:
Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are undertaking a study on chapter 4, “Managing the Coast Guard Fleet and Marine Navigational Services—Fisheries and Oceans Canada”, of the February 2007 report of the Auditor General of Canada.
I'd like to welcome our guests. We have a few more members to arrive, but it is eight minutes past the hour of eleven and we only have two hours. I'm sure the membership will have all kinds of questions for our guests.
I would like to welcome Sheila Fraser, Auditor General of Canada; John O'Brien, principal; and Kevin Potter, director.
From the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, we welcome George Da Pont, Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard; Larry Murray, deputy minister; and Charles Gadula, Acting Deputy Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard.
I would also like to welcome two guests here today, Jake Vanderhide and Georges Cormier from the Pacific Halibut Association, who are here just to take in the proceedings of committee today.
I will ask the Auditor General, if she would, to start.
We thank you for this opportunity to discuss chapter 4 of our February 2007 report.
As you mentioned, I am joined today by John O'Brien and Kevin Potter, principal and director respectively from our Halifax office, who are responsible for this audit.
In this chapter we concluded that Fisheries and Oceans Canada, more particularly the Canadian Coast Guard, has not made satisfactory progress over the last four to six years in implementing recommendations made in chapter 31, “Fleet Management”, of our December 2000 report, and in chapter 2, “Contributing to Safe and Efficient Marine Navigation”, of our December 2002 report.
The coast guard plays a number of important roles. It provides marine navigation services, such as aids to navigation and marine communications, to mariners in Canadian waters.
The coast guard uses its fleet of large vessels to deliver its own programs, such as icebreaking and offshore search and rescue. These vessels also support other departmental programs, such as science and fisheries management. In addition, the fleet assists other government departments when requested to do so.
In the 2005-06 fiscal year, the cost of fleet services totalled about $344 million. The cost of marine navigational services was about $245 million, including costs allocated from the fleet.
In our earlier reports, we concluded that Fisheries and Oceans Canada had not managed its fleet and marine navigational services cost-effectively. In response to the problems we noted in 2000 and 2002, we made 13 recommendations for improvement, 12 of which remain the department's responsibility.
The department accepted all of these recommendations and made a commitment to take action.
After concluding that progress was unsatisfactory, we focused our attention on identifying the underlying causes.
[Translation]
We found that the coast guard started a number of initiatives, many of which were designed to address issues that we previously raised. However, the coast guard has not been able to complete these initiatives. We believe that there are three fundamental reasons for this lack of progress.
First, the coast guard accepted assigned duties even when there was no realistic way that it could successfully deliver. For example, it proceeded with implementing the coast guard as a special operating agency. With an already stretched management team, the coast guard developed an implementation plan without having the resources needed to support its completion. Not surprisingly, we found that many elements of this plan were unfinished well after the expected completion date.
Second, the coast guard did not prioritize its actions. For example, the coast guard attempted to address all of our recommendations to improve management of its fleet at once. These initiatives stalled at various stages of completion.
Finally, while the coast guard made commitments to resolve management problems and complete initiatives, both organizational and individual accountability for achieving results were lacking.
[English]
On April 1, 2005, the coast guard became a special operating agency within Fisheries and Oceans Canada. The decision to establish the agency was done with a view to affirming the coast guard as a strong national institution ensuring that its fleet provide services to the government and to providing the coast guard more operating flexibility.
In the chapter, we raised several issues that will be important for successfully implementing the special operating agency.
The coast guard has had limited success in developing a national approach to managing its operations. It has yet to strike the right balance between appropriate national direction and guidance, and responsive, accountable delivery.
In addition, the modernization of the coast guard's marine navigational services has been slow. New technologies are expected to improve the effectiveness of marine navigation while reducing the coast guard's costs. However, until it can shed the old technology and associated infrastructure, these cost reductions will be difficult to attain.
Furthermore, the fleet is aging. Reliability and rising operating costs are significant issues. While the government has approved funding for new vessels, we are concerned that the most recent plan for replacing vessels is already out of date.
[Translation]
You will note that we have made only one recommendation in this chapter. If little has changed, why then would we not repeat our past recommendations?
Like any other organization, the coast guard has limited resources and must focus on the key issues it faces. Therefore, we have recommended that it establish its priorities for improvement, setting clear achievable goals for each priority. Sufficient and appropriate resources should be allocated to each priority. The coast guard should plan and implement the changes required by holding managers and organizational units accountable for the identified results.
