Fisheries committee  I read that article myself in The Globe and Mail. I think there are a couple of elements to the answer. Number one, the MCTS officers responded immediately and actually directed a large portion of that response, to ensure that the search and rescue vessel deployed immediately a

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question, Mr. Donnelly. In terms of the telecommunication failures, on November 8 when the oceans protection plan was announced, a major part of that plan is for us to acquire and implement, install, an entire backup system so that there's a duplication for al

Fisheries committee  Yes, the first quarterly report was posted and, as promised, it is a joint union-management effort to look into any technical or operational problems with the system. That's going quite well. I can't say with fishers, absolutely, that consultations have occurred, but certainly th

Fisheries committee  Thank you for the question. Yes, we'll be reopening the maritime rescue subcentre that was previously located in St. John's, Newfoundland. We'll have 12 watchkeepers, and 16 staff in total. I believe that previously we had nine watchkeepers....

Fisheries committee  Okay. We had 12 in the old centre. We're taking the functions that the centre previously did, but we're also adding some capacity. We're going to make the centre an emergency operations centre. It's going to be 24/7, as it previously was. We're also going to combine it with our

Fisheries committee  I'm not the technical expert, but the Frequentis system is used in many other countries. We've been to their plant in Vienna, and we've seen the countries they are doing the system for. We can get you a listing of who they are.

Fisheries committee  It is not. Our old system was outdated. It was falling apart. It was failing, both the hardware and the software, the hardware in particular. We had technology going back to the 1970s, and it was inconsistent across the country, so that it made it difficult to maintain. You had

Fisheries committee  The service provided by the MCTS officers, pre-consolidation and post-consolidation, is world leading. We train them to an extremely high level at the Coast Guard College, and then they go through a rigorous checkout process in each individual station. We have given them now bett

Fisheries committee  They respond to vessel traffic. We have combined vessel traffic and safety into consolidated stations. I was visiting Finland, and they have now done the same thing. They have seen that as a model to follow. Our advancements and ways of making this—

Fisheries committee  They have done the same thing in their MCTS stations, combined vessel traffic with safety. We have a vast country, a vast coastline. We've looked at ways to make this work constantly—since the beginning of the Coast Guard.

Fisheries committee  Yes.

Fisheries committee  At its core, one of the reasons for consolidation was to look at the amount of overtime. We had individual stations across the country where there were one or two stands. It was difficult always to stop them during silent hours or off-peak hours, and we ended up having people wor

Fisheries committee  As I've said, I don't think it's compromising safety. Comox is the last station we need to consolidate, and there has been no indication that safety has been compromised anywhere in this country. As I've said, we are a maritime nation. The flow of vessels in and out of this count

Fisheries committee  I think there is stress and burnout. There was previous to consolidation, because it is a high-demand job. People do occasionally need a break from it. They will going forward as well. It's something we accommodate. The provisions of a public service employee allow for that, and

Fisheries committee  No, I would not. I have looked very hard at this. I've had discussions with my management team. My assistant commissioners, my deputy commissioners, the directors, and the superintendents know I am engaged in what's going on in the Coast Guard, down to the person. Mr. Hughes kno