Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue No. 30 - Evidence - May 1, 2018
OTTAWA, Tuesday, May 1, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 5:46 p.m. to study on Maritime Search and Rescue activities, including current challenges and opportunities.
Senator Marc Gold (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: Good evening. My name is Marc Gold, senator from Quebec. I’m pleased to chair this meeting. Before I give the floor to the witness, let me invite the members of the committee to introduce themselves, starting to my left.
Senator Christmas: Dan Christmas from Nova Scotia.
Senator McInnis: Tom McInnis from Nova Scotia.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle from Nova Scotia.
Senator Raine: Nancy Raine from British Columbia.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you, senators. I suspect we’ll be joined by a few other senators in due course.
For those who are watching on television or online, you may know the committee is continuing its study on maritime search and rescue activities, focusing on current challenges and opportunities.
This evening we’re pleased to welcome, by video conference, Jim Abram, the Electoral Area Representative, Discovery Islands-Mainland Inlets, and a former lighthouse keeper.
Thank you, Mr. Abram, for joining us. We’re very glad to have you with us. I understand you have some opening remarks. Following those, members of the committee, I’m sure, will have questions for you. Mr. Abram, the floor is yours. Welcome.
Jim Abram, (Elected) Electoral Area Representative, Discovery Islands-Mainland Inlets, Strathcona Regional District (Area C): Good evening to all of you and thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, honourable members and staff.
This is an incredible opportunity for me to share my views and experiences with you. I was privileged last time to have accompanied the committee that was put together a number of years ago to visit some of the sites in B.C. regarding the staffing of light stations.
The report you produced after that fact-finding mission is still, to this day, one of the finest and most comprehensive reports ever produced on the subject. Your work certainly had a great impact on the minister of the day, and the program to remove staff was cancelled. I’m sure it was due to the valuable information contained in that document calledSeeing the Light.
I can only hope the findings of this committee will have similar results with the present minister and present government.
By way of introduction, my name is Jim Abram and I am an elected local government member from the Strathcona Regional District. I represent a long and challenging stretch of the B.C. coastline, called the Discovery Islands-Mainland Inlets, Area C, and it comprises more than 1 million square kilometres of land and water, connecting countless inlets and islands along over 27,000 kilometres of B.C. coastline.
I served on the executive of the Union of B.C. Municipalities for 14 years and was the president of that group. The UBCM represents all 195 local governments in the province of British Columbia. I was first elected to local government in 1988 and have served continuously since then.
I served as a lightkeeper along with my family from 1978 until I retired in 2003. I am very proud of that. I was the founder of the B.C. Lightkeepers Local of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and served as its president since its inception. My family and I have devoted our lives to public service and have led every campaign to stop ill-conceived plans and reduce service to the people of the coast and this nation. Removal of staff from the lights was just one of those campaigns.
We care deeply about the coast, the people who live on it, work on it and recreate on it. We also understand the considerable economic benefit to our province and our nation that this coast provides and we will defend that as well.
I’ve spoken out every time that a misguided program has been proposed by bureaucrats who do not understand the importance of safety services provided on this coast, and I will continue to do so. The public expects it of me, and I could not live with myself if I did not speak out when the people of this coast are at risk of losing yet another piece of their safety net and possibly their lives.
That’s what brings me here today. I appreciate the invitation. Another reason I am here is due to the fact the Coast Guard continues to gag its employees, all of them. The management have been ordered by their minister to cease this practice, and to this very day, there is not a Coast Guard employee who does not fear for their job or their security due to the continuation of that gag order. They are terrified. They go through me.
You would be far better served by having members of the search and rescue stations, the Marine Communications and Traffic Services stations, along with the individual lightkeepers, testify before you about the inadequacies of the safety services on this coast — inadequacies that are a product of bureaucratic policy, not political direction.
I must make that clear. This comes from the lower levels through the upper levels and is advice to the minister. He or she doesn’t come up with the programs.