I am satisfied that the department's response to our recommendation recognizes the need for realistic planning and implementation.
I believe that your committee can play a valuable role by asking the coast guard to identify its priorities for improvement and to provide regular updates on the results that are achieved.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my opening statement. We would be pleased to answer your committee's questions. Thank you.
:
Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman.
Like Madam Fraser, we welcome the opportunity to be here, particularly with the Auditor General. I'm joined, as you mentioned, by George Da Pont, the commissioner of the coast guard, and Charles Gadula, the deputy commissioner.
As you probably know, Minister Hearn issued a statement following the tabling of the report in which he fully accepted the findings of the Auditor General. He has instructed that the commissioner and I develop a realistic plan that addresses to his satisfaction the matters raised by the Auditor General, and that we provide him with regular reports on progress. We intend to share this plan with the Auditor General and the Treasury Board prior to implementation.
Naturally, both the commissioner and I are disappointed with the audit results. The concerns raised by the Auditor General are largely, but not exclusively, management issues and must be addressed. As deputy minister of Fisheries and Oceans, I fully accept responsibility for the slow progress to date in responding to the recommendations of the 2000 and 2002 Auditor General reports.
However, notwithstanding our failure to complete all outstanding actions with respect to these recommendations, considerable progress has been made on many initiatives, and I believe that with careful identification of priorities, as recommended by the Auditor General, this important work will be completed.
We have produced a document for your information and consideration that indicates, fairly objectively, I believe, what has been achieved to date in response to the Auditor General's earlier recommendations and what remains to be done.
[Translation]
I also want to offer a few comments on the context within which this work was taking place. When I became deputy minister in April 2003, I knew that both the coast guard and the department faced significant fiscal and operational challenges. I felt that we needed to strengthen and clarify the organizational model, that we had to develop a strategic plan on our overall direction and that we needed additional resources to deal with serious operational shortfalls.
[English]
A major internal review encompassing the entire department, including the coast guard, is known as the departmental assessment and alignment project, or DAAP, together with a parallel Treasury Board expenditure management review where the principal vehicle is used to complete this work.
With respect to the coast guard, one of my first actions was to implement clear lines of accountability. In June 2003, I established the coast guard as a line organization and had the assistant commissioners in the regions report directly to the commissioner. Prior to that time they reported to the department's regional directors general. I was also concerned with the “five coast guard” reality, which has been raised again in this report. I felt this change in reporting relationships was an essential first step to addressing the issue, and still believe that to be the case.
In December 2003, the government announced the intention to further strengthen the coast guard's autonomy by making the organization a special operating agency within DFO. Various policy and regulatory functions that had previously resided with the coast guard were consolidated in Transport Canada, so that the coast guard could focus exclusively on program and service delivery. It did take several months of highly focused management effort to develop and secure approval of the authorities required to establish the coast guard as a special operating agency, and this change came into effect on schedule on April 1, 2005.
Meanwhile, the DAAP and related Treasury Board processes were concluded in April 2004 and resulted in a renewed departmental strategic plan, a significant reallocation of internal resources to operational purposes, and the foundation for a transformational plan that ultimately produced $55 million in short-term operational relief in 2005 and 2006 and, with Canada's new government budget of 2006, a $99 million permanent increase to our A-base, $45 million of which went to the Canadian Coast Guard.
The 25-year fleet renewal plan was also completed concurrently with these various initiatives, including the approval of phase I implementation. I would say the reports of this committee on the coast guard in 2003 and 2004 also very much informed and supported these processes and the results achieved, including augmented funding.
[Translation]
However, what I have described also entails a great deal of change for already busy managers across the coast guard, and culture change, which is what this is really all about, does and will take time. I firmly believe that solid progress has been made and is being made within the Canadian Coast Guard and that under Commissioner Du Pont's capable leadership, the CCG management team is deeply committed to transforming the agency into a strong national institution.
With regard to coast guard participation in maritime security priorities, I would like to correct erroneous media reports that the $27 million received by the agency has not been used for these purposes. Coast guard began receiving funding from Treasury Board in 2002 especially to enhance our on-water presence. Consequently, the vast majority of the fleet's increased number of sea days were carried out by multi-tasked vessels engaged in various programs, since existing on-water activities provided the collateral benefits of federal presence in Canadian waters including readiness to respond to on-water emergency incidents.
