Senator Rose-May Poirier

Senator Poirier: Thank you to both gentlemen for your presentations.

I have a couple of questions. We’ve heard from previous witnesses a lot that since the Canadian Armed Forces has no aircraft stationed in the Arctic, the presence of locally based, private companies can provide ready support. In fact, they are contracted on an as-needed basis. I want to know your opinion. To what extent can a private company operating in the Arctic help to fill the gap of search and rescue capabilities? Should we look into the possibility of renting aircraft and vessels for the private sector to fill that possible gap in the Arctic search and rescue capability? Either one or both can answer.

Mr. Clark: I would start out by saying that they are being used for sure as an asset that is quickly available. However, if we’re talking about the need to not only find somebody but also provide medical attention and bring them back safely to a health care centre in their community, you can’t do that from a private aircraft. In a best-case scenario, if you’re renting out a Twin Otter and flying out of Resolute Bay, or something, and searching out of Arctic Bay, if you’re able to find the individual, they’re still going to be 100 kilometres away from any community. You will need individuals, community volunteers, to go out on their snowmobile or boat to find the person and bring them back safely or to wait for that person to drop something in self-rescue. Further, most of these aircraft aren’t legally allowed to drop anything. Kenn Borek Air’s insurance company no longer allows them to land on snow or ice. They can only land on actual tarmacs. So there’s no way that you can actually extract anybody from the region. I think it’s missing two thirds of the main point of search and rescue, which is actually to provide care and make sure the person is stable and bring them out of that situation.

It certainly has a place if you need to figure out where somebody is quickly, but a SPOT device or satellite beacon would be a great way to do that as well.

Mr. Byers: To follow up on that, Mr. Clark is absolutely right. There is a role for private aircraft. Private aircraft are used across the country, for instance, to support land search and rescue. In some cases in the Arctic, that may be all you need. There are helicopters in a number of Arctic communities, and if they can land, they can do an extraction. But they’re not a purpose-built, long-range maritime search and rescue helicopter. A Cormorant can carry up to 40 people. It has a powerful winch on board. It can extract from the deck of a ship during a hurricane. These are really impressive pieces of equipment.

Canada is just now purchasing some new fixed-wing search and rescue aircraft which, although they cannot winch someone up, will drop search and rescue technicians by parachute onto the ice, into the water — highly trained, courageous personnel who can provide that essential medical assistance while the helicopter comes to actually do the extraction.

For some more minor incidents, yes, private equipment can do the role. But in the majority of circumstances, no, they can’t. And in the worst-case scenarios, the ones that I really worry about, for example, the cruise ship running onto the rocks during an Arctic storm, the Boeing 777 crash-landing on northern Baffin Island, you need serious assets. You need big helicopters. You need to be able to drop a whole lot of SAR techs down onto the ground by parachute to provide that emergency medical care. We’re a G7 country. There’s no reason why we can’t do that.

Senator Poirier: Tell me about the cruise ships. If I remember correctly from previous hearings, we heard that the number of cruise ships going up to the Arctic is increasing. Have you had an issue with a cruise ship that needed rescue to date? If yes, how did you deal with it? If no, and if there was one in the near future, are we equipped at all to deal with it? How would we go about doing the rescue?

Mr. Byers: In 2011, a small ice-strengthened cruise ship, the Clipper Adventurer, ran itself onto a rock ledge in Amundsen Gulf. It was travelling at somewhere around 12 knots in a poorly charted area. The roughly 150 people on board were incredibly lucky. The seas were calm. The weather was good. The Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Amundsen was only two days’ sailings away and it was able to come and extract all of the people. There were no injuries. But that was a best-case scenario. Like I said, the weather was good; the seas were calm. I’ve been in Amundsen Gulf in 25-foot waves during an Arctic gale, and had that accident occurred in those conditions, 150 people would have died. So we’ve been lucky so far.

Some of the cruise ships are getting much larger. The Crystal Serenity has gone through the Northwest Passage each of the last two summers with 1,600 people on board.

