Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue 3 - Evidence - February 28, 2008
OTTAWA, Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 10:50 a.m. to examine and report on issues relating to the federal government's current and evolving policy framework for managing Canada's fisheries and oceans. Topic: Arctic Study
Senator Bill Rompkey (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I call the meeting to order to continue our study of the Coast Guard, in particular, and the Coast Guard in relation to our Arctic study. We have heard from a number of witnesses, such as the Commissioner of the Coast Guard, George Da Pont; Acting Deputy Commissioner Charles Gadula; and Gary Sidock. We have also heard from officials with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.
We hope to travel to the Arctic sometime in May. That is the plan at the moment, although it has not been firmed up yet. As you will recall, we want to do that in conjunction with the Environment Committee.
Today, I am very pleased to welcome Michael Turner, who is the former commissioner of the Coast Guard. I will not go through his lengthy biography, but he has given a great deal of service to this country, in a number of different positions, for which he has received a number of awards. His biography is in front of you. I am very pleased to have him with us today, and I welcome him.
Before I ask him to make his opening remarks, I want to put us under some time constraints. I would like to conclude this meeting by noon because Mr. Turner has another engagement to attend, as do others. We do want to take the time to talk with Mr. Turner because this will be one of our most important hearings. Mr. Turner held the position of commissioner and can help us by reflecting on his experiences. I will ask him to make some opening remarks, after which we will go to questions.
Michael Turner, as an individual: Thank you very much, senator.
[Translation]
Honourable senators, it is my pleasure to appear before your committee today. I should mention that most of my remarks will be in English.
[English]
Honourable senators, allow me to begin by thanking you sincerely for inviting my small contribution to your work. I know we are playing a small role in this large picture you are trying to develop.
I have been asked here today to express my personal views, and I stress that in fact there may be the occasional error in the material I present in the sense that I have taken some care to not in any way involve the existing officials of the Canadian Coast Guard, not wanting in any way to sully the notion that this is purely my personal opinion and views. I am not speaking on behalf of any government department or agency. However, I believe you are aware that my particular interest in this matter arises from the more than quarter century I served in the Canadian Coast Guard, including several years as deputy commissioner and acting commissioner.
Although I left DFO and the Coast Guard in 1989 to move to another department of the government and then retired from the federal public service over two years ago, I continue to be deeply interested in our Arctic waters and their management. Anyone who has visited the Arctic at all knows how the area can grab hold of one's psyche.
Of course, I continue to follow the progress of the organization I spent most of my career with as it wrestles with a number of significant challenges. It was this continuing interest in Arctic affairs that prompted me to express my concerns in an op-ed piece in the Ottawa Citizen last July 13, shortly after the current government's announcement that it was approving the design and construction of a new series of offshore and Arctic patrol vessels for the Armed Forces.
You may ask why I would be concerned with such an announcement. I can assure you it is not out of any lack of respect for the skills and dedication of the officers and men of the Canadian Navy — far from it — nor is it because I doubt the need for a greater marine presence in our northern waters. Rather, it is because the decisions seem to ignore the many years and considerable resources spent by successive governments in building up a civilian professional marine service, which we today know as the Canadian Coast Guard, an organization with major responsibility for marine safety services but also designed to serve and support government's other responsibilities in Canada's waters, including the Arctic.
Canada's Coast Guard, which has only carried this name since 1962, has a long and proud history stretching back to the first days of the Department of Marine and Fisheries in 1867, later moving over to the new Department of Transport when it was formed in 1936, and now located back with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans since 1995. Throughout its history, the Coast Guard and its predecessor organizations have built up an understanding of our Arctic waters and an Arctic operations capability that is recognized and admired worldwide.
In contrast, not since 1957 has our navy operated a fully ice-capable vessel designed and built for operation in Canada's Arctic. Due to government decisions taken over a half century ago, all of this country's ice operations capabilities now rest with the Coast Guard and a handful of private-sector marine companies that between them have the skilled and experienced ice operations officers needed to safely function in this challenging environment.
Honourable senators present today are aware from earlier witnesses of the Coast Guard's major role — alongside DND — in search and rescue, its responsibilities for marine pollution response, aids to navigation, traffic, waterways management and ice-breaking support for commercial shipping, so I do not propose to take your valuable time in describing these in any detail.
Yet, as so often seems to happen, government organizations appear to be failing to operate as one federal government, maximizing the capabilities of each agency or department. Regrettably, in the case of last July's announcement of the new naval vessels, the government seems to have decided that modernization of the rest of the aging Coast Guard icebreaker fleet, which already serves multiple missions, is less important than constructing a new group of ships with a limited role and far less Arctic waters capability. However, I note with pleasure the announcement in this week's budget that the government is programming funds for replacement of the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, Canada's largest and oldest icebreaker.
The government's failure to appreciate that there might be "a better way" to enhance our federal presence in Arctic waters is disappointing, though perhaps not surprising. Within the Coast Guard itself — and its parent department, DFO — management has tended to take, in my view, a rather narrow view of the organization's role since the merger of the two took place in 1995. For fully a decade after the merger, the focus was almost entirely on cost reduction and provision of more efficient services, with mini-fleet units tied alongside, either permanently or for increasing portions of the year, from lack of program funding for their operations.
During this period, DFO's own challenges with inadequate resourcing for its responsibilities made it difficult for the department to focus on anything but their annual budget shortfalls, with the result that the program planning tended to be largely short term, around specific stand-alone programs requiring Coast Guard's operational capabilities, a fact, by the way, on which the Auditor General has also commented.