As the Auditor General has noted, there was a problem in reporting the information. Activity codes were put in place in May 2002 to track vessel activities related to maritime security. However, these codes were being interpreted differently, leading to an inconsistent application at the regional level. A strategy has since been developed to deal with activity coding deficiencies and inconsistencies.
[English]
I also want to emphasize the very effective work the coast guard has done throughout the period in maintaining its day-to-day operations. Here again, I would like to correct some news reports last week suggesting that no fisheries resource surveys had been conducted since 2001. The coast guard provided the necessary platforms to ensure that the vast majority of them were indeed carried out. As the Auditor General noted, a number were delayed or changed as a result of technical problems. However, out of close to 90 surveys in the Atlantic zone between 2001 and 2006, only two were not done, both of which were referenced by the Auditor General in her report.
My primary point is that the crews who operate the over 100 ships of the Canadian Coast Guard year round in some of the harshest conditions on the planet do so with selfless dedication, professionalism, and courage.
The well-founded criticism of some management practices and a lack of satisfactory progress on previous audits, which the Auditor General has delivered in a measured and very effective way, is deserved. However, it is also important to recognize that the men and women of the Canadian Coast Guard deliver excellent operational results, whether in marine search and rescue, consistently maintaining NAFO patrol vessels on the nose and tail of the Grand Banks 365 days a year in all weather conditions, responding to unique emergencies such as the highly successful Hurricane Katrina relief operation in the Gulf of Mexico with the ship, the Sir William Alexander, whose control systems were designed for operation in cold northern waters, or routinely maintaining six to eight ice breakers in the Arctic for six months a year, despite always-present technical and logistical challenges. As this committee well knows, there are countless other examples I could use.
Finally, as our minister has emphasized publicly, notwithstanding the management issues correctly raised by the Auditor General, the Canadian Coast Guard has one of the best records in the world for marine search and rescue, with a 98% success rate in cases with lives at risk during the same period.
I offer these observations not as excuses for the slow progress in some management areas, for which I take responsibility, but rather as examples of ongoing significant achievement in challenging and very important operational areas by the members of the Canadian Coast Guard.
I now will ask Mr. Da Pont to say a few words to conclude the statement.
Thank you.
:
Thank you. I wanted to spend a few minutes to give the committee a sense of how we intend to respond to the findings of the Auditor General.
First, let me say that the management team of coast guard agrees fully with her report. Early last year, just after I had begun to act in the position of commissioner, I launched an A-base review to examine both how we were spending our money and our internal business practices.
We set up a dedicated team of people from all parts of coast guard and all regions to do this work over a six-month period. While I obviously knew that the Auditor General's staff would cover some of the same ground, I felt that a review of our A-base would look beyond the scope of the auditors, and take a broader look at our internal practices. This group reported out in September of last year. Their findings were very consistent with those of the Auditor General. Indeed they helped to inform her analysis.
Last September I appeared before this committee. I identified five multi-year priorities for coast guard that were reflected in our first business plan as an agency and indicated that, within each of these areas, we would identify specific actions and activities to be taken.
As you may recall the priorities were: full implementation of agency status; renewal of the fleet; steady progress on our various modernization initiatives; our on-going contribution to the security agenda; focus on our people, especially succession planning.
[English]
I believe these priorities provide a good framework for responding to the Auditor General's findings. I also agree completely with her observation that we tried to do everything at the same time with unrealistic timeframes and without ensuring that we had adequate human or financial resources assigned to complete the work.
That is why I would like to use our business plan as the vehicle to respond, so that we can put our response to the Auditor General's findings in the context of all our other business activities to ensure that we do not repeat the mistake of spreading ourselves too thin.
I will also provide regular progress reports to the minister and, through our business plan, to the Treasury Board. The plan is a public document, so it will be available for widespread scrutiny, including by this committee. I expect our next business plan to be ready by the end of April.
I've also taken a number of concrete actions that begin to address some of the issues identified by the Auditor General. For example, marine advisory boards, which are our principal consultative mechanism with the shipping industry, have been revitalized at both the national and regional levels. Already we've engaged in meaningful discussions on the issue of marine service fees, which have been a contentious issue for many years. This has helped us to re-engage with one of the primary users of our services.
We are in the process of establishing a parallel link with recreational boaters and commercial fishers through existing structures.
I have created a new group to focus exclusively on vessel procurement, a capacity that has not been in place in the coast guard for 20 years. We have also updated our fleet renewal plan. I've created a workforce development unit to establish a capacity for analysis and strategic thinking on how we manage and train our people.