I’ve gone through about 30 years of fighting to keep staff on light stations due to the incredible service they perform efficiently, reliably and cost effectively. Yet Coast Guard managers insisted that they were unnecessary. The Senate committee that wrote Seeing the Light had a different opinion and convinced the government of the day to adopt their recommendations.
The agenda for this committee today is incredibly broad. Marine and aviation safety are incredibly important to the people of the coast and elsewhere. So where do I start? I really troubled with this over the last number of days. There’s so much.
I’ll begin with the fact many providers of safety services on this coast come to me to tell me of the things that need to change. They tell me of the services being lost and the consequences of those actions.
As an example, with regard to communications, the loss of the Comox Marine Communications and Traffic Services station on the East Coast of Vancouver Island. It was situated roughly midway up the Georgia Basin, also called the Salish Sea, and was one of the busiest stations on this coast outside of Vancouver and Victoria. It was closed in May of 2016 with the tragic loss of valued marine radio coverage for boaters and aviators, and the loss of one more weather reporting station, which it also was.
Weather conditions in this area are on a dividing line between north and south in the basin and was a crucial piece of information to boaters. This is gone now. But more important is the loss of the dependable radio communications that covered the entire Georgia Basin and all of the inlets and islands that spread to the north and east of the station that I represent.
The workload of that station has now been spread between the other stations at Prince Rupert and Victoria. I should point out that shortly before this, the station at Tofino, on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, was also eliminated. This was due to the supposed cost-cutting measures and the hackneyed tune of, “We can cover it with new technology.” I’m sorry; that is not true.
Well, it didn’t save any money, and the technology is not up to par, and the worst thing is the unintended consequence — the loss of reliable radio communications and monitoring of distress calls and vessel traffic.
I have in my possession right here, printed for you, pages and pages of incidents that have been logged by professional radio operators at both Victoria and Prince Rupert stations.
These are the people who take the calls or don’t hear the calls, and they’ve logged every single one of them by date, time, incident, name, et cetera. These pages are regarding the missed distress calls and incidents at those two stations, and it’s because of the fact there is no longer a Comox station in between. These are calls not heard or responded to in a timely manner. This is a result of yet another bureaucratic program that’s gone bad. It was ill-conceived and it was unsuccessful, yet it continues.
I am sure the Canadian Coast Guard will deny these claims and defend their programs, but in the real world, who am I going to believe and who are you going to believe? Should I believe the instigators of an ill-conceived program, or should I believe the factual evidence presented to me by the professionals who do the actual work?
In addition to the filed information of the radio operators, there are letters and accounts by mariners of calls not being heard and not being received. I’m not even going to go into the anecdotal evidence in those letters. This is real proof.
This sad story has been repeated so many times in governments around the world — a perfectly functioning system is removed and then countless millions of dollars are spent to try to fill the gaps. We have all heard the old axiom, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Unfortunately for our mariners and for our taxpayers, that seems to happen all too often.
I’d also like to mention the loss of service at the Comox station included the Vessel Traffic component. The operators monitored traffic and averted more tragic groundings than I’m able to remember. The station was situated approximately — and it still is — 100 feet, plus or minus, upon a bluff that overlooks a huge shoal area in front. It was strewn with very large boulders that were covered at high tide. Very often large pleasure vessels, usually, would be transiting the area oblivious to the danger. The observant operators would come on the distress channel, channel 16 VHF, and warn them of the impending danger and cause them to drastically alter their course, avoiding a possible serious incident, which would then tie up other search and rescue resources.
Other search and rescue issues include the removal of the 71-foot Coast Guard cutter Point Race a number of years ago from Campbell River. It was replaced by a 47-foot vessel designed for very different waters than ours. It does not have the range or the towing capacity of the previous vessel. This is not to say it is not a good vessel, or that its crew does not go above and beyond in all instances. We have the best crews imaginable, but even the best crews always need the best tools. They don’t have the best tools. Our area is one of the busiest on this coast, and these men and women work tirelessly for the safety of the mariners. They are also the least likely people to bring forward issues that need addressing due to the gag order placed on them. It would be great for you to hear their stories in person.
