:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Civil Air Search and Rescue Association, or CASARA, was established in 1986 as a Canada-wide volunteer association dedicated to the promotion of aviation safety and the provision of air search support services to the national search and rescue program. Our volunteers use their own aircraft or vehicles to provide this service and are reimbursed for their expenses.
CASARA is funded by a contribution agreement through Treasury Board and managed by DND. The contribution agreement is a five-year agreement outlining the services to be provided and the funding authorized for those services.
CASARA provides annual financial statements reviewed by our auditor. To date, all financial statements are unqualified and without opinion. This speaks very well of a volunteer organization that is managing public funds today.
We have member organizations in every province and territory. Our membership this past fiscal year was approximately 2,997, and members have contributed approximately 124,701 hours in volunteer time, training, and hosting safety seminars. Across this country, our volunteers have also participated in 254 actual SAR missions and 137 air and 117 ground taskings, involving some 4,577 volunteer hours.
These volunteers actively augment the Canadian Forces primary search and rescue assets during SAR missions by supplying spotters from military search aircraft and by providing pilots, navigators, spotters, and aircraft when called upon to do so by any of the three joint rescue coordination centres in Canada. We also aid local police and emergency management organizations with humanitarian assistance in looking for lost persons.
CASARA is managed by a volunteer board of 13 members. They are elected from each member organization in the country. This board is responsible for setting policy, managing our financial responsibilities, and setting training standards. The board meets twice a year to fulfill these responsibilities for our day-to-day running. The four-member board executive that is charged with the responsibility meets four times a year or as otherwise needed.
CASARA has developed our own training programs based upon the national SAR manual. Along with these training programs, we have set training standards and currency standards that our volunteers must meet before being authorized to work on actual SAR missions. We have developed certain training courses for each of our pilot, navigator, spotter, and search coordinator roles.
In order to be successful, CASARA uses a structure that breaks each member organization into zones and areas as needed. CASARA has approximately 104 zones across the country. A zone is the level at which all operations occur. Our certification, training, currency, and crewing all occur there. To ensure that each zone is compliant with our training certification and currency requirements, DND evaluates each zone. Our CASARA liaison officers assigned from the SAR squadrons are given this responsibility. On average, we successfully pass our zone evaluations approximately 97% of the time, and the other 3% are successful with immediate retraining.
We have developed an electronic computer-based CASARA management system to retain all of our data regarding our volunteers, their training records, and their currency status. As we work with a rolling 365 currency period, our volunteers' currency is continually being monitored, and training is adjusted to match the training needed. Appropriate courses are scheduled to ensure that everyone is provided the opportunity to maintain their currency.
All CASARA volunteers are certified to ensure that a high level of service can be provided to the Canadian Forces, but also to ensure that those in need have high-quality professionals searching for them. CASARA volunteers willingly agree to participate in searches where environments are challenging.
One of CASARA's greatest contributions to the Canadian Forces SAR assets is the local knowledge that pilots, navigators, spotters, ground personnel, and coordinators have of their respective areas. Our members might know of an airplane in an area, so that if an emergency locator transmitter alarms, we would have a good idea of where to look. This local knowledge may have the effect of quickly ending a search or allowing Canadian Forces aircraft to not participate, thereby reducing the workload on the SAR squadrons.
CASARA has developed an insurance program to provide protection for our volunteers. This program covers liability, accidents, injury on duty, and secondary aircraft hull insurance. This program will ensure that our volunteers are not left to their own resources, should they be injured during the course of their missions.
Complementing our insurance program are workers compensation boards. In almost all provinces and territories, our volunteers are recognized as emergency services workers, thus allowing the WCB in a province or territory to provide financial support should an unfortunate incident occur. We are still negotiating with one or two provinces or territories who are still reluctant to provide this coverage, even though the federal government will ultimately cover 75% of the cost of any claims.
The chief of review services, DND'S internal program auditor, has recently completed an audit of the CASARA program within DND. The chief determined that CASARA is a cost-effective program that saves both funds and scarce DND equipment and personnel resources. For example, since 2005 the cost of CASARA in support of SAR has been $85.20 per hour in the Halifax search and rescue region; $65.82 per hour in the Trenton search and rescue region; and $447.51 in the Victoria search and rescue region.
CASARA is involved in approximately 25% of the SAR cases, and we were reimbursed approximately $1 million for these efforts. However, if DND had performed these operations without the benefit of our CASARA volunteers and their aircraft, it would have cost about $30 million. These figures alone demonstrate the value the CASARA volunteer program brings to the SAR program. The cost of the CASARA program is 1.9% of the DND program costs for SAR.
Throughout the report, those interviewed rated the CASARA program as either indispensable or very relevant, which is a very positive endorsement of a civilian volunteer organization.
In fiscal years 2005 to 2009, we participated in 32 actual SAR incidents in the Arctic and Northwest Territories, 11 of them on the ground, for 1,250 hours of volunteer time; in Nunavut, in 20 air incidents, two of them on the ground, for 1,400 hours in total; and in the Yukon, in nine air incidents, four of them on the ground, for a total of 226 hours.