I have taken a different approach to budgeting, which will bring more transparency to what we spend our moneys on, particularly for maintaining the fleet and for the results of the funding we received for federal on-water presence. Finally, I have increased the moneys we allocate for vessel refit and put in place a more structured planning process for how we do that work.
These measures are only a start, and I know that much more needs to be done. But I am confident that we are on the right track to building the strong national institution that we all want.
Let me conclude by emphasizing, as did the deputy minister, how proud I am of the professional and dedicated work of our employees.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes our opening remarks.
:
Yes, I could offer a few comments.
As the Auditor General has noted, certainly, when the coast guard transferred from Transport Canada to Fisheries and Oceans, there was a significant amount of work that had to be done. We had to merge what was then the existing coast guard fleet with the DFO fleet. At the same time, both were downsized in the context of program review activities. We had changes to our mandate.
So those are things that take a fair bit of time to implement and do. In addition, the “five coast guard” reality was a reality of the time of the transfer. It's not something that was created in the last few years, because, as the Auditor General has noted, some of those activities and differences go back many years.
I think it did take time to put together the special operating agency. It did take some focused time to put in place the authorities that were required to make it effective. They only became effective at the beginning of April 2005, and I'm very confident it gives us a good framework for moving forward. Obviously, it hasn't been a reality for that long, and I don't think we've yet realized the full benefits of that.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Good morning, Ms. Fraser. Good morning gentlemen.
First of all Ms. Fraser, I must say that I'm rather impressed to met you and to be able to ask you questions, because I have a great deal of respect for you.
I would like to have a better understanding of how this really works. When the time comes to draft a report, for example on the coast guard, it starts somewhere. There has to be a beginning to this study.
Is that beginning driven by particular events? Is it launched by you, by your office, or following some complaint? How does this work? What is the point of origin?
I have something in mind that I want to talk about right away, namely the small craft harbours file.
Regarding the coast guard, you said that if things are allowed to slide, maintenance costs go up. Due to a great increase in maintenance costs, the challenge becomes greater. Unfortunately, this can create problems with various aspects of the mandate for which the coast guard, for instance, is responsible.
However, I am specifically thinking of the small craft harbours file, because the harbours begin to deteriorate as soon as they are not maintained. Their deterioration causes safety problems as well as a great increase in maintenance costs.
If a house is not kept in good repair, a leaky roof can sooner or later cave in. I feel that this is more or less what happened to the coast guard, but I would like to understand this more clearly. You said that your studies and audits are done over a long period of time. Therefore, you produce audit reports, you make requests and recommendations. Obviously, your recommendations were not followed.
When I read through the report, and when I listened to some of the testimony here as well, Mr. Da Pont, the thing that concerned me was that you identified the business plan that's coming up as the vehicle you want to use to implement some of these priorities. A business plan identifies those priorities, and the Auditor General has been very clear on what some of those priorities are.
There need to be some priorities, or else we just simply spin our wheels. As a representative of taxpayers, of course, the last thing I want to do is throw more money into what I would call a swirling cesspool of mismanaged spending. I'm not suggesting that's what's happening, but it's certainly the perception that some people would have from the media reports and so on.
I'm getting myself into trouble here on my first day on the committee, I can just tell.
From reading through the Auditor General's report, something concerns me about these five priorities that you have identified as dealing most effectively with some of the problems identified by the Auditor General. When I read through the Auditor General's report, item 4.47 talks about the integrated technical services strategy project, whereby the material management system seems to be inadequate. If we look at some of the case studies outlined in the Auditor General's report, I think material management is a big deal. If you don't keep track of your assets and the management of your assets through the life cycle process, that's where costs start to get out of control. I don't see material management as one of your five priorities that you're going to outline for your business plan.
Maybe I'm just not reading it in there correctly. Could you just highlight for me where that would be found in your business plan?
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Could I piggyback onto that?
I would indicate that in terms of this business plan, we certainly have every intention of sharing it with the Auditor General. It will also become part of our ongoing input to the Treasury Board in terms of the management accountability framework.
I'd like to underline as well the absolute essentiality of getting there in terms of the Auditor General's recommendations around maintenance management systems. In other words, it's one thing when we're operating in 1984 trawlers, but as we move forward with this fleet replacement program, as the navy did, it will be absolutely essential that the recommendations she and her staff have made are actually functioning in order to make the system work.
