in the west.

There was disenchantment within the Coast Guard. People felt somewhat abandoned. There used to be a sort of division. I must say that the Coast Guard was a bit like a large family at the time. When they combined it with Fisheries and Oceans, they displaced the family, which resulted in problems with the internal workings of the Coast Guard, on both the east and the west coast.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I wish to thank the hon. government House leader for allowing the debate to take place this evening. It is a debate we do not have very often in the House, in central Canada. The debate is about the serious issue of the Coast Guard which more or less affects the three oceans we have. Many people fail to remember that the Coast Guard is also very effective in the Great Lakes region, Lake Winnipeg and in the Arctic. I wish to thank all members for participating in this debate.

Hopefully through this debate and dialogue we can give support to the minister when he goes to cabinet asking for more resources, because we hope that is what he will be doing. We assume that is what he said in his speech tonight although he did not come out as clear as the Minister of National Defence. We are hoping indeed that he will be doing that.

If we listen to the minister's speech he makes it sound like everything is just great and wonderful. In fact, why are we even having a debate tonight? We should go home, have dinner and be with our families, but the reality is that there are serious concerns within the Coast Guard.

Mr. Mike Wing, the head of the Union of Canadian Transportation Employees, Mr. John Fox from Nova Scotia representing the regions, Senator Pat Carney, Senator Mike Forrestall and many members of Parliament would not be holding press conferences and addressing the serious issues of the Coast Guard if everything was just fine. The fact is that it is the absolute opposite. Not only the men and women of the Coast Guard, but coastal communities across and within the country as well as many shippers in cities along the St. Lawrence, for example, have raised serious issues about the Coast Guard, its fee structure and how it collects its fees, as my hon. friend from the Bloc mentioned.

It is not only the opposition who has noticed the deficiencies within the Coast Guard. The member for Beauséjour--Petitcodiac is the son of a former fisheries minister. We were in Prince Edward Island and saw countless numbers of buoys on the ground. They should have been in the water doing the job of a nav-aid, but they were on the ground. The hon. member from the Liberal Party asked what they were doing there. The officials said they simply did not have the budget to take them out. They went on to elaborate that approximately $150,000 worth of nav-aids were lost due to the ice the previous year because they did not have the budget to go out and bring them in. They were just lost. They get damaged and they are gone. That $150,000 is just what we know of from one little visit by the committee to Prince Edward Island.

We were in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador. My colleagues behind me will know this very well as will the Liberals. We were there meeting with Coast Guard officials. The coastline of Newfoundland and Labrador is very large. There is lots of oil and gas activity, commercial activity for fishing, and lots of recreation fishing, et cetera. We asked them how many Coast Guard vessels were patrolling the waters of Newfoundland and Labrador at that moment. The reply was that they had one. It was sitting in the harbour. I am not making this up. That came from one of the managers of the Coast Guard in DFO in Newfoundland and Labrador. They had one vessel.

Why do we have thousands of shore birds and sea birds washed up on the shores of Newfoundland and Labrador because of oil spills? Why do we have illegal fishing off our coastlines? Why do we have illegal immigrants coming into the country? Why do we have drugs coming into the country? We are simply not doing the job. The Coast Guard, because of lack of resources and clear direction by the government, is not able to do the job it wants to do.

One would assume that post-9/11 we would have beefed up security, but the reality is that we have lessened security. It is unacceptable that has happened.

Mr. Mike Wing, the head of the union, would not be standing in the House, or anywhere else for that matter, mentioning the serious concerns of morale among the men and women he represents if he did not have facts and clear arguments for his case. This is what is happening. Morale in the Coast Guard is at an all-time low.

Those who talked to Coast Guard officials and DFO officials when the merger took place in 1995 know of the internal battle between the Coast Guard and DFO officials. In many cases that battle still continues as they fight for their share of the pie.

Moving the Coast Guard to DFO sounded fairly good in theory. They both did the same sort of work so maybe it might have worked. When Senator Pat Carney, Senator Mike Forrestall, and the union asked for an inquiry into the Coast Guard, one of the biggest questions they wanted to ask was: How is that merger working? In their opinion it had failed. It was simply not effective.

