Madam Speaker, I rise to follow-up on a question that I raised in the House on May 13 of this year concerning the search and rescue facilities available in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The question was raised in the wake of a Cougar helicopter crash off the east coast of Newfoundland on March 12, 2009, with the loss of 17 lives. This took place while all three of the Department of National Defence search and rescue helicopters stationed at Gander were in Nova Scotia at the time on training.
It was also raised following a decision by the Department of National Defence to send the search and rescue 444 Squadron stationed in Goose Bay, Labrador to Cold Lake, Alberta for six weeks training, leaving the Labrador residents very concerned. They were worried about their situation because of the ice conditions at that time of the year.
This only compounded the public perception in Newfoundland and Labrador that the Department of National Defence was not providing first-rate service, and was failing to understand and meet the search and rescue needs of the Newfoundland and Labrador offshore fishery and oil and gas industry and, in the case of Labrador, address the vulnerability of the residents to the ice conditions in the break-up months of May and June.
I am glad to say that decision on Labrador was reversed a couple of days after I raised the question in the House on May 13. I was very glad to see that happen two days later. Of course, the government did not say why it did it, but I hope that it was because it listened to what I had to say and certainly listened to what the residents of Labrador had to say about their concerns.
In terms of search and rescue capability, particularly in St. John's, there was a Cougar helicopter that provided back-up service to do the search and rescue because of the presence of the helicopters in Nova Scotia. Major McGuire of search and rescue indicated that it took an extra hour for the Cormorants to get to the site because of their distance from it, but there was supposedly a standby Cougar helicopter available to go.
In fact, it was the first responder. However, it was a helicopter station at St. John's that was not configured for search and rescue purposes. The first thing that the crew had to do was take the passenger seats out of the helicopter, install rescue gear, and do that configuration before they could take off to conduct the mission. It was obviously not on standby.
I referred my question to the royal commission back in 1984. It made a significant recommendation in the wake of the Ocean Ranger disaster, which claimed 84 lives. The recommendation stated:
That there be required a full-time search and rescue dedicated helicopter, provided by either government or industry, fully equipped to search and rescue standards, at the airport nearest to the ongoing offshore drilling operations, and that it be readily available with a trained crew able to perform all aspects of the rescue.
That recommendation has never been implemented. The evidence of that is very clear considering what happened on March 12 of this year, when there were no Cormorants available. There was no fully equipped, full-time dedicated helicopter available for this purpose. We believe that the government has failed in its obligations to the people who are working offshore and need the kind of—