So notwithstanding my very strong support for the men and women of the Canadian Coast Guard, who have done a wonderful job—which is why I might take a little bit of an exception to decisions about at-risk pay and that kind of stuff—there is no question that your point is bang-on and that we must ensure that the recommendations the Auditor General has made are implemented in terms of a comprehensive maintenance management system for configuration management as this new fleet rolls out. It's absolutely essential operationally, as well as from a taxpayers' perspective.
:
With the material management, the key thing is that we have to have three or four things come into place. We actually put the details on those things into the status report that we shared with you.
First of all, obviously we need a common organizational structure and common job descriptions across the country. We've made very good progress on that. It's not 100% in place, but as you can see from the status report we distributed, we're well along with that.
Secondly, you need the clear, overarching framework policies that are necessary for life cycle management. We have most of the framework policies in place or close to being finalized.
Thirdly, you then need the specific ones that the people in the field can actually follow. We have a good start there, but we have a fair bit of work to do.
Finally, you need an effective information management system that you can readily keep up to date. We have a system, but it's not being utilized effectively. We've had some successes with it, but we still have some cultural changes to make. We have a good framework for how to do that, and we are reasonably well along in most aspects, but clearly there's work to be done.
The one thing I would say again on this is that we have made very significant progress in the last eight or ten years. Prior to that, some of the vessels didn't even have a paper-based system for maintenance. Where we are is not where we need to be, and I fully accept that. At the same time, we've come an awfully long way in the last six or seven years. I hope that doesn't get lost in the analysis.
:
I obviously don't disagree with Madam Fraser's observations, but I would mention several points.
First of all, I would agree—and this is certainly my approach and the arguments I make—that if I do not have the resources within my existing budget, I cannot take on new responsibilities and an expanded mandate without the funding that would go with it, or without being given the ability to shed some of the shore infrastructure that the Auditor General has talked about, such as staffed lighthouses or some of the large number of shore facilities.
All of those are very contentious, not from the operational perspective of the coast guard, but for legitimate heritage considerations, for legitimate issues about the impact on local jobs in small communities. I understand that fully, but what I can't do is effectively be unable to realize some of those improvements and rationalizations and at the same time be expected to take on more without funding.
There is opportunity within our budget to use some of our budget much more effectively—and that's a good example—and certainly there are improvements in our management practices that we will try to make, but I think in essence that's the situation: in the absence of being able to readily deal with shore-based infrastructure, I don't see much opportunity to expand the mandate within the current envelope.
:
Frankly, I have met industry representatives at the national and regional levels several times since I became commissioner. Re-establishing relations was one of the priorities.
So we did two things. First of all, as the minister announced, for the first time in several years, we have launched a discussion with industry on the future of fees. That is their major issue. The discussions are underway. We have made progress, to some extent, and I hope we will reach an acceptable solution for both the government and industry.
Secondly, we specifically re-established the marine advisory councils with industry to have a place where we can truly discuss the key issues. Frankly, I have not received too many complaints about services. I have the impression that industry is satisfied with the quality of the services. I have received many requests to increase services. In some regions, I have also received comments about service shortfalls, depending on the industry.
I have already made a commitment to industry to launch a general, overall and comprehensive discussion of our services and service quality. That will take some time, but I hope that together, we will be able once again to come up with solutions that are acceptable to all.
Personally, I feel we have established a good relationship. I have not received many complaints about services and service quality.
Welcome to the Auditor General and the officials today.
We're having a challenging discussion today. I think everybody recognizes that the coast guard has been through a very difficult time that preceded Mr. Murray. I think he came on in 2003, and Mr. Da Pont came less than a year ago, and started to address concerns that go back quite a way.
I think the restructuring, when the coast guard was pulled out of Transport Canada, was back in 1995. From my involvement with the MCTS people on my coast, they went through a very challenging period of cross-training, amalgamation, reorganization, and downsizing. Everybody worked hard to try to make things work with fewer resources. Looking at the military, there was a period when they also had very severe budget restraints, and their top officer called it a decade of darkness.
In a sense, the report the Auditor General has brought here goes along with the concerns this committee has been trying to address for a number of years about the coast guard. We have the greatest respect for our hard-working officers who have been doing their best to make things work, with budget restraints and so on.
On what we want to see, I think all of us have a role in getting the coast guard on a new track. I hear some encouraging things like, “Let's look at the good things that come out of a reality check.” The Auditor General's report clearly delineates where some of the problems are, and I'm glad to hear that some improvements are being made.