When I first became fisheries and oceans critic for the NDP a Coast Guard official, the acting director at the time, came to our committee. My colleague from the Alliance was there. I asked him questions about funding. I did not ask him about this in particular but he came out and said that $200 million of the Coast Guard budget was diverted into the regular DFO budget for other purposes.

We know that with downsizing in 1995 a lot of money was cut from the Coast Guard. The minister said we put so much back in. We have not put back what we have taken out already.

We understand there are other spending requirements for the government. We know we need to be fiscally accountable and responsible for taxpayer dollars. An investment in the Coast Guard is an investment in our country. That is a fact. The men and women of the Coast Guard are willing to risk their lives for the protection of our interests. They are willing to go into certain conditions out on the ocean at the worst time of year that you and I would not even dream of, Mr. Speaker. They are proud and they want to do their job. What is most important is that they have the confidence and the support of not only the fisheries minister but the government as well, and for that matter all members of Parliament, that what they do is valuable and important.

One of the most telling things about what was going on in the Coast Guard and how the right hand did not know what the left hand was doing was when we were in Vancouver. I asked Mr. Mike Henderson of the Coast Guard: “How is it going with the resources? How is the money? Is there any problem with money?” He said, “Money is not a problem”. We had to take the man for his word. We were not going to accuse him of something until we got the facts. Then we went to the regions. We went to Victoria, Ucluelet and Tofino. It was a completely different story.

Those who know Vancouver and Victoria know that it is not that far apart. There are phones and, with technology, e-mail. We would assume that the head of the Coast Guard on the west coast would know what the heck is going on in his department. Every single person on the west coast said money was the number one problem. I ask the minister, how can your official, who--

[The Chairman of Committees of the Whole]

I wish to remind members to direct all their interventions through the Chair please.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Chairman, through you to the minister, how can one official there, in a senior position, be so ignorant of what is going on in his region? That is just one person we spoke to. We do not have the taxpayer dollars to go to every single person in the Coast Guard across the country to ask these questions but that was just one. If that is an indication of the management of the Coast Guard and reflects what is going on in that region, then we are in serious trouble.

We ask now, and I support the call for the inquiry, to ensure that the government has a clear understanding of what is going on in this valuable department in the country.

Nobody on this side, and I suspect nobody on that side, is condemning the work that the men and women of our Coast Guard do. We are proud of our men and women of the Coast Guard. As the minister said, they are ready to answer the bell. The fact is the bell is not ringing because they simply do not have the resources to do the job that we ask them to do. That is a serious problem.

We can go on all night on this debate. The reality is that Cap Rouge II was a serious incident. We have serious questions to ask about that. We will never know if somebody could have been saved. There were warnings. Just a while before that happened a person ran off a bridge in his car and there was no dive team to respond. There were warnings that something of this nature could happen and Coast Guard officials refused to respond in the proper manner.

We are asking the minister to go to cabinet and say that he has the support of the opposition as well as the support of Canadians to ask for more resources and a clear direction for the future of the men and women of our Coast Guard.

[Peter MacKay, Progressive Conservative, Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I thank my colleague from Nova Scotia for his spirited and passionate debate.

Clearly there is a serious problem with respect to the lack of resources and staffing cutbacks that have been made to the Coast Guard. The member is right to point out that it is not a lack of effort and commitment on its part. In fact, the Coast Guard is performing admirably in spite of the situation that it has been placed in.

I want to key in on one area that should not be ignored in this debate and that is the situation with navigational aids. My colleagues from Nova Scotia and St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador are painfully aware of this from having had discussions with Coast Guard officials and others.

Since 1996 and even before, the presence of marine navigational aids have dropped significantly and dramatically. The government will have to reinvest in that critical area. Putting lights and buoys on the coast goes back to the very beginnings of this country. We must ensure that those beacons of light are available for basic safety reasons for those who find themselves in peril at sea.