Lastly, I cannot conclude without mentioning the fact that after the government stopped the removal of light stations, the government gave direction to the Canadian Coast Guard to do a number of things. They have not been done. That was 2010.
Communications is one example. That’s what we’re talking about here partly, so I’ll mention it. Light stations still have not been supplied with the most basic of marine communication tools, the marine VHF radio. Everyone uses one on the water, yet light stations don’t have them.
The Canadian Coast Guard based in Victoria has a quantity of satellite phones that were procured for emergency use on light stations, but they remain stacked in the warehouse in boxes. They have been there for a very long time and not distributed to the lights. The light stations have still not been connected to the Internet, nor to the intranet, to get interdepartmental information.
They have still not had station boats returned, and continue to have them removed on the bogus argument it is for their own safety. I hope you’ll ask some questions about this point.
Does the commissioner of the Coast Guard understand how many people have been pulled from the water by lightkeepers who have boats? They’ve been able to go out and pull people out of the water. I’m one of those people. They’ve had life vests and they’ve had exposure suits removed “since they don’t have boats.” They take away the boats and then they take away the safety equipment. Every working environment that is near the water requires a flotation device, and yet we’re taking them away.
The staffing of light stations is in such disarray that I’m not even sure how to fix it other than with outside help. The internal management at the Victoria base responsible for this, for the staffing, has not dealt expeditiously with the problem. How can we get good keepers when they are offered ridiculously short-term jobs that are non-permanent, and then they have to wait many months to be paid due to some system called Phoenix, which some of you may be familiar with. I’ll be meeting with the assistant commissioner on these and other issues in the very near future.
In conclusion, I’d like to thank the committee for taking the time to look into something so key to our coastal life and our economy. I appreciate all of the work that you’ve done over the years, and all of the benefits that have resulted from your work. I’d be pleased to try to answer any questions that you might have, to the best of my knowledge.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much, Mr. Abram.
Senator McInnis: Thank you very much for being here. It was a wonderful presentation. We like for our guests to be candid, and you’ve certainly been that. You’re very well-spoken. Anyone who was the head of the Union of BC Municipalities, that would be quite a task; how many municipal units would there be in British Columbia?
Mr. Abram: One hundred and ninety-five, and that is 100 per cent membership.
Senator McInnis: They certainly had a good leader in you.
Mr. Abram: Thank you.
Senator McInnis: Interesting — the gag order. We’re trying to delve into things. There may be something we can do in order to seek out information from those in the trenches, so to speak. Sometimes it’s difficult to do because, as you rightly point out, many employees would be loathe to speak as candidly as you.
Using the lighthouses makes eminently good sense, but it’s one person in a boat. It’s not that; it’s the communication that you mentioned. If you had the network of communication where you would be able to report incidents; is that correct? It’s not that you want to be a rescuer, although I think you mentioned at the end that you’ve participated, and many lightkeepers do participate in rescue issues. Could you comment on that?
Mr. Abram: Yes. The communication is key. Every station should have a land-based VHF radio in their house, and they should also have in their station boat, which they don’t have anymore, a VHF radio with a proper range; 25 watt is sort of the standard. I have one in my boat — I have a small 16-foot boat and I have a 25-watt radio. Handheld radios are also readily available. They’re very cheap. They’re usually 3 to 5 watts, but they can go quite a way. Certainly in the situation at light stations, or any station on the coast, if a person goes out in a boat, they will always be within range of that 3 or 5 watt radio, which would then go back to the land station so there could be that communication. That communication would also be going on with the nearest Coast Guard station, Coast Guard vessel or perhaps the rescue coordination centre in Victoria.