This will only increase, because climate change is melting the ice, extending the season, and also contributing to more and more search and rescue incidents because the sea ice is becoming unpredictable and so the Inuit hunters are falling through the ice with increased frequency. That’s part of the explanation as to why we’re seeing more search and rescue needs coming out of these Inuit populations.

Senator Poirier: From your point of view, what would be the short-term challenges we’re facing compared to the long-term challenges, and what’s the immediate solution?

Mr. Byers: For me, I think the federal government should partner with the territorial governments and actually provide substantial numbers of satellite beacons, do the training and make sure that anyone who is going out on the land, water or ice has one of those. Eliminate the search component. That will save a lot of money and save lives, and it will be relatively inexpensive. And then base one of the Cormorant helicopters in the central Arctic during the summer months, during the busy season.

Those are the two most obvious things to me. We have the equipment. It’s a question of political will. Those are short-term solutions.

In terms of the icebreakers, I’m not averse to the idea of leasing stopgap vessels, but we need to sign some contracts to build new icebreakers. There isn’t even a single contract right now. Even the big polar icebreaker that’s supposed to be built here in Vancouver is not yet subject to a construction contract, and all that needs to change.

Mr. Clark: I think we have been extraordinarily lucky to this point that there hasn’t been anything more serious in the Arctic. We are fortunate that the Canadian military was in Resolute when the 737 crashed there in 2010. There would have been more fatalities if they weren’t there. We were extremely lucky that the Clipper Adventurer had good conditions when it was grounded.

However, I think at some point you can’t plan on luck going in your favour. Some of the immediate things need to be stopgaps for these larger incidents. The Nunavut Department of Health estimates that medical help essentially isn’t going to be able to be provided immediately for most communities. They need a plan to meet needs from 6 to 12 hours. There are seven aeromedical planes on the best day available in Nunavut, and there’s essentially no surge capacity for medical resources outside of Iqaluit and Rankin Inlet. So that alone requires federal assistance, essentially, if there’s a medical need beyond that, because essentially it's a one-to-one ratio for an acute care patient. Beyond seven individuals needing serious medical provisions, federal assistance would be needed in that scenario.

Further, obviously resources like airplanes and helicopters are needed quickly. You can see, with the handout I provided, essentially you’re looking at, best-case scenario, six to eight hours for a C-130 to be up near Resolute. For a helicopter, that’s roughly a day. Pilots will be timed out at 18 hours, so they won’t be able to search around.

The benefit of having an aircraft in Yellowknife or Rankin or Cambridge Bay, wherever you have that, that’s more easily able to respond, would be beneficial.

As I mentioned, the new C-295s will be more limited in their capacity in terms of what they can carry, how far they can go, and safety regulations, because they have only two engines instead of the five engines that the C-130 has.

Also, it’s important to remember that roughly 10 per cent, or less, of search and rescues now actually use any kind of DND or Coast Guard assets. It’s mostly ground search and rescue. So provisions and improving training and access to those community resources is essential: first aid training for the individuals, some kind of provision for improving the Coast Guard Auxiliary units and ensuring that communities have boats and snowmobiles they can use to go out for at least 90 per cent of the search and rescue cases they have. Communities have reported to me that they’ve had to wait 12 hours or more to find a boat or snowmobile to go out and search, and that shouldn’t be happening.

Further, prevention is obviously key. Communities have set up VHF and CB radios that they use to communicate. The provision of towers that are strategically placed so that coverage is improved would be another remedy to that SPOT device challenge, so that community members could talk to one another and relay messages.

Further, SPOT devices and paying for those plans could be huge. I know that a massive part of the Nunavut emergency management budget is just paying for the subscription plans for the SPOT devices.

Some other important improvements that could be made are continuing to invest in the CASARA volunteers and working with Rangers. We saw last summer the emergency planning and the exercise that took place in Rankin Inlet where the army actually worked with community members and had a mock scenario of what happens if there’s a large community disaster. More of those integrated responses and exercises would be important for both the communities’ response in the day to day and also improving response for potentially a larger disaster.