My first question is to the Auditor General. Looking back over the challenges of the past many years with the reorganization of the coast guard, your reports of 2000 and 2002, and reports from this committee concerned about some of the issues related to the coast guard and MCTS, was the coast guard given a budget to accomplish the objectives that were laid out for it?
I'd just like to zero in, if I could, on the special operating agency. In April of 2005, the former government designated that Fisheries and Oceans would have a special operating agency within their system. I guess this change was intended to form the coast guard into a national institution.
I noted in your comments, Ms. Fraser, that in your view the coast guard still operates largely with five regional coast guard operations, instead of with the one national institution that was supposed to come from the SOA. I'm just wondering if you could elaborate—and maybe Mr. Da Pont may want to speak on it also—whether this status has posed particular challenges to the coast guard transforming itself into a national institution, notwithstanding the unsatisfactory progress in some aspects of that.
It seems there was some thought process at the time that the department was large enough to have maybe several SOAs, instead of just the one, and that it might be better off in regard to management if it had to do that, because my understanding is that the coast guard right now is the largest SOA within government.
I'm just wondering if you would—
:
Yes. Well, I think having SOA status and the framework that was put in place in 2005 give us a very effective tool to become more of a national institution. We're certainly not there yet, and we haven't made full use of that tool. But it's been in place only for a year and a bit, and the culture of having five regional coast guards goes back decades. You're not going to eliminate or overcome that culture overnight or in a year or two.
Certainly what being an agency does is it gives us a stronger identity within DFO. It gives us the opportunity to access some very special authorities relevant just to the coast guard, separate and apart from some of the departmental authorities. We have some, we are looking for others. It will give us, over time, the ability to become far more businesslike in terms of our relationships with the users of our services and developing a business plan, and the requirement that it be public, that it be with the board, is a good example of that.
But I think the biggest change in moving from five regional coast guards to one is there certainly are a number of management improvements that need to be done; there are certainly policies and procedures that need to be standardized. They exist. They are just different from one region to another.
Those are things that one can, over time, easily put in place. The harder part is the cultural change, for people to adjust to operating in a different way. I think we're making success in that, but realistically it's going to take time. It took decades of being five regional entities with lots of autonomy. It's not going to come together culturally in a year or two.
:
May I just say that having come from a navy that has two navies, and it's always a tension, you have to be careful here as well, because actually there are some reasons why the five regionals...things are different. Some of the operations are different, and a cookie-cutter approach out of Ottawa isn't necessarily—
We need to be careful that we don't screw up that 98% number. However, we need to explain it and all that, but all that to say it's a high success rate in our key operational issues, and part of that is because of the way we operate. So we need to be careful in this stuff, that we end up with the right balance, and we're well short of bumping into too much national oversight on some of these things right now.
All I'm saying is operationally we have to be careful, because it's not entirely bad that people in Newfoundland take a different view and have a different set of imperatives than the people on the Great Lakes and the people in B.C. So this isn't just a question of “well, let's just roll on through here”, because the operational impact of doing it with a cookie-cutter approach out of Ottawa may produce something that has terrific management accountability but we can't save a frigging soul.
So we need to be careful about how we do this thing, because it's an organization that works at the coal face, but it does need to move into the 21st century.
:
I want to look at two numbers Mr. Murray referred to. The first one is the marine search and rescue success rate, which is 98%. That's very reassuring to a group that's looking at going out on the ice to witness the seal harvest in a couple of weeks. We hope you keep your A-game there.
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
Mr. Rodger Cuzner: I want to go back to another comment you made with reference to support for DFO science. Out of close to 90 surveys in the Atlantic zone between 2001 and 2006, only two were not done.
I think that's a pretty good record; that's pretty good business, if that's a fact. I would think the newspaper article was probably a result of the tabling of Ms. Fraser's report. When we look at the case study, it refers to how the science sector has been unable to complete many of its multi-species surveys because of problems with the vessels. Not able to complete many of their surveys—I wouldn't think that two would be referred to as many.
I'm just seeing the divide between what we're seeing in the report and then further down in the case study as well. The vessel programs have significantly affected ongoing research; it's impossible to complete surveys. That's strong wording in the AG's report, but it doesn't mesh with what we're seeing as facts.
Perhaps you could each shed some light on it.