When I was a lightkeeper, the communication was quite good. I cannot complain about it. We had to buy our own radios because Coast Guard wouldn’t supply them. I didn’t really mind that. That was fine. It was basically a tool of the job that was absolutely necessary, and I wasn’t going to be without one. The communication was good. It’s now gone downhill. That has been at the instigation of the Coast Guard bureaucracy, not the politicians. They don’t get involved in the details we’re talking about today. They take advice from the people they hire. If they give them bad advice, well, politicians only have one recourse, and that’s usually to act upon the bad advice. That’s very sad. I feel sorry for them.
Senator McInnis: On the East Coast, the move is to eliminate the lightkeepers and the lighthouses. Is that the case in British Columbia on the coastline? How many lighthouses would there be that have a keeper or a family there? I ask that question because it strikes me, now that we’re talking about search and rescue, that lighthouses are pieces of infrastructure that we have there. They’re readily available. Is there a move to eliminate them on the West Coast?
Mr. Abram: The move has been there since 1985. That’s when I started to fight it. You have to remember, first of all, the light station policy is a national policy. Whatever happens on the West Coast happens on the East Coast.
Senator McInnis: Exactly.
Mr. Abram: We have a national policy dictated by the commissioner’s office up to the minister that says we want to destaff all stations in the end. We fought it, and we won. We fought it four different times. A couple of times we lost a few; other times we didn’t lose any. The fact that the argument was made then — and you just brought it up just now, astutely — was the infrastructure is already there. You have all that is needed to completely have an isolated station do just about anything. It can provide communications. It can provide lifesaving. It provides aids to navigation. It can provide scientific study, which it does on a regular basis. It can provide search and rescue, which it does in conjunction with the other search and rescue agencies. There are 27 stations on the West Coast; 24 on the East Coast, in case I didn’t mention that.
Not to use this infrastructure, I think, is completely wasteful of government. We have other government departments like Atmospheric Environment Service, Environment Canada and the RCMP. We work closely with the RCMP on coast watch and other things. All of these different agencies do not need to duplicate what already exists at a light station. All they need to do is join in.
The lightkeepers have been 100 per cent in favour of this since day one. They have never asked for a penny more to do it. They don’t want money. They want to be useful, and they want their time to be useful while they are on the station. They don’t want to just be painters of buildings, mowers of lawns and observers of weather. They want to be everything.
From a government perspective, if I were king, I would suggest to use existing infrastructure at any station — whether it’s a radio station, or a light station, or whatever — makes good sense.
Senator Munson: Mr. Abram, thank you very much for being here. I have to declare a conflict of interest because my great, great uncle, James Munson, was the first lighthouse keeper on the Bay of Fundy, Cape Enrage, which was the first square lighthouse built in New Brunswick. He was lighthouse keeper there in 1839.
Mr. Abram: It’s honour to be in your presence.
Senator Munson: Well, it’s a connection. I always want to make sure I get his name on the record because his name is on a plaque. That lighthouse has gone through so many new beginnings and closings, and so on, which brings me to my question about the usage of these lighthouses. I’m wondering how former Senator Pat Carney is feeling these days because in our committee work, when we went out to Victoria and Comox, we heard about the engagement with the Indigenous community. The whole idea was the Indigenous community and those who live along the shores are the ones who know better of what is going on. They can easily rescue — and they have done that over and over and over again. I think the same thing would hold true for those who lived in lighthouses all those years and know the coast of British Columbia.
Is there a dual purpose or an economic argument to be made for not only using them for search and rescue but also continuing as a tourist attraction? Is that economically viable?
Mr. Abram: The points you make are absolutely valid. The Indigenous communities up and down this coast, as you probably know under the Oceans Protection Plan, are being heavily targeted as a group of people who on this coast have been completely ignored. Yet their traditional knowledge of the areas is immense, and in many cases they are the first on the scene. I’m not going to say this is in every case. In many cases, the lightkeepers are the first on the scene, and they pull people out of the water. In many cases, it’s a vessel of opportunity, which is just another pleasure boater, a fish boat, or whatever.