Efficiency is always a laudable objective, but the larger concept of the multi-mission-capable Canadian Coast Guard delivering and administering Canada's non-military responsibilities at sea was seriously eroded during this period. In the focus on internal operating efficiency within DFO, perhaps people have forgotten that it is the Coast Guard that every day demonstrates our nation's control and management of the waters over which we claim ownership or jurisdiction, through administration of Canada's laws and programs and the provision of marine services. While being able to deter a potential enemy from using or occupying one's territory and counter such aggression with force when required is certainly an important aspect of sovereignty, it is by no means the only part or, arguably, even the most important aspect.
While the first decade within DFO was indeed challenging, the Coast Guard has now been set up as a special operating agency restructured to ensure it acts as one organization from coast to coast with greater management flexibility in some areas, although in the bargain, I might add, it has lost the program responsibility in some areas of marine safety, which has been transferred back to Transport Canada.
Most important, significant changes are also under way to make it better capable of supporting a multitude of government responsibilities in Canada's waters, both Arctic and southern. For example, budgets are being recast to clearly identify the cost of providing "federal presence" at sea, aside from which specific programs are also being supported. Funding has been approved for the Coast Guard to provide new vessels as platform support for the RCMP in the area of maritime security on the Great Lakes, and the Coast Guard will also be one of the departments supporting the DND-managed Marine Security Operations Centres now being set up on East and West Coasts.
I note that worn-out midshore fisheries enforcement vessels are to be replaced with more capable vessels also able to support the RCMP. I am very pleased to see the extent to which the Coast Guard now actively supports Arctic science research, as exemplified not only by the work of our flagship CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, but also by its operation of the CCGS Amundsen on behalf of a research consortium managed through Laval University.
All of these examples confirm to me that the Coast Guard is now returning to the fuller, multi-mission, all-of- government support role for which it was intended. How ironic, then, that the government should choose to ignore its own professional marine service at the very point when it is being restructured to better support all departments, at a time when its Arctic operations for science support have significantly increased, and when the Coast Guard is clearly best suited for the Arctic surveillance and sovereignty patrol component of the functions envisaged for the offshore and Arctic patrol vessels that were announced last year. How disappointing it is that we are not considering how to replace the rest of the Coast Guard's aging icebreakers with an appropriate number of Arctic class, multi-mission icebreakers operated by the Coast Guard for and on behalf of all of the departments and agencies of government, including for DND.
Surely we can do better for the Canadian taxpayer. Surely this would provide for more effective support of the full range of government programs in our Arctic, ranging from geophysical mapping to Inuit health clinic support, to foreign flag vessel monitoring and marine environmental protection, to platform support for the Armed Forces in Arctic waters. Surely this would be a more effective demonstration, in fact, of Canada's sovereignty.
If honourable senators have questions or would like clarification of any of the personal views I have expressed, I would be happy to respond.
The Chair: Thank you very much for that useful presentation.
Senator Cowan: Mr. Turner, we understand that you were prepared to come the other evening, but that conflicted with a caucus meeting that some us had to attend. We are grateful to you for rearranging your schedule to accommodate us.
Can you tell me something about the capability of the vessels that were announced a year or so ago, described as offshore and Arctic patrol vessels, as compared with existing vessels such as the Louis S. St-Laurent and the Terry Fox? As well, in the budget handed down the other day, funding was announced or proposed for a vessel to replace the Louis S. St-Laurent. Can you tie those two things together? Is this a change in position? Is this an addition? How does all of that tie together?
Mr. Turner: I will do my best, though you will appreciate that I am not in a position to speak for the government or the department.
My information on what is planned with respect to DND Arctic and offshore patrol ships comes essentially from their own announcements on this subject in which it was announced that they would be building a series of eight of these vessels with a limited capability to operate in open ocean, limited speed and, of course, limited icebreaking capability. The intention is that the new ships would be capable of operating independently and effectively in our economic zone, including the Arctic environment at certain times of the year. They would have ice-strengthened hulls to operate in what they refer to as medium first-year ice, which may include old ice inclusions where the ice is denser and may strike the hull of the ship. They are talking about an endurance of 6,000 nautical miles, all the latest electronic suite, and an economical speed of 14 knots, a maximum speed of 20 knots, armed with some kind of weaponry and able to conduct boat operations. These ships would have the ability to embark and operate a helicopter on board, as well as flying maintenance and crew in and out.
In that sense, compared to the existing Coast Guard icebreakers that operate in the Arctic, even the lightest of the Coast Guard icebreakers are significantly more capable of Arctic operations than the ships being proposed for the navy. The Type 1100 vessels that go into the Arctic, referred to as an Arctic Class 2 — and usually two or three of them go into the Arctic each year for a period of time in the summertime — would be capable of sailing through continuous ice cover of perhaps half to two-thirds of a metre and ramming through ice ridges of a couple of metres, which certainly suggests more capability than the ships being proposed here.
The much larger ships that you referred to, the Terry Fox and the Louis S. St-Laurent, are the two most powerful ships in the Coast Guard. The Louis S. St-Laurent has, in previous times, actually gone as far as the North Pole, along with an American icebreaker. It is capable of operating in a significant portion of the Arctic over the summer months, though not everywhere, and is capable of sailing through continuous ice cover of a little less than two metres and is able to bash its way through ice ridges and rafting of three metres and sometimes even larger. It is a vessel designed for those purposes, as is the Terry Fox, although the Terry Fox is somewhat smaller and does not operate a helicopter. By the way, all of the other Coast Guard icebreakers do operate helicopters similar to the proposed DND vessels. The Terry Fox, which was originally built for use in supporting the Beaufort Sea Arctic drilling operations, has the capability to operate in ice a metre thick to 1.5 metres thick. While it does not carry a helicopter, it is certainly a very capable vessel in other respects. The ship has served the Coast Guard extremely well in that sense.
