Mr. Speaker, there is public contempt over the defence minister's use of a search and rescue helicopter as a personal taxi. There is real contempt back home in Newfoundland and Labrador, not so much over the misuse of a government aircraft, which is almost routine, not even because the defence minister misled Parliament. What is most unforgivable about the minister's embarrassing actions is that they take away from the real story, that being the search and rescue response time of the Cormorants, which is 30 minutes during working hours, but 2 hours during evenings and on weekends.
Can members imagine a fire department operating with one response time during the day and another during the night?
The emergency response times of the Cougar helicopters that service the offshore oil industry will soon be 20 minutes around the clock.
I can tell members that the survival time of an offshore oil worker in the North Atlantic is the exact same as the survival time for a fisherman. There should be one universal response time for the offshore. That is where the contempt originates.