Mr. Speaker, it is my very great pleasure to speak to this motion. Many of my colleagues are aware that I am a former member of the military, but I was also a medical assistant in the Canadian Forces. That job has a direct connection with the subject before us.
The reason I wanted to say a few words about this motion is that, in the three elections in which I have campaigned, many people came to talk to me because of my military background and asked me what purpose our armed forces serve. They told me they found it hard to understand what purpose our armed forces actually serve, simply that they went on missions abroad and they did not understand more than that. They added that it seemed to them that the armed forces should focus more on our needs. Often, that was when people started talking about search and rescue.
Search and rescue is really a job that our armed forces do directly, to protect and assist the Canadian public by coming to the rescue of people who are in need. Search and rescue is something that really does focus on our needs. As well, I think search and rescue fits well with the Canada first theme of the Canada first defence strategy. Search and rescue means helping, protecting and serving Canadians first. I think that having very high standards for search and rescue is entirely appropriate and is in line with the strategy and the kind of army that most Canadians want to have, to defend their country and serve them.
I would also like to mention that as a medical assistant in the armed forces it is truly a dream to be able to work in search and rescue someday, because doing that job means performing a real service to society. It means saving lives. I did search and rescue exercises with the Canadian Forces reserves every year. It is something that we took very seriously because we wanted to be ready and able to do it on the day when we had to do it in real life, when someone’s life had to be saved. Those training exercises were highly valued by soldiers. Thus, we must understand that search and rescue is important to Canada.
I would like to take the time to read the motion, because it really is an excellent motion. The motion states:
That the House acknowledge that Canada lags behind international search and rescue norms and urge the government to recognize the responsibility of the Canadian Forces for the protection of Canadians, and to take such measures as may be required for Canada to achieve the common international readiness standard of 30 minutes at all times, from tasking to becoming airborne, in response to search and rescue incidents.
I will get back to the motion, but I must say that this is an excellent motion and a number of elements help us better understand the situation.
If we are talking about international norms, the norm of 30 minutes at all times comes from a report produced by Seacom International Inc., which is a company that specializes in emergency preparedness. This company prepared a report for the Standing Committee on National Defence. In this report, Canada was ranked last, behind Australia, Ireland, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States when it comes to search and rescue response times.
I think it is awful that Canada is last given that our country usually aspires to a leadership role in search and rescue.
I think it is essential that we aim higher. First of all, I want to make it clear that, with respect to search and rescue response time, the clock starts ticking when the authorities give the order and ends when the aircraft, boat or vehicle leaves the base to carry out the search and rescue mission. No more than 30 minutes should elapse between tasking and the time people leave the base to carry out the mission. It is important to understand that it can sometimes take a lot of time to transport people.
So, it can take quite a while for the search and rescue mission to reach the person. Sometimes it can take more than two, three or four hours in the air or on the water to reach the person in danger. I want to make that very clear.
I would like to provide a brief overview of the number of responses that search and rescue people will have to carry out. There are three joint rescue coordination centres located in Halifax, Trenton and Victoria. These centres coordinate search and rescue interventions. Every year, they coordinate some 1,100 interventions in response to incidents, rescue more than 20,000 people, and literally save an average of 1,200 lives. It is important to keep those numbers in mind.
Now I would like to talk about the problem that led to this motion. Currently, the Canadian Forces have two different search and rescue response times. During office hours from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the response time is 30 minutes, which is what the motion calls for. However, in the evening and at night, from 4 p.m. to 8 a.m., weekends and statutory holidays, the readiness standard is 120 minutes, or two hours.
Thus, two hours can go by between the time when the order is received and when the plane or boat leaves the base. After that, there is also the time needed to get to the site, which can take up to an additional two hours. This means a really long response time.
Most emergency situations—over 80%—that require a search and rescue response occur outside the hours when a the 30-minute response time is the norm, so it is particularly disturbing to think that, for over 80% of operations, people have to settle for a two-hour timeframe. In practical terms, one of the reasons for this is that, if people are out on the water for the day, either for work or recreational purposes, other people—their families and spouses, for instance—who are waiting for them ashore will not begin to worry until the evening, when their loved one has not returned. That is one reason why so many calls are logged in the evening and at night. Calls are received when people begin to think it is really strange that their loved one has not appeared.
At that time of day, people must wait two hours to contact a person. If we consider the example of someone who calls at 6 p.m., if there is a two-hour wait, the work will have to take place at night, but if the response had begun within 30 minutes, the work could have been done in the daylight. Something is really not working here.
Everyone here agrees that if someone were to call the hospital when their spouse was having a heart attack and they were told that it would be two hours before the ambulance even sets out, that would be considered completely unacceptable, especially if they were told that it normally takes 30 minutes to send an ambulance, but, sorry, since the heart attack happened in the evening after supper, it will take two hours, so they will just have to wait a bit and hope the someone is good at performing CPR. It makes absolutely no sense. No one ever chooses the moment they will need emergency assistance.
I would also like to say one last time that it is understandable that the volume of distress calls is not always the same when we are talking about search and rescue and medical help. It is fact of life that the call volume goes down in the evening, but we still have to be ready in case a call does come in, because lives are at stake.
The Conservative government has to make choices in its budget and in the budget bill. When we talk about the Canadian Forces, Canadians understand the need to set high standards in order to promote effective search and rescue services. People would understand if the government made that choice. This is a question of choice. The Conservatives can make that choice and avoid needlessly putting lives in danger.