The icebreakers that the Coast Guard currently operates, including its Type 1200s, the two you mentioned, and the two or three lighter vessels which are called multi-mission vessels — the 1100s — because they do other jobs in the south in the summertime and wintertime, are significantly more ice capable. They are able to sail over a much broader range of the Arctic than the vessels that appear to be proposed by the navy. That is only from their information.
You asked me about the announcement this week. I have no information other than what was in the budget papers. The budget papers made it clear that money is being set aside to replace the Louis S. St-Laurent, which is due to be decommissioned around 2017, but it will take several years to design and build a new Arctic class icebreaker. The words also indicated that the vessel would have a great capability than the Louis S. St-Laurent, which would imply it would be at least a Polar 6 rather than an Arctic Class 4 or 5, which is what I consider the Louis to be now.
Senator Cowan: I do not remember the precise numbers, but the evidence we heard from the commissioner was that the useful life of the Louis S. St-Laurent was another — perhaps at a stretch — 10 to 12 years, and it would take almost that long to design, construct and commission a replacement vessel.
Mr. Turner: That is quite correct. These are complex, unique vessels, and it takes a lengthy period of time to design and build one. If he spoke of 10 years, that is perhaps a bit long because within that time period you also have to arrange the funding, and it would appear they have succeeded in that step. In other words, the clock started some time ago. You also have the procurement process, which as are all aware can be somewhat onerous in terms of costly, large and unique projects like this.
You have picked up on a very important point, which is that the Coast Guard icebreaker fleet overall is aging rapidly. Just like the rest of us, every ship gets a year older every year. The last icebreaker built was the Henry Larsen, which is now 20 years old, and the Louis S. St-Laurent will be 40 years old next year, which is incredible. The mid-life modernization that was done back in the early 1990s was very successful, but you can only keep an old ship going so long. I must say my colleagues in the Coast Guard have done a marvellous job. The Arctic class vessels we have now in the Coast Guard, including the Type 1100s and the Type 1200s, are now at the point where they are either approaching the end of useful life in terms of the 1200s or need significant mid-life modernization in terms of the 1100s.
Senator Cowan: From my rather non-scientific observation out my office window in Halifax across from the Coast Guard base, these ships seem to spending a lot of time at the base and in the yards undergoing repairs, which is what happens to our automobiles. As they get older, they take more and more time to fix in the repair shop at greater and greater cost, so sooner or later they need to be replaced.
Mr. Turner: It is a phenomenon to which we personally seem to be subject as well. I know it more and more that, as we age, we end up going in for repair and replacement.
Senator Cowan: Yes, it not only icebreakers.
Senator Robichaud: Mr. Turner, in the last paragraph of the first page of your presentation, you say:
Yet, as so often seems to happen, government organizations appear to be failing to operate as one federal government, maximizing the capabilities of each agency or department. Regrettably, in the case of last July's announcement of the new naval vessels, the government seems to have decided that modernization of the rest of the aging Coast Guard icebreaker fleet . . . .
Can you elaborate on how they failed to operate as one and which agencies or departments you are referring to in this case?
Mr. Turner: I would be careful to stress, senator, that I am not pointing the finger of blame at individual departments. I am saying, from my long experience with the government, that there is a natural inbred tendency within departments to operate in a silo. This is not unexpected, given the British cabinet system of government we are all so familiar with, in which individual departmental programs and services with their enabling statutes report up through a department to a deputy minister and a minister who is accountable to Parliament. That in itself drives a certain insularity and intensity of focus within the department, which is a good thing. However, in our increasingly complex world, it becomes essential to cooperate, coordinate and collaborate across and between departments.
In my period of service with the government after I left the Coast Guard, I was involved in the government online project to put services on the Internet for Canadians. We spent an enormous amount of time and effort getting the departments to collaborate and work together in order to do that. Similar kinds of efforts are always necessary any time you want government departments to work together and collaborate.
A small example that struck me the other day was that the Department of Fisheries and Oceans has operated aerial surveillance aircraft under contract for fisheries surveillance for quite some time. After the Coast Guard joined the organization and was merged with the rest of DFO, those aircraft also took on a certain amount of pollution patrol as well. Now, with the program responsibility transferred back to Transport Canada in a regulatory sense — always having been with that department in a regulatory sense for ship source pollution — I noticed that for the past year Transport Canada is now operating its own surveillance aircraft to look for ships at sea that are polluting. That is a wonderful thing, a very positive move and we need to do more of that. However, here we have a department that has that vertical responsibility and has chosen to put its money into flying aircraft from Transport Canada to look for oil spills or intentional dumping from ships. If it was positioned with the common marine services agency, the Coast Guard, I would argue that that could have been done more effectively across several different programs and departments, including the fisheries surveillance aspects. It is somewhat disappointing to see that, because fisheries surveillance, drug interdiction at sea, fisheries, general sovereignty patrol — showing the flag, so to speak — plus the pollution patrol that is now being conducted can very often be done effectively from a single, multi-tasked, multi-mission platform.
That is a major difference between how the Coast Guard is traditionally operated and how the former Fisheries and Oceans used to operate. The Coast Guard is focused on building and operating multi-mission-capable platforms and carrying out multiple missions on each trip, whereas DFO — and, it appears, Transport Canada now — tends to be focused on the responsibility for a specific program being assigned to one particular operational unit.
