Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. In fact, the number is probably 40 hours of maintenance for each hour the helicopter flies.
I want to read a quote from this report that was released only less than a month ago. It was done by Captain Eric Hill, a naval captain out of Halifax. His mandate was to point out the shortfalls in the Sea Kings and the equipment. It was signed off on by the commander of the base he operated within. A couple of things he said relate to the questions that were asked.
He said, in fact, that out of 37 operational missions that the Sea King has operated in since the cold war, 33 have been above water operations. That is the interdiction type of operation involved in the gulf. I will read a part of his next point that relates to that. I will quote from Captain Hill's report on information given by crews that fly the Sea Kings:
The inherent danger of approaching unidentified surface vessels creates the pre-requisite for conducting SSC: a sensor capable of imaging beyond the limits of the human eye. [Sea King] crews do not have the tool to execute this mission. This has resulted in ineffectiveness and mission failure, endangerment of operational crews, the loss of life, and increasingly, exclusion from participation in joint/coalition operations in theatre.
That is exactly the kind of mission he is asking our people to be involved in and in fact which they are involved in the gulf region right now. This captain's report says clearly that the Sea Kings simply are not capable of performing a mission like that in any kind of effective way or in a safe fashion. It is shameful that our men and women are put in this kind of danger and that our billion dollar frigates are reduced in value to a fraction in terms of their effectiveness because of the lack of a proper helicopter on board.