There are lighthouses that have been completely taken down and are no longer manned. That situation has exacerbated the shortages that already exist in terms of personnel who are available on the water, but this is now an increased danger. With the exception perhaps of Prince Edward Island, manned lighthouses in the maritime region have dramatically fallen.

There are private groups such as Keepers of the Beacon in Guysborough County who are desperately trying to attract the attention of DFO and the minister to this situation. In some instances they are looking to privatize the navigational aids for both heritage and practical purposes.

I would like to hear what the member thinks could be done in terms of improving the presence of these buoys and lighthouses. I have been made aware of instances where lights and buoys are currently in place but are insufficient. They do not work, they are not certified, and they are not up to par. We also have the situation where many lighthouses are being taken down and efforts are being made to re-establish, and in some cases at a private sector level, this important infrastructure.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I thank my hon. colleague from Pictou—Antigonish—Guysborough for his intervention.

He is absolutely right. It would be remiss for any of us to ignore the concerns and also the valuable work that the Coast Guard Auxiliary does across the country. These are volunteers who have in many ways picked up the slack from the lack of government attention.

The lighthouse keepers and many groups in Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia and other places have spent thousands of hours trying to get the attention of the government to say that these lighthouses are of historical value. They are not just nice and pretty for tourists to look at, but they also have a function and a role to play. We cannot rely on GPS alone. We must have these lights out there. I for one have always opposed the destaffing of lighthouses.

I also oppose alternate service delivery. The Coast Guard or DFO does not have the resources or personnel to ensure that private companies are doing the job they say they are going to do. A lot of the nav-aids and buoys disappear when the ice comes in. They are gone.

This is a waste of taxpayers' money. Taxpayers pay money for those buoys. DFO or the Coast Guard just says that they did not get it this year. There is some more money gone. It is simply unacceptable.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Chairman, I thank the member for his comments, especially his fine comments about the Coast Guard Auxiliary which has its own maintenance costs with little assistance from the federal government. The government gives them some $5 million a year. I agree that it provides an invaluable service.

I understand that the member would not agree with destaffing lighthouses. I imagine if he were here in 1890 he would not have supported abandoning the stagecoach and we would still have it. We must modernize some points and he is right on some of them. We are using modern aids and modernization. I appreciate the points he made about marine service fees and I share those elements, but we have additional cost requests. We have cost needs and cost recovery.

I believe the member would agree that we should discuss some partnership arrangements with marine shippers, partly because they would like to see a reduction, and prefer an elimination, of marine service fees. They also recognize and work with us so that we become more efficient.

Would it be objectionable to the member to have third party arrangements or private sector partnerships with marine navigational aids or other structures to achieve those goals that we all want?

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Chairman, I for one have never objected to working with outside partners in order to achieve efficiencies within a particular department, but if those efficiencies mean one is going to lose $150,000 or $170,000 worth of equipment on a yearly basis, then I question the efficiency of that. I come from the Halifax area where they are always concerned about the threat of ice-breaking charges and fees for an ice-free port. These are some the things that we have to raise.

He talked about the stagecoach revival. Well, it has been proven that manning those lighthouses is just as cost effective as if they are allowed to die down with all the environmental concerns and the fact that someone has to be sent out to repair the lights, if we bother to do that at all. The neglect is incredible. It is almost to the point that working in a lighthouse is thought to be a passé job and it should not have to be there, but I beg to differ.

In many areas of the country, those eyes and the physical presence of a human being could be saving lives when mariners are in trouble. Automatic light stations cannot do that. Having a human there could very well save people's lives. We simply do not know. If they are not manned we will not know if they are able to save lives. However, if somebody is there to survey the waters and check everything out and has knowledge of the local area, that could indeed save lives. If we are using the precautionary concern, why not?

[John M. Cummins, Canadian Alliance, Delta—South Richmond, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my friend has raised a very good point which has been raised by others as well. It has to do with the marine navigation services program. In the public accounts committee report, Mr. Adams, the Coast Guard commissioner, admitted:

We don't always get the buoys out of the water as soon as we would like before the ice comes in, and we don't always get them back in the water as soon as we'd like to when the ice goes out...some compromises are made as a result of the lack of funding.

