Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In terms of the environmental caches, we currently have 24 across the Arctic, including one rapid air transportable pack—we call it a RAT pack—in Hay River. The caches, in and of themselves, are pretty well useless unless you have people who are trained to use them. One of our

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  One of the things we should recognize is that it's not new to us. It's something we've been doing as we have navigated the Arctic and supplied services to the Arctic over the decades. We've been consulting and engaging with the people of the north for that long period of time. I

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Climate change has a direct impact on the safety of navigation through the Arctic. That is its most direct impact in our domain, and that's something I talked about in my opening remarks, in terms of what we're doing to mitigate some of that risk as climate change affects the Arc

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Those vessels are being converted and modified for our use in Davie shipyard currently. The first one will be ready probably around the end of December. I do not have the number in front of me, and I would not want to speculate. I think we can probably come back to you later wi

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Icebreakers are very expensive vessels to build, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes. I do agree with you, sir. That is exactly why we have put the investment into the fleet renewal plan. In this case, because icebreakers take so long to build—it doesn't matter which shipyard you go to; they take a long time to design and build—we've made interim investments

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, we do.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Right now, the two vessels that we would consider heavy icebreakers are the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent and the CCGS Terry Fox.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I don't believe Seaspan has put forward a firm date yet. It would come after our current build of science vessels and the joint support ships.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In the Canadian Coast Guard—which I'll speak to specifically—we have 15 vessels across the country that are able to deploy to the Arctic. Typically, though, we deploy our heavy and medium icebreakers to the north, plus one light icebreaker from the western region. Typically, we

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That's correct. Seaspan has our polar icebreaker, the John G. Diefenbaker, as part of their planning in the future, yes.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll touch on that. Across the table here, we all have a part in the oceans protection plan. From the Canadian Coast Guard's perspective, we are investing in areas such as communication. On the communications side, we're making sure that we understand where shipping is, so that

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Good afternoon, Madam Chair and committee members. It is my honour to be here today and have the opportunity to provide you with an appreciation of the Canadian Coast Guard's important activities in the Arctic, and particularly those that impact the peoples of the north. I'm p

Transport committee  The only other piece to add is that when we think about a dilapidated vessel, it's one that generally is not meant to navigate, so moving it around every 60 days would be fairly challenging in any case.

Transport committee  There are also much more stringent requirements that Transport Canada and marine safety have now put on the towing of vessels as a result of many of the sorts of towing incidents that have occurred over the last number of years with the MV Miner, the MV Lyubov Orlova, and those t