Fisheries committee  We're all experiencing age. Joking aside, it is a challenge not only for our organization but for many organizations within the government and across the country. To start from the very beginning, in terms of recruitment we have a continual recruitment program that gets people i

Fisheries committee  I'll ask Mr. Girouard to respond afterward, but certainly from the national perspective and the national program across the country, among all of our centres we are not aware of any particular near misses or near incidents or any particular safety issues that were caused by any p

Fisheries committee  Certainly. I think Mr. Girouard and I will answer this one. The training at the Canadian Coast Guard College is from a national perspective. It's about how to use the equipment properly. It's communication procedures and all of the technical and operational aspects of using the

Fisheries committee  Certainly there is a regional.... We do have advisory boards, as an example. We have a National Marine Advisory Board. More specifically here, that concerns mainly commercial traffic. Each region—and Mr. Girouard can speak to his specific region—has advisory boards that advise on

Fisheries committee  Thank you. There are very simple measures of efficiency in terms of the number of our staff and the amount of funds we expend on a particular operation. They are simple measures of our efficiency, and those we can provide in detail to the committee, if you prefer. Those are meas

Fisheries committee  Mr. Spurrell was certainly talking about the rigorous manner in which we took the systems from the contractor and evaluated them before we put them into service. That happens with any particular IM/IT project. It's a testing procedure to ensure that we're not going to put into pl

Fisheries committee  To get to the other part of your question, though, around how we're taking lessons learned from the east coast or from the rest of the country and applying them to the west coast, that's an important aspect. Recently when we looked at sound issues in Sarnia, as an example, Mr. Ry

Fisheries committee  In this case, because of this particular consolidation effort and the time period in which it went through, those particular budgets were taken away or were let go. In this particular project, those funds have not been used elsewhere.

Fisheries committee  It's a fairly general question, obviously. Certainly in many of our projects across the country we have been able to achieve efficiencies, but in many different areas other than marine communications. We've been able to move those funds back into the Coast Guard. I can't think of

Fisheries committee  I think this is where Mr. Ryan's expertise comes in. I think he can speak really quite well on the technology and the advantages it gives us.

Fisheries committee  Well, certainly if there was a particular environmental spill, as an example, whether it is the old technology with Comox there or the new technology with a consolidated centre in Prince Rupert or in Victoria, the response remains exactly the same. In this case, it could be a re

Fisheries committee  That's correct.

Fisheries committee  As we've gone through this large change, we recognize that the impact upon employees and staff is tough. Any change is tough, and we've really tried to make sure that people who may be affected by this particular consolidation effort are provided with all the transition measures

Fisheries committee  Absolutely. Going back to Mr. Donnelly's point, though, in terms of change, we did see issues—we're not saying we did not see issues—and we worked with the officers to try to address those issues. What we are finding, though, is that for something like the text-to-speech marine

Fisheries committee  That's a fairly easy question to answer, so I'm glad you asked it. When we speak of a Coast Guard station, we're normally talking about a Coast Guard search and rescue station. It's a relatively small building in which the crew live and work. They will also have a search and res