That was said by the Coast Guard commissioner. I do not think the hon. member for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore could have said it any more clearly than that. He may want to comment on that.

There is another issue on which I would like him to comment. I appreciated his remarks about the Coast Guard auxiliary. It does a marvellous and outstanding job. There are a couple of auxiliaries that operate in my constituency and I am very much aware of what they do.

However, with these funding cuts to the department, there is a fear that the government may be trying to replace the regular Coast Guard employees with the volunteers in the Coast Guard auxiliary. It is clear in my mind that there is not really a duplication of services. One complements the other. However, if they are trying to accomplish replacing the fine work that the regular force does, there may be some problems. I wonder if my friend has some thoughts on that.

[Peter Stoffer, NDP, Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore, NS]

Mr. Chairman, my hon. colleague from the Canadian Alliance is the official DFO critic for his party. I must say that he brings a wealth of knowledge as a commercial fisherman in the past to the Coast Guard and DFO debate. I thank him and members of his party very much for the continuous work they do in committee.

He mentioned what Mr. Adams said. I did not say that; Mr. Adams said that. If the minister is not willing to listen to us, is he willing to listen to his own commissioner? The fact is there is a sneaking suspicion not only within the union but with many other people that DFO eventually would like to eliminate the full time and regular employees of the Coast Guard and replace them with the volunteers. That is the suspicion. I cannot say that is actually happening, but it leads one to believe that may be the final objective.

In looking at the serious funding cuts, the lack of attention to detail in the Coast Guard, will it just let it go and let the volunteer sector pick it up? That may very well happen. We hope it will not and we will fight against it. We believe, as the hon. member said, that the full time Coast Guard and the auxiliary complement one another and have a very good working relationship.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Mr. Chairman, it is certainly a pleasure to speak to the resolution that is before us. We are not the first ones to kick it off. A few days ago the other house through Senator Carney raised the issue publicly in a press statement which was followed up by a news conference. It was a news conference participated in by many of my colleagues here and is one which drew attention from the Coast Guard.

The commissioner was not very happy with some of the stuff we said. It was interesting after he had done his presentation on the radio. The people who actually work in the Coast Guard, are hardworking people whom the minister said he is so proud of. We are all very proud of the workers in the Coast Guard because they are the ones on the front line. They are very seldom called out when everything is going well. They are called out to do their jobs when things go wrong, when the weather is bad, when there is danger. Many of them always put their lives on the line.

When we talk about the example in British Columbia, the people who were not rescued, it was not because the Coast Guard people were afraid. They go out there as firefighters and policemen. They know what is ahead of them when they go to work. It is not all hunky-dory, sailing around in a nice big ship. No, when they go to work, their lives are on the line every day and every night.

The commissioner said he did not agree with a lot of what we said because things are much better than we portrayed. That is not what the average person who works in the Coast Guard is saying.

We are not here to be popular with the commissioner. We are not here to be popular with the minister. We are not here to be popular with the government. We are here to get a job done. We are here to make sure that the Coast Guard that protects the people who travel our oceans are safe and looked after and that the Coast Guard people who work in that great institution can fulfill their other objectives as well.

Having said that, I say to the minister that we are not here tonight to criticize, as was mentioned by the parliamentary secretary, and tell how bad things are in the Coast Guard. We are here to give examples of what we are hearing, not from people who are not connected, but from people who work in the institution. They see what is happening to them.

We are here to support the minister as he goes to the government, to Treasury Board, to the Minister of Finance as he prepares his budget, to look for money.

I remind the minister that just a year ago we were discussing the state of our marine infrastructure. It was the fisheries committee and the presentations that were made that embarrassed the government. The government was told by its own people that $400 million was needed to bring the wharfs up to par, that 21% of the wharfs were unsafe. It was because of what came out truthfully from the witnesses that the government was embarrassed to the point that it gave the minister $100 million over a five year period on top of what he gets for the small crafts harbours division.

If as a result of our input here tonight and the other things we are doing outside, the minister receives money to keep the Coast Guard not in the state in which it is in now, but in the state it should be, our job will have been well done.