:
I think we are very comfortable in Canada with the national search and rescue system, and our statistics are based on the contribution of everyone to saving lives. So if you have vessels of opportunity, if you have coast guard auxiliary members, if you have Department of National Defence, or if you just have a vessel or a recreational boat passing by, all of these contribute to the statistics.
We've changed the way we do SAR and have moved basically to an inland fleet of small lifeboats, spread across the country strategically. But we only place the coast guard resource, or the federal resource, when we cannot find local volunteers who can be part of the coast guard auxiliary. So placing a primary vessel as the coast guard in an area is the last choice, not the first choice.
Right now we are doing an SAR needs analysis, which we expect to have completed by June of this year, I believe. At that time we'll be able to say whether or not we have any gaps in the safety net across the country. But at this time—with the exception of the Arctic, where we have few resources—we haven't identified areas where there is a crying need for us to put in a primary SAR resource. But what we do on a regular or annual basis at the regional level is to look at small SAR zones within a specific region and determine whether or not we have to emphasize recruitment and whether we have to work more with our partners, and we evaluate whether or not there's significant risk in that area for vessels being in trouble.
The statistics are driven by reported incidents to the joint rescue centres or to the marine rescue subcentre in Quebec City and into the national system, by whoever is in trouble, distress or imminent distress. So the statistics would not include saving the lives of people who are out on Sunday afternoon on a fine day and who just run out of gas.
:
I have two minutes and two questions. It's tough.
I wanted to draw attention to the section starting with paragraphs 4.55 to 4.65. You're dealing with navigational aids, and you draw out that during the budget process there the financial savings the coast guard proposed were not realistic. They talked about $15 million in savings by reducing traditional aids, and yet we recognize that not everybody is equipped to use modern aids. So foghorns, lighthouses, and buoys are still very important on a coast, especially where we are. We have a lot of people who aren't professional navigators out there.
I'd like to know that we have a realistic plan to maintain all of the aids that are going to be necessary, the modern ones that we're moving towards but also the traditional ones that others depend on. Do we have a plan to get there?
My second point would be on the lighthouses, the heritage situation. We have a bill proposed by Senator Carney now to deal with the heritage aspect of lighthouses. Has anybody considered using lighthouses as bed and breakfasts and letting them become revenue-generating, to justify maintaining a presence there for search and rescue by having some revenue generating? And maybe it could be transferred to Heritage Canada, or Parks Canada, or somebody else, with the assistance of the coast guard to maintain them.
There are two questions.
:
I have a couple of points on that.
First of all, in terms of the aids to navigation issue, in fact in January we announced a fresh approach to that in an initiative that we're calling “Aids to Navigation in the 21st Century (AToN21)”. It replaces the initiative that I think this committee has seen under the label of “Marine Aids Modernization”.
We did that for two reasons. One is to be able to take a different approach based on a national approach rather than on individual, piecemeal regional approaches, which, as the Auditor General flagged, was one of the contributing factors to limited success with the previous one.
We are basing it on developing actual sound business cases for the changes, and we have made a commitment that we would discuss these with the users of the services, with the unions, with our own staff, and use that as our strategy to begin to get people onside. Quite frankly, I wanted to divorce it entirely from having a philosophy that it was intended to cut costs. I don't think you can go to the users of our services just with that. I think you have to base it on the fact that you're there to improve or maintain service, to take advantage of new technologies.
I hope and I expect in many of these cases that over the long run there will be cost savings. But when we were going to people, saying, we're doing this to cut costs, you can appreciate that the users of the service were not entirely receptive to sitting down. So we have re-based the initiative in that fashion, and I think if we take that approach over time we will make progress, and I think over time we will get some savings, but certainly not in the context and in the timeframes that we had originally envisioned under the previous versions of that plan.
:
It's a final question, yes. It's on something put forward.
In your presentation, Ms. Fraser, you had identified that the modernization was slow.
I thought back to an action undertaken by the late Pope John Paul. Before his passing, he had issued an apology to a group of Greek Catholics who were wronged back in the year 1260. If the Catholic church is just getting around to those files, I don't think we're in bad shape at the coast guard. We're doing okay, and your office has the ability to go back.
Mr. Da Pont, I know we don't go into initiatives or capital investments solely for the purpose of saving money, but it is often a rationale. We want to continue to provide services, but it is often a rationale and a justification for significant capital investment.
But is it typical, not only in this case but in any case, that your team would reach back to see the projected cost savings of an initiative, and then you would measure whether or not they are successful?