National Defence committee  No, I'm not.

National Defence committee  I would say that the advances we've made in the 406 technology have been a remarkable advantage for our SAR forces' ability to respond in a timely manner. The investment in reducing my standby posture, if we go back to our timeline, is relatively small. It's a wedge in that big t

National Defence committee  If that's the end of your question, yes, I do, absolutely. As we're looking at the big picture and all the statistical data and determining how to make those improvements, by and large our response has been very capable in terms of delivering the SAR service when required and in

National Defence committee  I believe my answer is that part of our continual support of the search and rescue program is equipment replacement. Essentially the fixed-wing program is a replacement program.

National Defence committee  In Canada, the idea that we have a lot larger area of responsibility requires a different dynamic on the flight line to prepare aircraft for departure for SAR missions, so 15 minutes becomes a challenge. We have to keep our aircraft for a large part of the year inside the hangar

National Defence committee  I don't know. It would have to include how much it has in ocean reaches, but Australia is an interesting one, because there is no overland SAR equivalent anywhere near comparable to the one we provide in this country.

National Defence committee  Actually, it's a good question, because when you try to align our capability to what else is out there, it's very difficult to compare the exact points from which to get a fair comparison. I'll leave it at that.

National Defence committee  I can indeed.

National Defence committee  I know the figures I quoted in this briefing came from the study we did. It lists all the elements that we costed: the training, the personnel, the maintenance, the repair and overhaul, the facilities. I would suspect that CRS used different sources to calculate, or different par

National Defence committee  They are, but I suspect they're not comparing apples with apples.

National Defence committee  Indeed I can, sir. The report I referred to is available as well to the committee, and it goes into great detail about what's involved in doing those calculations. Essentially, to go to a continuous 30-minute posture we'd have to increase the number of crews from the current fiv

National Defence committee  I fully understand your question, sir. Again, as I said, there are a number of reasons we've chosen those hours to hold our standby. Indeed, if we move them, we may have larger than 17% captured in a given eight-hour period. To go beyond eight hours in a 24-hour day, you're into

National Defence committee  Part of our departmental resource planning is to replace the Buffalo and the Hercules. If we are to maintain the level of service that we provide, which I would argue is a very, very good level of service for the people of Canada, then we would need a number of fixed-wing aircraf

National Defence committee  Sir, the privatization discussion has been with us for a number of years. It's a very complex question: what elements of the search and rescue system would we be discussing? Is it the provision of rotary-wing or the full SAR response capability? Would it include our rescue coordi

National Defence committee  Yes, we have the latitude to modify it by base to cater to.... For instance, in the case of pleasure boating in Ontario in the summer, we have that latitude, and sometimes we will change our standby posture to take it in the evening hours. Normally, ocean-going disasters really a