Fisheries committee  We have the basic money to refit the ship for normal operations until the end of the ship. It's in our budget right now.

Fisheries committee  If we have the money, you can be sure we'll do it.

Fisheries committee  It's not improvement. You have to be careful: it's for the normal refit of the ship. We have to re-certify the ship year after year. That's the money we have in our budget. We don't have any kind of money to upgrade the ship. On the scientific side, ArcticNet would take care of all the costs.

Fisheries committee  The Amundsen should be in Quebec right now doing flood control and escort.

Fisheries committee  We had to mobilize the ship for Inuit health, so we had a lot of nurses, a lot of experts on board, just to conduct a survey in each village.

Fisheries committee  No, it was prior to it.

Fisheries committee  It's live information. You have new information in sight, right in front of you.

Fisheries committee  Yes. We like to say in the High Arctic that you don't need a greenhorn. You need people with a good background. On my side, I have only ten trips in the Arctic and four in the Northwest Passage, and I'm like a greenhorn. So you need pretty good expertise, and we try to put our best people on board the Amundsen in order to conduct the research in the High Arctic.

Fisheries committee  Yes. I was involved. We had the chance with the Amundsen to conduct the Inuit health survey two years in a row. We were able to visit every little place in the Arctic and in Nouveau-Québec. We had close contact with the population, like during the CFL expedition during the IPY. We had to keep the ship up and running in the Arctic all winter long, so we had to discuss this with elders in different communities in order to get their expertise.

Fisheries committee  Without the science, the Amundsen would stay alongside in layup in Quebec City, every summer, summer after summer.

Fisheries committee  Without the science, the Amundsen would stay alongside in Quebec City with--

Fisheries committee  We would try to redeploy them somewhere else.

Fisheries committee  Without science, the Amundsen would stay alongside.

Fisheries committee  That is not part of the coast guard's current mandate. If I may, I would add to what the commissioner said and point out that the coast guard used to have six icebreakers in the Arctic, including one dedicated exclusively to the western Arctic. Since the Amundsen's arrival in 2003, generally speaking, two units have patrolled the waters in the western Arctic every year, including the Beaufort Sea.