I acknowledge that I have not looked into the Transport Canada program in any great detail, although at one time I used to work for the department. However, it was surprising to see that Transport Canada is operating a very capable aircraft for this purpose as a departmental aircraft, as opposed to a Government of Canada or Coast Guard aircraft that could do multiple missions across multiple departments.
Senator Robichaud: I was watching The National a few weeks ago. They aired a well-prepared documentary on a plane that was doing surveillance for dumping at sea. I took particular interest because the pilot was my neighbour's son, whom I know very well. Are you saying that that plane is now operated by Transport Canada? I was under the impression that it was the Canadian Coast Guard.
Mr. Turner: No, I believe it is the one operated by Transport Canada. They do a fine job; they are very professional people. Transport Canada's air operations have been the backbone and an absolutely essential component of the Coast Guard's own operations. For years, Transport Canada's air operations people have operated the Coast Guard helicopters, along with all the ships that go to the Arctic or into the gulf in the wintertime, icebreakers, plus some of the work along the coasts that requires the use of helicopters. Those helicopters, which are Coast Guard helicopters and operate in Coast Guard facilities, are flown and maintained by Transport Canada employees who come aboard and act as part of the Coast Guard while they are on the ship. It is an effective example of close, tight integration, and Transport Canada has done this repeatedly in the past.
Senator Cochrane: Are you telling us that there is a conflict between the Coast Guard and DFO?
Mr. Turner: The Coast Guard is part of DFO. I did not say there is a conflict. I said that the first decade of its integration with DFO was a trying and difficult time for both organizations. The Coast Guard, in particular with respect to fleet operations, ran its fleet in a different manner than the surveillance fisheries patrol and science research people did within DFO. That caused considerable challenges within the Coast Guard and DFO for the first few years in sorting out how that should be done.
Part of that, as I said in my opening remarks, came back to the shortage in funding within the fisheries organization. The deputy minister of the day did exactly what any good deputy should do and reallocated his funding according to overall department priorities; so some of the funding was removed from Coast Guard and redirected to other priorities within DFO. That is the right thing for the deputy to do.
However, it took a long time for them to work out a modus operandi by which the Coast Guard ships would be adequately funded. There are still issues around the longer term planning for the use and orderly replacement of the vessels. It is not because there is a conflict within DFO. It is a side product of a number of factors, including the fairly short-term funding challenges that DFO seems to face so often.
In terms of the way the fleet used to operate, DFO tended to use the ships on a single-mission basis, crewed by qualified officers. Very often, the staff were hired on a term basis as ship's crew to carry out a specific mission as a platform support under the direction and control of the fisheries officer or the chief scientist, for example, except in matters of marine safety.
The Coast Guard's method of operating has always been to train the officers of the vessels to be program managers in their own right, to manage not only their own budgets, but also the operation of the vessel and the program delivery aspect. They came into the organization with the expectation that they would be doing something similar with Fisheries and Oceans, in which the program responsibilities for fisheries surveillance, science and oceans management would be assigned to them to carry out to the best of their abilities. That would be integrated with other things they were assigned to do at sea because the ships are designed to be multi-mission capable as well. That is not the way the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was used to operating. Its people were rightfully concerned at the significant operational cost associated with using ships that were generally larger than might be required or more complex than might be required for their specific function for that week. They were essentially looking for the lowest-cost possible platform to do just that role.
I was saying that the Coast Guard is now established as a separate operating agency. There is a move afoot to refocus the budget, to recognize the importance of having a federal presence at sea and to split the cost from the programs they support, such as fisheries enforcement or science research. This is a more logical and responsible way to operate the Coast Guard fleet. However, this is all happening within DFO. It is not that there is any fight between them since they are all one.
Senator Cochrane: I used the wrong term, "conflict."
Senator Robichaud: Do I understand that the announcements that have been made would reduce our global capacity to do the work we are doing now and the new ships will not be as efficient as the platforms we have now?
Mr. Turner: The new vessels that have been announced and are to be built for DND are offshore and Arctic patrol vessels. They are not designed to replace the Coast Guard icebreakers. However, the government is spending a great deal of money to build these new ships, which of necessity will be a compromise vessel and design since they are required to operate perhaps eight or nine months of the year in open water and three or four months of the year on ice. My fear is that this drain on the federal purse, while it may create a fairly superficial, additional presence in the Arctic for a few short months, could result in a reluctance to fund the orderly replacement of the Coast Guard's icebreaking fleet with adequate capability for true Arctic operations.
As I also noted in my remarks and in the newspaper article I wrote, the unfortunate reality is that as good as our naval personnel are, the only experience they have in operating in ice-covered waters is when they go aboard a Coast Guard or commercial vessel for a trip. The expertise around ice operations is entirely within the Coast Guard at this point.
Senator Robichaud: You are saying this new ship will be DND, not Coast Guard.
Mr. Turner: I am not referring to the Louis S. St-Laurent replacement announced this week. I am referring to the eight Arctic and offshore patrol ships announced in July of this past year. These eight patrol vessels have an estimated acquisition cost of $3.1 billion and another $4.3 billion required for operations and maintenance over their lifespan.
As I indicated before, I am not speaking on behalf of the department or the Coast Guard, but my case is simply that this is not the best use of Canada's limited government resources, the taxpayers' money. We should ensure that the navy has offshore patrol vessels optimized for that role in ice-free waters, including small portions of the Arctic that are ice free in the summertime, as they do now, whereas the Coast Guard should be given the resources to renew and modernize the icebreaking fleet to support all departments, including National Defence. For example, to create a scenario for you, National Defence navy personnel could form a detachment to be carried at certain times on board certain of the larger Coast Guard icebreakers. The ship may well be armed, but in a weaponry sense it would be under the control and management of DND, not Coast Guard personnel on board. There are ways to do this, and other nations have found effective ways of combining these responsibilities.