I brought forward my personal belief and theory publicly in the media and got a lot of flack for it last year, when we had all these horrendous fires in British Columbia. There was discussion as to whether or not we should use this equipment, or that equipment, or whether we need more or this or that. My point to the media was when you have something this catastrophic and this big, you throw everything you have at it immediately. That’s what you do in a search and rescue situation. Everybody responds. Anybody in an area when there is a distress call — they all respond.
In the end, somebody gets tasked with the actual rescue of that particular vessel. It might be that a Coast Guard vessel is closest, so they give it over to them. It might be that a First Nations boat from Hartley Bay goes out and saves all the people on the Queen of the North, the B.C. ferry that sank. You cannot weigh one against the other. They are all very important assets and should all be used. They should be used to the maximum.
Senator Munson: Where do you think the stumbling block is? You alluded to it in your presentation. Is it senior bureaucrats here in Ottawa, or in British Columbia, and others, who are giving bad advice to ministers over the many years, and saying, “No, we have this sophisticated technology now that can be used by Coast Guard and others.” It’s not going to cost a lot of money to keep these lighthouses working the way they should be.
Mr. Abram: It does not cost a lot of money. Some of the trouble started way back at the beginning of the light station destaffing program.
It started with new technology coming online every day, and people were glomming onto that and saying, “Hey, it’s the new iPhone, the new Samsung or whatever, and I have got to have it.”
The worst thing that happened during that time is the group called the International Association of Lighthouse Authorities, I think it was called, would get together annually, somebody from each country, and they would say, “We have discovered the best thing since sliced bread, and we think everybody should use it.”
They started doing that. They started putting in fog detectors that were surplus from the U.S. government that were being sold because they didn’t work. The Canadian government didn’t know that at the time. They bought them, tried them and we babysat them as lightkeepers for all the years we were lightkeepers. They never worked properly. We always ended up being the fail-safe foghorn “turner-on-er.”
The lights have all diminished from 15-mile lights to 5-mile to 2.5-mile to 2-mile. It’s crazy. If you have a light up there, anyway, why shouldn’t it be the brightest light possible? The amount of power used is miniscule, and the bureaucracy bought it. People who were into technology, engineers, et cetera — not to target engineers as bad people; they aren’t — they felt that, yes, we need to keep up with the world.
The problem right now the world is finding they need more lighthouses. There are lighthouses being built in 17 different countries around the world. They are not only restaffing them; they are building them.
We don’t need to keep up with the Joneses. That was being done at the time, keeping up with the U.S. The U.S. had destaffed most of its light stations, and Canada’s bureaucracy felt they could do the same thing.
But our coast is quite different.
You can go down the West Coast of North America, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find a place where you can pull in. The coast of British Columbia, you’d be hard-pressed to figure out where you are, because there are 27,000 kilometres of actual in-and-out coastline all the way up and down, from Prince Rupert down to the Washington border. It’s a pretty different situation.
I certainly cannot absolutely pinpoint where the problem was, but I can tell you where the problem is right now. The problem is common sense is not as common as it should be. We need to have common sense and use our resources well, because our resources, nationally, provincially and locally, are being diminished all the time.
We do not have a lot of money, so let’s use our money well. As an elected representative, that’s something I have to look all the time. I only get so much money from my tax base. It’s the same with the province and the feds. Let’s put it to work.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, Mr. Abram. I really appreciate your frank presentation. I have a couple of questions. With regard to the lighthouses that are still functioning on the B.C. coast, how many of those are actually staffed today?
Mr. Abram: On the West Coast, 27 are staffed.
Senator Coyle: So they are staffed.
Mr. Abram: Yes, they’re fully staffed, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. On the East Coast, there is 24 fully staffed and function 365 days a year.
Senator Coyle: How many are not staffed on the West Coast?
Mr. Abram: That’s a number I don’t have off the top of my head. When I started in 1978, there were 43 staffed light stations on the West Coast. They had a number of them already slated for destaffing when I started; I believe it was eight. Since then, they managed in each of those different runs at the destaffing, they took out a couple of light stations. It went from 43 down to 27 at that point.
