National Defence committee  Because we have such large SAR areas to deal with in Canada, the whole posture of SAR requires both fixed-wing and rotary-wing, and we have them. Right now we have a very capable aircraft in the Hercules, and for the regional application in the mountains, the Buffalo is very capa

National Defence committee  The Hercules is a very capable aircraft as a SAR platform.

National Defence committee  The Buffalo is also a very capable aircraft in the mountain search regions. It has less range, for sure. The problem with both the Hercules and the Buffalo is that the aircraft are aging and becoming much more expensive to maintain, but in terms of being able to use them for SAR,

National Defence committee  Correct.

National Defence committee  We'd need at least 14, I'm sure.

National Defence committee  I am familiar with the report, sir, but I haven't read it in detail. Again, the fixed-wing replacement is not part of my responsibility, but if there is a pertinent question that I can help you with--

National Defence committee  Again, I'm not familiar with the years of study that they were using for that. To be clear, in my statement I didn't say our hours were perfectly aligned with a majority of the cases. I suggested that there are a number of cases that occurred during that period of time, but the

National Defence committee  Sir, as I mentioned in our last slide, slide 8, that's essentially answering not just for Gander but for the whole SAR system.

National Defence committee  I'm not sure the slide answers that. I apologize for not following the question.

National Defence committee  That I can answer. We need a bigger fleet, and that's part of these costs. These are summary figures, but to get to those times, if you have more personnel, which is required if you're going to hold that tighter standby, you absolutely need more aircraft.

National Defence committee  That alignment is the best, the optimum, arrangement. It caters to a large majority of the SAR incidents historically, if you look at the distribution during the hours of the day, but--

National Defence committee  Actually, there was one reference in the briefing that we actually do that.

National Defence committee  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Members of the committee, I do have a short presentation, and I will accompany the presentation with a few charts. I'll refer to the charts when I wish to draw your attention to them. As was mentioned by the chairman, I was asked to speak today about t

National Defence committee  Sustainment is not a problem, once we get this on the ground, and there are anchors, so it's not going to blow away in the Arctic gales and things. The whole notion is this is the first step in bringing somebody, especially the injured, to a medical facility. The limiting factor

National Defence committee  In terms of cost, I have no idea what the dollar figure is to stand it up. There's a maintenance cost to sustain just the capability, to make sure it's primed and ready to go. Once deployed in a real-world scenario, a lot of the materials would not be recovered, so I don't know a