My concern is that we end up with a series of eight expensive naval vessels that carry around a huge amount of additional steel and additional ice capability two-thirds of the year in open water and, vice versa, going into the Arctic during the summer months but are not capable of doing anything except sailing through light first-year ice. It does not sound like the optimum solution.
The Chair: I think the rather facetious term applied to them was "slush breakers."
Mr. Turner: Not by me, I hasten to add.
Senator Cochrane: What about this new polar icebreaker that was announced yesterday? What are your views on that matter?
Mr. Turner: That is a direct replacement for the Louis S. St-Laurent. I am delighted to see the government announce the replacement of Canada's Coast Guard flag ship. It will be 40 years old next year. It has done tremendous service. That vessel has been highly successful. However, it is at the point where orderly planning and replacement is essential if Canada is to continue to have any presence up there that people will take seriously.
The Louis S. St-Laurent is unfortunately the only one of the major icebreakers we have of that class. My understanding from reading the budget announcement is that the new replacement for that Coast Guard ship will be somewhat more capable than the existing ship. From that, I take it that it will be perhaps an Arctic Class 6, and I would be pleased to see if it was more. That raises questions about the wisdom of building one ship with significantly greater capability and power than the others. Perhaps there should be two. It also gives me hope that the current government has not forgotten about the other ships that are already up there, the Coast Guard fleet and Coast Guard icebreakers, because the other ships — the Type 1200 vessels that are somewhat smaller than the Louis S. St-Laurent and less powerful and less capable in ice — are also all aging. They are now at the point where replacement has to be planned for them as well. The newest ship of the fleet in the Arctic that was built for that purpose is 20 years old. Even the Terry Fox, which is operating there now, was not designed to last 30 or 40 years, so replacements are essential.
I am pleased to see the announcement of what is billed as the replacement for the Louis S. St-Laurent and pleased that it is being indicated that the capabilities will be in fact better than the Louis S. St-Laurent.
Senator Cowan: To follow up on a question and an answer you gave to Senator Robichaud, those vessels announced in July will be DND vessels, not Transport Canada vessels.
Mr. Turner: Correct, they are not Transport Canada vessels. They are not Coast Guard-DFO vessels. They are DND vessels, operated by our navy.
Senator Cochrane: In various media recently, there has been increasing coverage of the mapping exercise in which Canada is currently engaged but also of similar attention paid by the U.S., Russia, China, among others. From what I am reading and hearing, this issue will only become all the more pressing. From your perspective, do we have adequate resources in place to support our efforts in regard to Arctic sovereignty? What are we doing well in these efforts and what more needs to be done? Finally, do you personally believe there is a threat to our sovereignty in the Arctic?
Mr. Turner: You have asked several questions. Let me touch briefly on the processes under way under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea with respect to the delineation of undersea features that would allow a nation to lay claim to management of the area because these features are an extension of the continental shelf. That is what the argument is about when we see the Russians sailing up there to map the area and put canisters in the sea underneath the North Pole.
Canada is engaged in a similar exercise. It is going about this in an orderly and methodical way. A number of professional people in various government agencies are doing this. The Coast Guard is part of the support function for some of these mapping exercises. A lot of it is done fairly quietly, without much fanfare, through a number of different vessels, even through international research efforts, from aircraft and from parties on the sea ice. There are a number of different ways it can be done, but from my understanding, the Coast Guard is engaged and involved in supporting that mapping process. It is certainly not responsible for it. That is an essential component of making a claim with respect to undersea jurisdiction for resource management responsibility over certain parts of the Arctic.
Other nations are taking this extremely seriously. The Russians have a far greater ice-breaking capability to support such a research mission. They demonstrated that in a recent high-profile voyage to the North Pole. In fact, in 1994, when the Coast Guard vessel Louis S. St-Laurent, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, made a trip to the North Pole on a scientific research mission, who should it meet when it arrived at the North Pole but a very large, powerful, nuclear icebreaker from Russia. They were up there not for scientific research but to film a television show with a bunch of children out on the ice. It is interesting that they can dedicate those kinds of resources to filming a television program.
The Russians have a massive capability compared to what other countries have in terms of their nuclear icebreaker fleet and conventional icebreakers. The Americans have three ships that are more powerful than the Canadian ships, including the two classic polar ships, the Polar Sea and the Polar Star. The Healy, which is their newest research icebreaker, is very capable as well.
With respect to the larger question of Arctic sovereignty, it is much more than being able to demonstrate that you can sail through ice-covered waters. You must be able to map those waters and the undersea features or be able to defend those waters in the sense of repelling an intruder with force. In a newspaper article that I wrote some months ago, I said that experts will tell you there is an 80-20 rule, and I hasten to add I am not an expert in maritime law and sovereignty issues. Essentially, 80 per cent of a country's ability to demonstrate sovereignty over its waters and adjacent lands is inherent in the management and administration of its laws, programs and service delivery in that area. The 20 per cent is associated with the ability to also deter, to defend, and there is no question that this is an important component.
I would argue that we should not overlook our ability to be in the Arctic and to have our citizens living in the Arctic, as they do now; to have the capability in government departments to support our programs and services; and to have the capability, including in the case of the Coast Guard, to enforce our regulations and laws with respect to marine pollution, vessel passages through Arctic waters and environmental protection. These are extremely important aspects of sovereignty.