So we are available. We are out there and can provide any assistance that DND or emergency measures organizations request of us.
Thanks for the opportunity to present the story of CASARA.
Your questions will follow, I assume.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.
I was asked to speak today about search and rescue in the north. I'll start with a brief presentation on CF roles, responsibilities, and posture, and show you the activity rates we have recorded in recent years. I will be referring to search and rescue as SAR during my presentation.
I should mention there are multiple organizations and agencies involved in SAR response. The Canadian Forces and Canadian Coast Guard are responsible for aircraft and vessels in distress within coastal and marine waters. Parks Canada is responsible for lost and missing persons within national park boundaries. Each territory has the mandate for ground SAR--that is, the Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut, respectively. Volunteers play a significant role, as Mr. Davidson just pointed out. We rely heavily on CASARA to assist in our SAR operations.
I'd like to refer now to the slide deck I provided you, and I'm just going to make some brief comments on the various slides. The first one is entitled “Search and Rescue Regions and MRSC Locations”. We have three rescue coordinating centres serving Canada, depicted here at Victoria, Trenton, and Halifax. The area we're talking about includes offshore waters as well. We have 15 million square kilometres of area we are responsible for in search and rescue. This area essentially runs from the U.S. border to the North Pole, and 1,100 kilometres west of Vancouver and 1,600 kilometres east of Newfoundland. Three of our centres are co-manned by Canadian Forces and Canadian Coast Guard personnel, who are highly trained in search and rescue operations.
A SAR operation will start with notification. Notification passed to any of these rescue coordinating centres will trigger a series of events that ultimately will conclude with a successful or unsuccessful SAR mission, depending. Notification will come from various sources, such as NavCan, next of kin, or emergency locator transmitters, ELTs. I can elaborate on these later, if required.
The coordinating centres will task the most appropriate asset. It may be a Canadian Forces aircraft; it could be a coast guard vessel; and the navy may be involved, and other government department assets too, such as Transport Canada, and provincial and territorial assets. We often charter commercial helicopters, if they are the most logical and convenient resource to use. We use CASARA, as mentioned, and the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary. Often there's more than one search and rescue asset tasked in any particular search.
The next chart shows you where our bases are located. We're across the country, from Comox in the west to Gander in Newfoundland. We have primary bases, where our aircraft are on standby 24 hours, seven days a week; and we have secondary capability, such as at Cold Lake, Bagotville, and Goose Bay, where we have some search and rescue capability.
The next chart will show you the primary SAR aircraft resources we now employ and where they are based. These aircraft are all specially equipped for SAR operations, with electronic capability as well as air-dropable rescue equipment, such as pumps, rafts, medical supplies, and shelter; and the load can be tailored depending on the mission specifications. Each aircraft is crewed, in addition to the pilots, of course, with two SAR techs—search and rescue technicians—who are trained in advance trauma, life support, land and sea survival, and specialized rescue techniques, including Arctic rescue, parachuting, diving, and mountain climbing. They're the full rescue capability.
The next chart I'd like to speak to briefly is of the COSPAS/SARSAT system. The notification of an incident is the key to SAR response. Back in the early eighties, Canada was one of the founding member nations to develop COSPAS/SARSAT. Essentially it's a satellite-based detection system for distress beacons. Since we've used SARSAT and COSPAS, we have substantially reduced search times, because we get very rapid location and information, allowing us to pick the appropriate SAR response.
Quite recently, we've actually improved the capability of the COSPAS/SARSAT system, as we converted to 406 megahertz technology, a digital capability with beacons, which now gives us very precise location and very quick alerting capability, and a number of details about the registration of the aircraft and the number of people involved. It helps us greatly in planning the initial stages of any search operation.
As an example, a twin-engine airplane crashed in Iqaluit in December with two people on board. They were both saved. We got a 406 alert, which triggered the system and gave us vital information that allowed us to do a very prompt and quick search and rescue operation.
The next chart is on MAJAID, or major air response capability. It's for an airline-sized air disaster in a remote area. We have pre-prepared and ready-for-dispatch MAJAID kits that contain shelters, provisions, and medical supplies. They're rigged for immediate dispatch and can be rapidly deployed and aerially delivered to the scene of the crash.
The MAJAID kits themselves are just one component of our major air disaster capability. Initially we would launch our primary aircraft, which have some capability to provide shelter and medical aid to people on the ground. We'd follow with MAJAID kits. We'd deploy a forward medical facility, and then we'd start the medical evacuation. We have a plan to support MAJAID that includes not only the military, but territorial responsibilities and other government agencies. Canada is the only nation with such a capability.
In addition to MAJAID, we have caches of survival equipment throughout the north. They contain clothing and shelters, and can be picked up and dispatched to an incident site as required.
