Fisheries committee  It's a reasonable decision in that it doesn't compromise safety. We have implemented a new system that allows for a reduction in the number of locations from which we offer the service. It hasn't compromised safety. It has reduced the workload for the employees at the station thr

Fisheries committee  Mr. Strahl, I can assure you that it was not affected by the decision to study. The May date had always been on the books. We can't close stations, we can't consolidate, and we can't do work on the stations through the busy summer boating season, so we closed them all, and we've

Fisheries committee  Comox is the last consolidation so this system is rolled out across the country. Canada is a maritime nation. Along the St. Lawrence in the summer we have the highest density of recreational vessel traffic anywhere in the country and the system is functioning perfectly, and in th

Fisheries committee  The minister, I believe, has been to MCTS centres, and so, yes, he has heard transmissions.

Fisheries committee  I can't say that he's heard one of the transmissions that has reverberation or feedback on it. I wasn't with him when he was on his regional tours.

Fisheries committee  He has not been to the MCTS centre in Prince Rupert that I am aware of.

Fisheries committee  I believe he went to Halifax and Quebec. Because there is no consistent reverberation, no consistent echo, no consistent static, but rather specific transmissions that have problems, we're looking into why. It's not the software. Echo problems in the software have been corrected

Fisheries committee  Yes, Mr. Donnelly, I'm assuring you of that. The system's been tested. The number of people responding per volume is unchanged. We have surge capacity if there is a major incident. We also have expansion capacity within the centres as traffic increases. We monitor these things ju

Fisheries committee  I'd like to refer back to the staffing, if I may, for one second—

Fisheries committee  Okay. I'm not sure about the lifeboat analogy for Comox. I didn't hear it. I can review that quote and get back to you, if you would like. But the network as it's structured means that we will have zones within the Prince Rupert and the Victoria stations that will monitor speci

Fisheries committee  We had a $47-million budget for the MCTS program. We saved $7 million, and we've turned that over to the centre as part of the deficit reduction action plan, so that money is gone from the Coast Guard budget. Long-term, it will save money, based on the number of people we employ

Fisheries committee  There isn't really a private sector equivalent, but that study of seven persons was done in 2003 and I'm not sure what the methodology was for it. The standard that we're using now is based on our 2009 workload study.

Fisheries committee  I don't know where that number has come from. Within the project budget, because this was a national project started in 2012, we estimated a one-time cost of $50,000 per employee for relocation. There is equipment in Comox, but that's the banks of servers, the racks of computer

Fisheries committee  I didn't see the video, but DFO does modelling all the time of various scenarios, whether they are the most likely or the most extreme. The models of Capital Regional District, which is responsible for the lower island—the south coast of the island—and that area of Victoria, say

Fisheries committee  We believe in the Coast Guard. Absolutely, this consolidation is being done safely. I say this and have evidence of it. We intended to release the software in 2013 and start the modernization. As I said, Coast Guard employees tested the software. We received the software from t