I believe there was a third aspect to your question.
Senator Cochrane: I think you covered all of them. I was concerned about sovereignty.
Mr. Turner: You had asked whether there is a threat to sovereignty.
In a small "t" sense, there has been a threat for a number of years in the sense that Canada's declared sovereignty over all of our Arctic waters is not recognized by a number of other nations — principally our good friends and colleagues, the United States. Many nations still consider the waters between the islands of the Arctic Archipelago to be international straits that any vessel should be free to sail through, provided it meets international safety and marine pollution standards.
That is not the position that Canada has taken. You may wish to talk to experts in this area about the background to that. However, the threat is there in the sense that if we do not demonstrate that we manage, control and administer those areas, including the waters and the ice that is over them — which is an essential component of it — then there certainly is a threat in a legal sense.
Is there a threat in the capital "T" military sense? I am not an officer in the Armed Forces, but even those I have seen quoted or spoken to have said no, there is no immediate military threat of which they are aware. You should talk to DND in that sense, though.
Senator Cochrane: Minister Flaherty's budget on Tuesday provided $20 million over the next two years to carry out data collection activities, as well as legal work to enable Canada to prepare an effective submission to the United Nations on the limits of the continental shelf. First, what do you make of this $20 million boost; and, second, what would happen if Canada missed the 2013 deadline?
Mr. Turner: To answer the questions sequentially, I am pleased to see that additional funding is being provided. It is essential if the organizations and departments working in this field are to complete their work. There is no point in arriving at that magic date of 2013 with only half the work done. It simply will not cut it. Any claim we might wish to file at that point will be extremely weak and not likely to be accepted.
Whether $20 million is enough is quite another matter. Operations in Canada's Arctic are extremely expensive, as you know. It has nothing to do with the Coast Guard, per se; it has to do with the broader programs, though a portion of that may be required for ship support to carry out those programs. I will not call it a down payment, but I suspect it is a portion of the work and the costs associated with carrying out these initiatives.
The other nations involved in this work would consider that to be an extremely small investment. They are investing far more than that to define the undersea margins of the continental shelf, to map out the features and make their case that those features are an extension of the existing continental shelf in their country, and therefore they should be able to go forward by the deadline date to make a strong claim.
The resources that are thought to be buried under the sea in those areas are believed to be substantial, if not enormous. Obviously, it is in every country's interests to ensure that it controls as much of it as it legitimately can lay claim to.
Should Canada not make such a submission by the deadline, my understanding is that we will lose the opportunity to make that claim at that point and that any retrograde, later action will not carry the same force. It will not be necessary to recognize it as part of the official process that has been laid out by the commission.
Again, there are people far more expert in this field in Ottawa than I that you may wish to talk to about the implications concerning the work being done, along with the timing of it and the submission to the commission.
Senator Robichaud: I have a question about the sovereignty issue and the 80-20 rule, where you say that the 80 per cent relates to our ability to provide services and administer the laws. Do you see any place where we could be challenged on that 80 per cent?
Mr. Turner: Speaking again as a private citizen who simply follows what is going on in our Arctic, there is no doubt that we could be challenged. There has been a reduction in some areas of activity in the Arctic, such as the Nanisivik mine closure, and some areas of development work in the Arctic.
A very small population is broadly scattered across the Arctic — Inuit, in particular. On the other hand, there is an increasing level of foreign shipping traffic sailing through that area, usually tourist traffic in the summertime, with an occasional commercial vessel as well.
No one is at the point of trying to turn the Northwest Passage into a commercial shipping route between Japan and Europe, but there is always that prospect, particularly if ice continues to thin in the Arctic waters. The challenge we have had is that the Arctic is such a vast and lightly populated area. We, as Canadians, have a tendency to address these kinds of issues on a crisis-of-the-day basis. If a big issue is getting attention in the newspapers and media, governments of the day — of whatever stripe — tend to pay more attention. Over the short term there are initiatives taken to try to strengthen our presence and support our people who live there.
As Canadians, I believe that we need to be investing more in our Arctic, in our people and in our communities. The core of our Arctic sovereignty is the people who inhabit the lands and live and work on the ice of the Arctic. It is not a question of throwing money at government programs to sail around to the waters up there or to sail a ship with a big gun on it through the area. There is a necessity to demonstrate every day that this is part of Canada, and we must manage it as if it is part of Canada. The people who live there believe it is part of Canada and we must live that fact every day. We must administer our laws, apply our programs and deliver services to citizens and companies who operate in this area, just as we would if they were living in downtown Toronto, to use an extreme example. It is that kind of investment and dedication to demonstrating not just sovereignty but our ability to live in and use the territory, lands, waters and ice of the Arctic that is so important in making a case later on.
The current mapping initiative is a very particular and specific issue. However, the day-to-day challenge is showing how we, as Canadians, are also an Arctic people. We have to take seriously our responsibilities to the people who inhabit the Arctic and who make a living in the Arctic, both on the land and on the ice. They are truly Canadian citizens like everyone else. I think that is an essential component of Arctic sovereignty.
To the extent that government services provided by organizations such as the Coast Guard, as part of fisheries and oceans, contributes to that. It is an important contribution. The reality is a much broader and larger one of being able to show how you manage, administer and serve the people who live there.
The Chair: Before I go on to Senator Watt, on that topic of sovereignty, we will be hearing next week from Professor Michael Byers from British Columbia who is one of — if not "the" — foremost Canadian experts on this topic. At his invitation, about 10 days ago I attended a seminar held here in Ottawa. It was a model negotiation between Canada and the U.S.'s Paul Cellucci.