The next two slides list statistics on the number of incidents we have recorded by region for a five-year period. The trend has not changed dramatically over the number of years that we've been tracking this data. These are all types of incidents, from false alerts to actual incidents.
The next one, which is more pertinent to our discussion today, shows incidents that have occurred north of 55 for the last five years. We've recorded incidents from the various rescue coordinating centres. These are categories one and two, which means we actually launched SAR assets on the cases. That doesn't necessarily mean they were distresses, but we had no other choice but to launch. You can see that the numbers are fairly small.
Finally is the chart that illustrates incident distribution. Superimposed on that we have our primary source squadrons and secondary squadrons. I think this chart really illustrates that a preponderance of incidents occur where we are based, and there is no particular part of the north where a large number of incidents take place.
Mr. Chairman, I will conclude my remarks there. I look forward to the discussion.
Thank you.
First of all, let me respond to the previous question that John answered. We, the military, are the sponsor of CASARA, and we have every confidence that the membership are very skilled and very capable. What we ask them to do is not out of line. They're not doing certain things that our SAR forces are doing, understandably. What they do with their own equipment and their own time is certainly something that we have found to be very valuable. There's no issue of confidence within our rescue coordinating centres; they will, believe me, task the CASARA if that aircraft or that crew can respond more quickly. It may be not the only one, and they don't do aerial delivery, and they don't do a lot of things, but what they do is tremendously advantageous.
We try to avoid searches. For early detection we use satellite to beacon, but occasionally those measures will fail, and we end up in a search scenario. A search can be a very arduous, difficult exercise, and to have the spotters that they provide to help us search is a tremendous advantage.
:
By and large, if you have the worst-case scenario and you place it in a very remote area, it's going to take a certain amount of time to respond. The transit time, the difference between the departure from my base and the actual crash site, may not be the determining factor in all missions.
What's more important, especially when we're talking about major disasters, the MAJAID that I briefed, is that if we located it in the north, for instance, we would lose time, because there's no dedicated aircraft that supports that package. That's an additional aircraft, in addition to our primary SAR aircraft. Those are based in Trenton. That's also where our medical folks are. These kits have to be renewed occasionally, with medical stuff in the kits. So there are all sorts of reasons why it's more efficient to base that there.
In terms of what you would put in the north to cater to a very challenging multi-passenger situation, sometimes having a helicopter might make sense, but sometimes a local commercial helicopter might be more appropriate, depending on the scene.
Just as a brief point on the C-130 crash, in that scenario the weather closed in so rapidly that it would have been a challenge no matter where you were based in the north. As it turned out, we had aircraft overhead of that incident site for hours. When our SAR techs don't jump out of an aircraft.... You almost have to tie them down. So there was a great desire to do something, but they were way beyond their safety margins. When they did do it, it was borderline.
We also, in that particular case, mounted a ground-party search for the aircraft, and we pretty well knew where it was. They also took 30 hours to get there.
I would suggest that was very exceptional--challenging and rather tragic--and unfortunately, it was our own people as well.
:
That's an excellent question, sir. Prevention is a very important aspect.
I spoke and John spoke a little bit about SAR response, but for the prevention program actually Transport Canada has the lead responsibility, and they do it through regulations. They have regional officers that teach aviation safety, similar to the coast guard and its responsibility for prevention.
With organizations like CASARA, there's a value to their program that's not in dollars, because you can't break it out, but they are community leaders. They actually are respected in the aviation communities and they are big on the whole prevention aspect.
There are certain licensing requirements, such as the requirements for life jackets in boats, and all those activities. One--and it's not prevention, but it speaks to that--is the beacons that I mentioned earlier. If all else fails, at least you've given yourself an opportunity to be helped in a very rapid manner. That's an education piece--more education than prevention, I guess.
The good news, I think, is that we have never deployed it operationally, and that means we haven't had a situation requiring it. That doesn't mean it wasn't available. The last time that I'm aware we had it on alert and preparing it was Swissair 111, which is the aircraft that crashed off the coast of Nova Scotia. We were prepared to launch the MAJAID and then it was determined that this was a marine recovery, as opposed to a rescue operation, and it didn't have any impact.
You bring up a very good question, in that I did not mention other applications, but this has applications beyond strictly an air disaster. If a marine ship runs aground and you've got 1,600 folks on a cruise vessel that goes aground and is floundering and you get all those folks off on to some permafrost or rugged environment, it will take you a long time to evacuate that many people via the helicopter or whatever means. The MAJAID is a fly-away air-dropable capability. Each kit has tentage, for instance, for 80 people, and we have four kits. So to get this into a sparsely populated area.... And it doesn't have to be the Arctic, either; it can certainly be any part, because there are parts of a lot of northern provinces that would be equally applicable. It's scalable, so you don't have to have the whole exercise.
We also have a 12-man army paratroop team that are trained to go with this, so they can provide assistance on the ground, survival techniques, and our SAR techs, of course, who have medical capability. So it has more versatility than strictly one-time in the Arctic.