We have heard members talk about the west coast and about Nova Scotia. In the few minutes I have I want to zero in on Newfoundland and Labrador.

A number of duties are outlined for the Coast Guard. Let me just read them out in case the minister does not know:

Responsibilities: Safety of life at sea; protecting the environment; vessel screening; safe and efficient movement of traffic; broadcasting vital information such as notices to shipping of weather warnings; supporting other government agencies.

That is quite a chore. When it is being cut and cut, it is very hard to fulfill all those needs.

I have raised safety issues with the minister before. He has said that along with our own boats, despite the fact we are taking the odd one out of service, we now have an auxiliary. We have a great auxiliary back home. People train through the Coast Guard to effect search and rescue with smaller boats because of our changing fishery.

They can do their job as long as they have the resources. We are halfway through the present year in terms of budget, approaching the season when the needs are greater. The auxiliary does not have any money, nor does even the minister's own department, his own Coast Guard boats.

I have memos to prove it from his own people to his own people telling them to conserve fuel, to only use the boats when they have to and to reduce speed because it saves time. The skipper of a ship on an ocean in times of search, rescue or even travel, because of sea conditions, wind, storms, ice or whatever, does not want somebody in Ottawa telling him how fast he should move that ship along because of the safety of the people involved and the needs of the people with whom they probably will be involved in terms of search and rescue.

I did not pick up who, but someone said why not. Perhaps that person could picture somebody sitting in an office in Ottawa telling someone how to operate a ship on the Grands Banks of Newfoundland or on the coast of Labrador when the ship is surrounded by ice or there is a storm and they are trying to rescue a small fishing vessel.

We have a change in fishery in Newfoundland. Some years ago when the Coast Guard was much stronger and when we had more boats, more facilities than we have right now, we had big boats and we had little boats. The major fish companies had big draggers that were as big or bigger in a lot of cases than the Coast Guard boats. They could look after themselves quite well. We had small boats that operated within sight of land, practically inshore.

The fishery has changed. Not only have we gone from the 25 foot or the 30 foot trap skiff, to 45 foot and 65 foot long liners, almost everybody has gone to the midsize boat, anywhere from 35 foot, decked over and made into a small long liner, as we say, to the 65 foot or even to the 100 foot class. Not only have they moved up a little bit, they have had to move further and further from shore to get the meagre resource that is left. The small boats that fished within sight of land or within a few miles of land are now fishing out around and even outside the 200 mile limit.

The fishermen themselves, and we have them here tonight, members of the auxiliary, members of the Coast Guard, will tell us that all that is needed is the perfect storm and we could have major disasters. Every day in relation to the fishery and during the winter in particular with the seal fishery, many, many times the Coast Guard is called upon to assist people in search and rescue. The needs are greater than ever they were.

On top of that there is extra traffic in relation to the oil development off our coast. We talk about protecting the environment. There is an example. If there is ever a disaster, who do we think would be called upon? It would be front and centre the Coast Guard.

I talked about security. I have always said anybody could get into this country by plane or car, but they would be searched and so would their car, bumper to bumper. However if they used a boat, a dory, and it was a foggy day or night, there are many parts of our country, whether we are talking about terrorists or drug traffickers, they could move into this country without even being noticed. If members do not believe me they should ask the people who operate the radar.

The minister says it is an RCMP problem. It is, but who do the Mounties call when there is a case in relation to security on the ocean? It is certainly not ghostbusters. They call the Coast Guard.

I wish I had more time to speak because there are so many things I could put on the record. Let me say to the minister that we are not here to complain. We are here to highlight concerns that I hope you and the government will listen to, to make sure our Coast Guard can continue to do the type of work it originally was intended to do and not be hamstrung by the type of operation that we see at present.

[The Chairman of Committees of the Whole]

Before we proceed to questions and comments, I just want to remind colleagues that interventions must be made through the Chair because sometimes directing our comments in a more familiar fashion by saying “you this and you that”, leads us down a path and let us just not go there. We must go through the Chair.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans]

Mr. Chairman, certainly the member and I take your comments to heart and understand your instructions, but we have become such good friends through question period that it is difficult to be too formal.

