Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to rise in support of this very important motion brought by my colleague in the House, the member for Random—Burin—St. George's. This is an extremely important issue in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador for many, many reasons. It has to do with our history and our attachment to the sea and our way of life and also to the many tragedies that we have suffered over the last centuries, really, when it comes to fishing, but even in the offshore, we have seen two significant tragedies that were mentioned by the member for Random—Burin—St. George's, that of the Ocean Ranger and recently the Cougar Helicopter crash in March of this year.
I fully support this recommendation. I would like to put on the record the fact that I also have a motion before the House with respect to search and rescue, on the order paper, and I will read it into the record:
That, in the opinion of the House, given both the increasing air and marine traffic and increased industrial activity off the east coast of Newfoundland, as well as previous recommendations by independent investigations of Search and Rescue (SAR), the Department of National Defense should upgrade Search and Rescue capabilities in Newfoundland and Labrador by providing for at least one fully equipped and fully staffed SAR helicopter at St. John's in addition to the existing SAR capability at Gander and Goose Bay and further that the Gander SAR crewing should be increased to permit 24-hour per day on-duty coverage and thereby provide improved response times.
The improved response time is really what this is all about. The Ocean Ranger recommendation that has been referred to by my colleague and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence reads as follows:
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 rescue.
The parliamentary secretary asserted to the House that this was in fact in place. Anyone who has looked closely at this knows that this is not the case. When the Cougar Helicopter went down in March of this year and the Cougar base in St. John's was notified, before they could respond to the crash, the first thing they had to do after they mustered their crew was to take the seats out of the helicopter and then try to put equipment on-board before they could even take off. That is not a search and rescue-dedicated helicopter fully equipped to search and rescue standards. In fact one of the criticisms of the Cougar ability or Cougar industry-provided standards is that it is not fully equipped. They do not have the same level of search and rescue capability as our DND SAR techs.
I join with the parliamentary secretary in praising the work of our SAR techs. They are magnificent men and women who are extremely dedicated and well trained, and they do a great job. I do not think anyone who has spoken in favour of this has anything to take away from them. They are terrific at their job. In fact, according to DND statistics, they are active across the country in some 8,000 missions per year and save on average 1,200 lives per year. We are very proud of them and proud of the work that they do.
We are so proud of them in fact that we want to see this work being done closer to where the greatest risk is present in Newfoundland and Labrador, off our east coast where at any one time there are 600-plus workers living more than 100 miles offshore, 24 hours a day, working 12-hour shifts on three-week rotations. They are there day and night doing the work that it takes to produce offshore oil and gas for the benefit of Newfoundland and Labrador, for the benefit of Canada and as my colleague said, to the benefit of the treasury of the Government of Canada.
The request was that there be a dedicated service in St. John's, although the member did not say St. John's but that is obviously the closest to where the action is required.
Response times have been mentioned here. We need to put on the record that response times out of Gander on a 24 hour basis differ considerably. During regular hours, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., the standard is 30 minutes. The response team is in the air 30 minutes after being tasked with the job.
Some documentation says that during quiet hours and on statutory holidays, the response time is standby two hours. What makes any time after 4 o'clock in the afternoon or a statutory holiday any different from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. during business hours? The sea does not calm down at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The risk of danger at sea does not disappear because it is a statutory holiday.
The Sea Gypsy sank in July of this year on a Saturday morning at 11 o'clock. The people on the boat did not say that the boat will not sink and a fast response will not be needed because it was 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning. The times have not been given out accurately yet. We have reports that a mayday was sent out at 11 o'clock. People were being rescued at 4:30 in the afternoon. This is obviously not a serious rescue time. If a helicopter had been stationed in St. John's, it could have been there in 45 minutes to an hour. One of the individuals on board that ship was lost and could not be found even though he was wearing a survival suit. There are a number of details which are too numerous to mention in the short time I have available.
A series of tragedies at sea have happened in Newfoundland over the last several years that raise the question of whether more lives could have been saved if the response time in Gander had been better. That is not the fault of the individuals. That is a question of crewing.
My resolution is a little more broad but it encompasses the resolution of my colleague from Random—Burin—St. George's, and I commend her for bringing it forward to the House.
There is one other matter that should be put on the record in terms of response times. It deals with the SAR operations out of Gander.
The Hibernia, Sea Rose and White Rose platforms are located in that part of the ocean. Supply boats go back and forth all the time. Fishermen work in that part of the ocean. International traffic goes back and forth all the time in the sea lanes. International fishing boats are out in that part of the ocean, 200 miles from the St. John's area out on the Grand Banks.
When a search and rescue aircraft leaves Gander to head in that direction to go out to sea, the first thing it has to do before it leaves for the eastern part of the waters is land in St. John's and refuel. Why is that? There are standards that if a search and rescue helicopter is going to be leaving land to go out to sea, it has to have enough fuel to get where it is going. For operational reasons that helicopter has to be able to hover for a period of up to an hour to be able to conduct any rescue operations or anything it has to do, and then get back to land.
Gander is about 200 miles by road and 100 miles or so by air from St. John's, so additional time is required for the helicopter to get to where it has to be. This is extremely important. A map is available on the Internet under the Department of National Defence which shows the vast area of ocean for which the Gander operations is responsible. I invite members to look at that map.
I am delighted to hear that the Bloc Québécois will be supporting this motion. The Bloc members understand the problems fishermen face at sea and obviously appreciate the dangers and the need for fast response times. I am glad that the Bloc is supporting this motion, as are the New Democrats.
We in the NDP believe this motion is timely. The cost really has not been assessed. I do not think the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence has given it justice by suggesting that we would have to duplicate the cost from Gander. There are ways of doing it.
We would like this motion to be taken seriously and I hope the House will fully support it.
