National Defence committee  Yes. It could be an opportunity. That's why I mentioned the CAP model, because that's what they're doing in the United States. They are bringing up cadets right through the system, from no aviation knowledge to the point where they become pilots—pilots that could be of use to our

National Defence committee  You're right that another area of potential shortages coming up is mechanics. I don't know the exact numbers out there, or if we're really seeing a huge shortage yet, but it's a potential to happen in future years, for sure.

National Defence committee  We do use rangers. They are members of our organization. One of the issues we have is that they normally get paid for jobs that they do, but CASARA is a volunteer organization. We don't pay our members. We pay some of their expenses. They are certainly a part of our organization.

National Defence committee  I don't know whether we're equipped to meet all the different emergencies that could happen up in the Arctic, right now. I'm probably not the best person to answer that question, because it's not quite in our mandate.

National Defence committee  We're certainly seeing a change because of climate change. It could impact runways that are normally frozen throughout the year. There are a lot of gravel runways up in the north. Things are going to change with climate change. I don't think it has impacted us too much yet, but i

National Defence committee  Our membership has gone down a little in the past few years, especially with COVID being out there and being an issue. For the most part, we've been able to get most of the volunteers we need across the country, I'd say. If people own an airplane, they like to fly it. We provide

National Defence committee  Yes, we regularly train with the air force. We have officers working with our organization across the country. They're called CLOs, and they work with CASARA to train our members. We train our members on Hercs, Twin Otters and helicopters. Our members go flying with the military,

National Defence committee  One thing I would look into is our being able to purchase aircraft that we could use in search and rescue. There's a model in the United States called CAP—the Civil Air Patrol. The United States government provides them with aircraft and funding so they can train people. They t

National Defence committee  In southern Canada, our volunteers use their own aircraft. For instance, I fly my own [Technical difficulty—Editor] search and rescue. I'm basically available to fly 24 hours a day, almost 365 days of the year. I have another job, but I have a lot of flexibility. When we go up no

National Defence committee  In the Arctic, most of our work is done with charter aircraft or having our volunteers serve on military aircraft as spotters.

National Defence committee  It depends on where it is.

National Defence committee  We're tasked by JRCC, the joint rescue coordination centre, and in the Arctic it's usually Trenton. We're in constant communication with them. Even up in the Arctic we use satellite phones, and we're able to talk to them and get things happening. The actual rescues would be done

National Defence committee  I actually don't have it right in front of me. Dave is in the Northwest Territories. Do you have any numbers, Dave?

National Defence committee  We don't do rescue, so we normally would be doing searches. I'd have to check the numbers to see what percentage of call-outs we get that actually involve a rescue. In the Arctic and in a lot of other places, we do work for the RCMP all the time, so we are involved in searching

National Defence committee  We have about 1,700 volunteers in Canada. We have several hundred volunteer aircraft that we use across Canada.