I wanted to tell you why and what I have just distributed. I apologize for the fact that it is only in English. These are the results of the model negotiation that went on between the Canadian and American teams. It was a game. Nobody represented anyone and nobody had any authority at all. It was simply a game that they played. At the end of the day, they produced this document. I wanted committee members to have it before next week so that we would be knowledgeable about what went on. Perhaps it will help us in exploring this question with Professor Byers when he appears before our committee.
Senator Watt: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Turner, I can not help but agree with you on many points you have raised. I think the Arctic has been suffering from the standpoint that as a government we tend to react only when there is a crisis. We must prepare and put ourselves in a good position to be able to know how to handle Arctic issues. We never really put enough effort into it, never mind the fact that there is always a lack of money to make those things happen.
In terms of readiness, as a parliamentarian I do not feel that we are ready in the event a crisis takes place in the Arctic. For example, if there is a huge oil spill, I cannot even begin to imagine which country we would contact first that might have the expertise to handle such an event. There is also the difficulty of how to transport the necessary equipment into the Arctic if there is a crisis. I would like to get your reaction on that particular aspect. We do not have any rigs to clean up the mess if there is a spill in the Arctic in amongst the ice. We all know that the ice is thinning. A certain amount of ice will always remain around the bays. Freeing up the open water might happen before the ice in the corners and pockets of those bays disappear.
I put that to you as a first question. I have other areas I am also concerned about that I would like to raise later.
Mr. Turner: Senator, I would tend to agree that as the number of ships increase there is a growing risk of a significant oil spill in the Arctic. The background on this issue goes back to amendments to the Canada Shipping Act in which arrangements were made and negotiations completed with the private sector oil companies to have them fund, through a levy system, the creation of oil pollution response equipment depots and to train their people to operate them in Southern Canada. That is not the case in the Arctic. The Coast Guard that has the responsibility in the Arctic.
The Coast Guard does have depots with pollution response equipment at a number of locations across the Arctic, but I think they would be the first to admit that they would be hard pressed to respond adequately in the event of a major spill amongst ice-covered waters because of the operational challenges that would create.
Certainly, this is an area where multiple departments would come into play. It is perhaps an irony of the situation I was criticizing earlier that there is nothing like a crisis to bring cooperation and collaboration amongst the populous. They step up quickly and do an excellent job. I can name numerous situations I was involved in during my time where we had super cooperation between the departments.
The Coast Guard has an excellent working relationship with DND, for example. You would see all Canada's resources quickly brought into play. DND aircraft such as the Hercules would fly supplementary equipment up into the North and parachute it out to the right area. I cannot overstress the necessity of the Coast Guard having a floating platform and icebreakers capable of operating in the area. You cannot do much if you do not have a platform from which to operate.
We need to pay attention to the limited capability we have in the Arctic to react to a major spill. There is no question that if there is a significant spill, there will be a significant impact on the environment up there. I know from personal experience that it is extremely difficult to clean up oil and ice. We must make that effort. We must do whatever we can possibly do. It will not be an acceptable excuse to Canadians across the country — not just in the Arctic — to say, "Oh, we did not have enough equipment in the stockpile." It is something that the government may want to look at in terms of funding the Coast Guard, which is directly responsible for the response to Arctic marine pollution.
Senator Watt: We are always relying on the government's source of general public tax money, if you want to put it that way, so we tend to look toward the government in many respects. However, with the huge amount of responsibility that is placed on the government at times, I would have to say that the money is not there.
What do you think of the possibility of somehow, somewhere, private funds becoming an issue? In other words, the private sector side would also have to be more involved in the activities in the Arctic because we are running out of time, in my opinion. How would you feel if there were to be a private sector-government partnership arrangement?
Mr. Turner: Senator, it would be extremely difficult to look to the private sector operators to fund major improvements in spill response capability in the Arctic. The private sector operates on the basis that it needs significant commercial activity in an area to sustain the notion that it should be taxed, as it sees it, to provide a capability to respond to something like an oil spill. That is why the system in Southern Canada works as it does now. I personally led the negotiations with the private sector oil companies to establish the capability we currently have. Whether it is sufficient or not is another question.
In the Arctic, you would find it extremely challenging to sit down with a group of oil companies and suggest that they should pay to clean up the oil because in most cases they did not take it there. They are certainly not carrying it through the Arctic in their tankers. They would say that the most likely cause of an oil spill would be a cruise ship from some other country carrying foreign tourists, and the oil companies would wonder why we are looking at them to pay for it.
I would suggest there is funding available within the wider range of government revenues and expenditures to carry out the level of activity that Canadians feel is appropriate. It comes down to a question of what and how we tax and what we do with those funds. Canadians have to make the decision as to whether the Arctic is precious enough for them to spend the money up front to ensure we have an adequate level of protection; in other words, to buy insurance against a significant spill. That is what it is: insurance. It can never be enough in the sense that you will always have damage if there is a significant spill.
I believe that my former colleagues in the Coast Guard will do the best job possible. They will call in every expert in the world to help, including other departments in Canada, but it will be costly to maintain an adequate capability up there. It will be supplemented from capability in the South as well. Before we say we cannot afford it as a country, perhaps we should look at the cost of not doing it if there is an accident.
Senator Watt: Would you be inclined to conduct feasibility studies?
Mr. Turner: It is time for an update of the level of marine operations in the Arctic as it applies to our concerns about the potential for significant pollution incidents. It should involve not only the Canadian Coast Guard and DFO but also Transport Canada and Environment Canada. We should have a close look at what is going on, how traffic patterns have changed, who is operating up there, what the level of risk is, what our capability is and what other countries are doing in similar situations.