I thank the member for most of his comments, but I would ask him whether he is aware that since 9/11 we have increased the notification period for foreign ships coming into our waters. I am working from memory, but I believe it is 96 hours, so we know well ahead of time and are able to monitor them.

He would also know that our ships are all available to go on duty. We have concerns about fuel costs. Fuel costs have increased greatly, so in order to use our resources properly we asked that ships not be in motion when they do not have to be but that they be ready to patrol.

I would ask the member if he could refresh my memory as to when I would have told him that we were lessening our dependence on the Coast Guard and increasing it on the auxiliary. I have no memory of that discussion.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

I'll send you a copy of Hansard.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Thank you. I would appreciate that. It would be imaginative, I am sure.

The hon. member would also know that our search and rescue capabilities are of course complemented by the military, by the brand new Cormorant helicopters, by military shipping, and by commercial shipping also, as well as the auxiliary. Together they play a great role in search and rescue, particularly in Newfoundland where ships do go out far.

I also would ask the member if he is aware that one of my first honours as Minister of Fisheries and Oceans was to sign a five year funding agreement, the highest funding ever from the Government of Canada for the auxiliary, a very good investment. The service received by the Canadian public from the auxiliary is at little cost to the Canadian public and of great benefit. I would ask the member whether he is aware of that.

[The Chairman of Committees of the Whole]

I get the impression the members are all such good friends that perhaps they do not need me, but I think I will stick around just in case.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I do suggest that you stay around.

I say to the minister in answer to his five questions, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. I am very much aware, and I wish the minister were as much aware of what is going on with the Coast Guard as most of the members here. I do not mean to slight others, but many of them are on the fisheries committee and live in fishing or marine areas and are well aware of what is happening.

I will deal with the questions very quickly. In relation to the funding for the auxiliary, I congratulate the minister. It was a tremendous move. It has done a great amount of work, but it was like always when the government announces money. Everyone says, wow, it is a lot of money, but it is over 5 years, 10 years or whatever and is announced 15 times, so when it gets to the people who need it, there is not so much money. Right now, halfway through the year, as I said to the minister, the auxiliary is out of money. What good is the money if it is not there when the real time of need arrives?

Let me also say to the minister that I was intrigued when he said we are protected in relation to security because we have now increased notice time to 96 hours. That is like making a reservation at a hotel. When we go to a hotel now, the first thing it wants is our credit card, and if we do not tell them we are not coming, it will charge us anyway if the reservations are not made ahead of time.

What we are really saying to terrorists or anyone else if they want to come to our country is that instead of calling us 24 hours before they come in, as they used to have to do, they have to call us 96 hours ahead of time. I am just wondering how many terrorists or drug smugglers pick up the phone and call the Coast Guard to say “we are coming into Newfoundland” or coming into British Columbia. The only way we know they are coming in is if we pick them up on radar or our boats see them while at sea. If our boats are not at sea, they cannot see them.

As well, many parts of our country, regardless of what the minister says, are not covered by radar. We do not have enough to cover all the coasts. If I know that there are places where we can come in without being seen, if the members know that there are places where we can come in without being seen, if the minister knows, whether he will admit it or not, that there are places where we can come in without being seen, do we not think the drug pushers and terrorists also know? I rest my case.

[James Lunney, Canadian Alliance, Nanaimo—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank the hon. member from St. John's for his comments tonight. I wanted to draw to his attention our MCTS centres, the marine communications and traffic services centres, that are watching the traffic flow up and down the coast. I know the hon. member was with us when the committee visited these centres.

I wonder if he would comment on the problems we have with the ab initio training program. That is training for officers. I believe we have the best and well trained officers manning our posts, but they are getting older and many of them are nearing retirement. The training to replace these officers, which takes quite a bit of time, simply has not been done, especially from the west coast.

We visited the Canadian Coast Guard College in Sydney, Nova Scotia, an excellent facility. It is actually quite busy training officers from other countries who are coming here to receive the benefits of our knowledge. It seems tragic to me that we are not training our own officers to replace our hard-working people on the coasts.

