National Defence committee  Those are a lot of excellent questions and there is a lot of information I could share here. Talking about our capabilities, it's going to start with our people and our assets. I also want to talk about relationships quickly, so I'll try to squeeze that. On the assets, you've h

National Defence committee  Yes, you've got it right. I was talking specifically about the North Pole. Last year, an exercise with PONANT showed that for all the countries in the Arctic, it would take four days for a ship to get there. That's why I said that about the ability to respond. It is so far away.

National Defence committee  Yes. This year a few cruise ships have gone up there.

National Defence committee  Absolutely. The Canadian Forces are also part of Canada's national search and rescue program. In principle, if there was a problem, there would probably be a Hercules transport aircraft that would go up there and drop off personnel and equipment until the ships arrived. However,

National Defence committee  There have been similar incidents. The largest recent search and rescue operation took place in 2018. It involved the passenger ship Akademik Ioffe, but it happened much further south and it was not the same situation at all. However, there were still a few hundred people at risk

National Defence committee  It does. I think there's always opportunity to do more of that kind of thing. I'll start with the U.S. Coast Guard. What you see in the south is also similar in the north. We work very closely with them as a partner. With regard to the Canadian Armed Forces, we've had navy pers

National Defence committee  First of all, with regard to the Canadian military, we work very closely with them. For example, my office in Yellowknife is a five-minute walk from the commander of the JTFN, who I know will be here on Thursday. We have formal, set meetings, and we have informal discussions. Tha

National Defence committee  I'll start off by saying that it's Transport Canada's responsibility and mandate, essentially, to look at a lot of this stuff. Where the Coast Guard comes in is when vessels actually show up in the Arctic. We have a marine communications and traffic services centre in Iqaluit tha

National Defence committee  Okay. With regard to the Canadian military, the relationship is both at the strategic and policy levels. As a starting point, we have one day a year where the senior command staff of the Coast Guard and the RCN get together and have conversations about things we have in common. I

National Defence committee  I'll get into the personnel one a little bit. We're in a bit of a different situation from the Canadian Armed Forces. We haven't seen a declining number. That being said, in the last few years, the number of Coast Guard members has actually increased. We still have, though....

National Defence committee  Yes, absolutely. I will just note that we do work.... I mentioned the Arctic Coast Guard Forum. We also have a North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum and a North Pacific Coast Guard Forum. There is engagement and discussion, certainly, with all of the partners around that, and that in

National Defence committee  Under our Coast Guard mandate, we don't have the authority to do that. We are essentially the civilian fleet for the Government of Canada. Other departments might look to us for anything that would not require an intervention from the navy or a military vessel. We do work very c

National Defence committee  I don't think it would be necessarily appropriate for me to weigh in completely on all aspects of it from my role in the Coast Guard. That being said, I certainly can speak a little bit about vessel traffic. One of the things to keep in mind is that we often hear about big perce

National Defence committee  With regard to the Arctic Council, ultimately it's not for me to weigh in on exactly what the future should look like. However, I will talk about it from our coast guard perspective. I'll come back to that example I gave about the cruise ship at the North Pole. Our reality righ

National Defence committee  The national fleet has 19 icebreakers. The number of icebreakers in operation depends on the month or week. As a rule, we try as much as possible to maintain ships in the spring and fall, when there is no ice on the St. Lawrence, in southern Canada and in the north.