Senator Watt: In an effort to get the government to move rapidly in that area, do you see that as part of the recommendations of this committee?
Mr. Turner: Clearly, it is not for me to guide your recommendations, but I will be pleased to see it, if that is what comes out of your report. It is an excellent step.
Senator Adams: I live with the people up there in Nunavut, and they have a few questions, too.
The first time Arctic sovereignty was introduced was in 1953. The C.D. Howe ferried Inuit to the High Arctic, to Resolute and Grise Fiord. It took my family to Churchill. Perhaps this was before your time in the Coast Guard.
Mr. Turner: Yes, senator.
Senator Adams: With respect to Arctic sovereignty, you mentioned that we are all Canadians. We deal with it between ourselves and the Government of Canada, but Arctic sovereignty does not seem to go anywhere given what I have seen. I would say that the people up there should go the United Nations and say, "Why are you guys fighting over Arctic sovereignty? We have a settled land claim and we are the people who are living up there." At least the people up there know that it is Canadian land. The Arctic was settled by other countries as well — the United States, Russia and Denmark.
The United Nations should be able to say something to the Aboriginal people who have been living up there all their lives. Again, with respect to Arctic sovereignty, why would our land and water be taken away from us?
Mr. Turner: Again, stressing that I am not an expert in this area, my understanding is there is a significant interest in what happens in the Arctic but absolutely no debate about Canada's sovereignty over the islands, the land. The debate, if I could call it that, is about the ice-covered waters between the land. As we all know in Canada, there is a distinct difference in how one treats water that is hard, if I can put it that way, on which you can travel, work and hunt, and water which is liquid, on which you sail. Very often in the Arctic it is the former, the ice regime, that governs how people live and operate, particularly in the native settlements.
The real issue in terms of sovereignty is the fact that Canada has chosen to make a claim or make a clear statement of its sovereignty over the waters between the islands, the waters of the Arctic Archipelago. Other nations, looking to maritime law which is approved and developed through the United Nations, are saying, "No, our understanding and interpretation of existing maritime law would effectively make those areas an international strait that we should be allowed to pass freely through."
The problem with taking issues like this to the United Nations is that you might not get the answer you want, in the sense that those laws that clearly define what is intended to be a international strait or waterway were, in fact, developed through the United Nations. A wise man who was my former boss used to say, "Be sure you are ready for the answer before you ask the question."
Personally speaking, I think Canada is in a much stronger position by demonstrating its active management, administration and sovereignty over the area rather than arguing before the United Nations that it should be considered to be sovereign.
Senator Adams: This land claims agreement took us 30 years to accomplish.
Mr. Turner: Indeed.
Senator Adams: On that point, I remember that the ITC, before the NTI, went to the United Nations because we needed to resolve this land claims issue with the Government of Canada. The United Nations said, "You have the land and you are entitled to a land claim." That is why I asked you about the United Nations.
Mr. Turner: That is an excellent example of my point. In that situation, the existing, internationally accepted law and practice clearly recognized that you had the claim because you inhabited the land. The international climate, the environment and the legal framework that has been collectively developed around the world, particularly in the last half century, clearly supported that action. However, you would want to be sure that the framework you are arguing under supports the position you are looking for in the case of Canada's Arctic waters.
Senator Adams: You mentioned not agreeing with the military and the navy spending over $3 billion in the future. What do you think would be the better thing to do for Arctic sovereignty?
Mr. Turner: Returning to my area of expertise in terms of Coast Guard operations, my preferred option would have been to tell the navy that we will fund the construction of a suitable number of offshore patrol vessels optimized for the patrol task, perhaps with a certain amount of light ice capability to take care of the fact that for a good part of the year we have ice even in southern waters, and not try to design a hybrid that will operate in Arctic waters in the ice for three or four months of the year.
With respect to the quid pro quo, or the other side of that coin, I would put the government's money as well into modernizing and updating Canadian Coast Guard ships and ensuring that the next generation of icebreakers constructed for the Arctic are fully capable of supporting all departments of the government, all agencies, including being capable of mounting and supporting an armed detachment from National Defence or the RCMP, for example. In that way, the ships could deliver optimally for the whole government.
The Chair: I have one final question with regard to structure. You said the Coast Guard now is a stand-alone organization, but it is still under DFO; is that right?
Mr. Turner: That is correct. I would hesitate to call it stand-alone. It is called a special operating agency. This is an administrative arrangement with Treasury Board officials and cabinet by which an organization within the government's normal structures can be designated as an agency. In some occasions, they have specific legislation supporting them. The Canada Revenue Agency and the Canada Border Services Agency are good examples.
The Coast Guard is not a Crown corporation. It is still part of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in every sense, but it has a little more administrative flexibility, which is a good thing.
The downside of that, though, is that in this case the designation of the Coast Guard as a special operating agency was accompanied by a transfer back to another department of the program responsibility in areas of marine safety and some of the areas the Coast Guard was already supporting. I am not sure that is necessarily the right thing to do because it telegraphs that we are trying to turn the Coast Guard into an operational service delivery arm and only that.
The Chair: My intention had been to pursue the structure of the Coast Guard. I wanted to explore the whole issue of where the Coast Guard is now, where it should be and what it should be doing. We do not have enough time to go into it now, so I would just target it for future reference.
I thank you for coming. You have been very helpful to us. It might be useful if we have you back a little later on in our deliberations. Once we get further along and firm up our ideas, you can come and criticize those ideas and tell us whether they are good or bad.
The committee adjourned.