In addition to that, I wonder if he would comment on what we saw in terms of notices of suspension shipping services that are not going out. The coast is not being watched at times and hundreds of miles of coastline are just simply not being watched at all.

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

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.

[Jean-Yves Roy, Bloc, Matapédia—Matane, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my question will be a short one.

This summer, in my region, in the Magdalen Islands, we experienced a rather major problem. Whenever there was a private entrepreneur who could provide the necessary service when a fishing boat experienced a breakdown, the Coast Guard would completely withdraw and the private entrepreneur, who would charge the fisher a fee, would go and get the boat.

Of course, fishers were upset and they did not accept this situation. The private entrepreneur was forced to stop operating.

I would like to know if the same thing happened in the hon. member's province, in Newfoundland?

[Loyola Hearn, Progressive Conservative, St. John's West, NL]

Mr. Chairman, I think the minister answered the question earlier when he talked about cost recovery. It is getting to the point where we pay for practically everything. The government argues, the minister will argue and other ministers will argue this way: “Is it not fair that people pay for the services provided?”

If we are dealing with the private sector, these people are in the business to make money and we know what we are getting at first hand. If we are dealing with services provided by government, unless I miss my guess entirely I think we pay for the services. We pay taxes so that government provides services to people, not on a cost recovery basis but because it is prepaid and paid for by a lot of people who will never need the services.

I will say to the member that I think we are going to see more and more of this cost recovery, because as government siphons off money into foolish programs that are not necessary and gives lucrative contracts to its friends, somebody has to pay for it. Who pays for it? The ordinary taxpayer. And we are already paying enough to provide the services we need.

[Joe McGuire, Liberal, Egmont, PE]

Mr. Chairman, to begin my remarks I want to talk about some of the history of the Canadian Coast Guard and the role it plays and has played in Canadian life. I want to put these remarks in context.

I do not see very many people in the House right now, Mr. Chairman, with the exception of yourself and the member for Delta—South Richmond, who were around in 1994-95 when our government faced a $42 billion annual deficit. At that time we had what we called a program review, in which every department, with the exception of the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs, I think, had 30% cut from its budget. This minister is living in clover compared to what his predecessors had to go through in 1994-95-96.

Those members over there were not around then. I think they came in as a result of some of the things we had to do, the hard decisions we had to make in those years, decisions on EI, Atlantic transportation subsidies, the elimination of the Holy Crow, et cetera. We dealt with it. The majority of us did survive. New members came in from the other provinces. We used to have every seat in Nova Scotia. We allowed some of the members from other parties to be elected and come to the House and represent their people.

Pretty soon those same members will be asking the government, because we have a surplus, for at least $5 billion more for health. It is a good idea. We should be putting more money into health. All the research says we should be putting more money into health and it is only $5 billion. Then the same people will say we will need $5 billion more for equipment for our armed forces. That is $10 billion more in spending right away. There goes our current surplus, but they will not stop there. They will continue to want services in every government department.

They have said they want to help the minister get some money for the Coast Guard. He has already been able to put back into the system over $100 million that was cut out in the bad old cutting days. If they really want to help the minister, they will have to moderate their demands for the other things they want. That would make our minister's job of getting money back into the Coast Guard much easier.

When the amalgamation occurred and the Coast Guard left the Department of Transportation and went into the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, I had the misfortune of being chair of the fisheries committee at that time. The member for Delta—South Richmond was one of the members of that committee back then. It was a pretty rough time trying to convince people that these moves had to be made. The Coast Guard and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans did not really jive perfectly. There was a lot of elbowing and a lot of territorial fighting between the two services, but we survived. We are surviving that. We are providing the services. The two services are getting more used to each other and getting back more money and resources. I certainly hope that the minister is successful in getting more resources from his cabinet colleagues to restore further money to the Canadian Coast Guard.

With that preamble, I would like to make a few more remarks. Even with the flaws that now exist with the Canadian Coast Guard, it is still one of the most effective and efficient marine search and rescue systems in the world. I will give members a little history. This system goes back to the time of Confederation, when the federal government accepted the responsibility to maintain lifeboat stations as detailed in the British North America Act of 1867.