There are still lighthouses. There is a difference between a lighthouse and a light station. A station is a fully functioning station, like you would expect. The lighthouses are basically just beacons. Sometimes they’re a beacon and a foghorn with an automated foghorn.
Those dot all of the coasts: the West Coast, the East Coast and through the eastern provinces. I do not believe there are any on the very north coast.
Their beacons are called aids to navigation, and they really are just a light and possibly a horn. They don’t give out any other services; they don’t give weather services on the spot, and they don’t do search and rescue, or any of those things.
Senator Coyle: When you spoke of the loss of the two facilities in Comox and Tofino, those were not light stations, were they?
Mr. Abram: No. Actually they were called MCTS stations, marine communication and traffic services stations. They did marine communications; vessel traffic, which is extremely important, especially in this age when we are being inundated by marine traffic; plus floatplane and helicopter traffic.
They also did weather reports. Those weather reports are part of the World Meteorological Organization system. Every station worldwide that reports, reports at exactly the same time through a radio station, two of which don’t exist anymore. Then it goes into Environment and Climate Change Canada or the National Weather Service in the States, et cetera. It becomes part of the global picture of what the weather is doing. That is used for forecasting purposes and local weather purposes. Any mariner on the West Coast who doesn’t use the weather services is just not thinking. You need to know what is happening, weather-wise, between point A and point B if you’re going to transit an area.
Senator Coyle: As we have been hearing, prevention is the best approach to marine search and rescue. The investment has to go into that end of the effort, right?
One last question. When you mentioned the quality crews that exist, I’m trying to figure out which crews you were talking about. You mentioned the best crews possible, but they don’t have the best tools. Are those the same people who you are saying are being gagged?
Mr. Abram: Yes, they are all being gagged. I could say the same for every aspect of the crews, whether it’s light stations, radio stations, or search and rescue stations. They are all top-notch people.
What I would like senators to please realize is these people are not just going to a job. This is a vocation. People go there because they believe in it. Sorry, I get a little choked up when I think about this, because of the numbers of times my wife and I, and every other keeper and their spouse has had to pull people out of the water, whether they were alive or not. I think of all of the vessels rescued. Those would not have happened, in many cases, without staffed light stations.
Many of them would have been covered by the Coast Guard search and rescue stations, no doubt, and they still are today. The vessel traffic systems, they didn’t have boats, they weren’t able to do that, but they certainly were able to direct efforts. If something needed to happen somewhere, they would tell people where to go.
All of those people are quality people, they need quality tools and to be respected by the people who employ them. That is the Canadian Coast Guard.
Senator Christmas: Just bear with me for a minute, Mr. Abram. I’m trying to connect the dots here. If I hear you correctly, I think what you’re saying is staffed light stations are underutilized and could become a significant component of search and rescue operations on the West Coast. They need respect, I certainly hear that, but are you also saying that they don’t have boats? They don’t have VHF equipment? What investment would be needed to fully utilize light stations as search and rescue facilities?
Mr. Abram: Okay, it’s a wonderful question. What you need to know is these stations did have boats, almost everyone of them. There were a few that didn’t because of their topography. They were at the top of 150-foot cliff and there was no way you could launch a boat. It makes sense. All of the other stations that could launch a boat, they had boats, and they had very good boats. Most of them were Zodiac-type inflatable boats, or they were aluminum-welded hull boats. They were built for the purpose. These are not terribly expensive items. If you spent $5,000 on a boat at that time—these are only 15 or 16 feet long; we’re not talking big vessels—there is your vessel.
As for a VHF radio, you can go pick up a VHF radio at any marine supply store for under $500 for the best made, a hand-held for $200. How much value do we place on the life? If you spent $10,000 on a station, bring it up to speed to what it used to be, you would still only have a $27,000 expense on the West Coast. I don’t think that’s really worth the Coast Guard worrying about.
Now, if you wanted to get into utilizing the light station by other departments, those departments are willing to pay to the Coast Guard for services rendered, not to pass it on to the lightkeeper, but to pass it on to the Canadian Coast Guard kitty, to be used in the program. That’s the insulting part.