Over the years, this system has greatly evolved and now includes the Royal Canadian Air Force and indeed all resources of the federal government that can be detached to the aid of persons in distress. Shortly after the second world war, the government appointed the Royal Canadian Air Force as the overall authority for commanding and controlling SAR missions in response to mariners in distress, while using all available government resources.

In 1962 the Canadian Coast Guard was created as a national institution, with its highest priority being to save mariners in distress. The Coast Guard has been saving lives ever since.

In 1976 to further increase the effectiveness and efficiency of Canada's search and rescue system, the government created the national search and rescue program, which is an inter-agency arrangement under the leadership of the Minister of National Defence, who is Canada's lead minister for search and rescue.

Planning is conducted through the interdepartmental committee on search and rescue to ensure the highest levels of cooperation between all agencies involved. This system is second to none in the world and the Canadian Coast Guard is a strong and key part of this search and rescue system. The safety of life at sea is the highest priority of the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard, in cooperation with its partners such as the Canadian Forces, the volunteers of the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary and others, responds to nearly 6,500 marine search and rescue incidents each year. Some of these incidents are distress situations where lives are in grave and imminent danger, while other incidents are less dramatic and may involve towing in a broken down vessel before the situation deteriorates into a distress.

Concerning the distress incidents, the Coast Guard, in cooperation with its partners, saves approximately 3,100 lives annually. Each year more than 97% of people in distress on Canadian waters are saved. This works out to be about eight lives a day, assisting a further 55 people each day in search and rescue missions. This record of success makes Canada's search and rescue system one of the most effective in the world. It is something of which all Canadians can be and are proud.

The number of lives that the Coast Guard saves is not an abstract number. These are real people who in many cases owe their lives to the Canadian Coast Guard's dedicated members.

If I may speak a little more specifically, I will give a few examples of where these people serve within the Canadian Coast Guard. At this very moment there are Coast Guard officers and crew aboard vessels and at shoreside operation centres providing a primary search and rescue coverage. This includes 31 lifeboat stations, 9 patrol vessels and one hovercraft unit which maintains the minimum half-hour standby posture or better, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We have 22 marine communications vessel traffic centres which monitor distress frequencies 24 and 7 and 5 rescue centres, three of which are jointly staffed with the Canadian Forces, which control all search and rescue missions under the authority of the Canadian Forces search and rescue regional commander.

Further to these search and rescue resources, it must be noted that any vessel within the entire fleet of 108 Coast Guard vessels which is at sea on another mission or available while secured alongside, is immediately tasked by a rescue centre to any search and rescue mission as required.

The Coast Guard, like all other government departments and agencies, has reduced its spending, but the CCG has done it in a careful manner, prioritizing its multiple missions and keeping search and rescue as the number one operational priority. As an example, I refer to the government's increased funding to the Coast Guard's search and rescue services as part of the program integrity funding initiative.

In 2000 the government injected $115.5 million in new funds into the Coast Guard to establish eight new lifeboat stations, increase the staff at our research centres, and to secure long term funding for our search and rescue patrol vessels. I am happy to report that two of these new lifeboat stations are in service and the remaining six will soon be in service. Further, the staffing levels have been increased in our rescue centres.

It is proof that the Government of Canada takes search and rescue services seriously. I can assure the House that in addition to further improvements in technology, regulations and operations, the CCG will continue to find ways to strengthen these services in the years ahead to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

In closing, I would like to restate that the men and women of the Canadian Coast Guard continue to deliver one of the most effective and highly respected search and rescue services in the world and that the Government of Canada remains committed to continuing its support of our search and rescue services.

[The Chairman of Committees of the Whole]

I take note that notwithstanding that the member for Egmont is somewhat removed from us a little further away, he seems to have created a tremendous amount of interest with a lot of people here.

Again I simply make the suggestion that if the questions can be phrased within a minute, and the response in the equal amount of time, then we will get as many people on as possible. I will begin with the hon. member for Delta--South Richmond.