I have a folder here, two inches thick. In 1988, this study was commissioned by the Canadian Coast Guard, and it included every single federal and provincial department and academia who wanted to use light stations. Every one of them was willing to put people out there if necessary or just use them as transient housing or whatever. They were also willing to pay.
If we have this revenue stream available, why aren’t we taking advantage of it? Some can’t pay. Some of the universities didn’t have the money. The RCMP, we certainly never would even ask them to think about it. But yet we work with coast watch. Back to the oil pollution part, lightkeepers were the first people to report the Nestucca oil spill back in the late 1980s. They were the first to report the largest drug bust in Canada on the west coast of B.C. on Vancouver Island. They were the first to report the first human smuggling activities in Nootka Sound that took place. They reported to the DND and to the RCMP and to the Coast Guard. These are the eyes on the water. They understand what vessels should be there and what vessels shouldn’t be there. When they see someone who doesn’t belong, they let people know.
Using those other agencies or having those other agencies use the light stations, to me, is just the epitome of common sense. You can’t get any better than that.
Senator Christmas: If we were to maximize the search and rescue role of light stations, I could imagine one of the arguments government may make is if light station personnel were first responders, then they need to be certified. They need to be trained. How would you answer that? Do light station personnel have access to that kind of training and certification to be able to do search and rescue operations?
Mr. Abram: They used to. They used to have what was called RIOT. That is the acronym. I don’t know what it means. It was a training course in which they would take lightkeepers from the light station and they would send them down to a place called Bamfield, and they would run them through a search and rescue crash course on how to run these vessels and how to rescue people. They stopped doing it. They said it was monetary; we know it was bureaucratic. The reason was lightkeepers were getting too much positive press. They did not want lightkeepers to get positive press because that made it very difficult for them to then come forward and say, “We want to get rid of these keepers. They don’t do anything. They just look after the light. We can automate that.”
Yes, training would be necessary, and I absolutely agree that it should happen. Every lightkeeper used to get training. As they came on to stations, they would time training for them to go to Victoria or other places.
Our weather training was done by a certified atmospheric environment service weather instructor, who came and lived with us for 10 days and would go out with us in the middle of the night to show us a cloud to say: This a very different cloud, and you need to know about it because it’s a dangerous cloud. We would report all of those types of clouds in our aviation weather reports and our marine weather reports, and many of those reports have been cancelled or shortened by the Coast Guard — once again, reduce the amount of exposure of lightkeepers to the public. That to me is sick. I’m sorry. I’ll be extremely blunt.
Senator Christmas: Mr. Abram, you mentioned earlier in your testimony that you have a log of incidents that included miscalls or letters describing some incidents. Are you at liberty to share that information with the committee?
Mr. Abram: Absolutely. I plan to send it to the clerk of the committee. I have it all here. I have gone through every one of the e-mails I received from the Coast Guard employees who are gagged, who were not allowed to share this with me. I have gone through and redacted everything that would point to them in any way, shape or form. This is just information, but it’s very detailed.
For example: 3:03 p.m., The West View — that’s a vessel — once again, tries calling Victoria Coast Guard radio. Cannot get through. Coxswain shouting. This is what they log in their books in those stations. That is public information. I shouldn’t say “public.”
It is information the Coast Guard has, and it could be accessed if necessary.
I will absolutely send this to the clerk of your committee for all of you to see.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much, and thank you for your frankness.
I want you to paint, if you don’t mind, a picture of the different kinds of SAR activities a light station could do, recognizing there are two people on a station at any one time, usually a couple. One could be manning the radios and one could be helping. Could you paint the actual SAR capacity, if you like, of a station, the potential?
Mr. Abram: Thank you for that question, because I had that conversation this morning with the Assistant Commissioner of the Coast Guard, and I was shocked.
Anyway, the picture would be that in most cases there are two families living on a station. You have a lightkeeper who is employed, and a spouse; and the other one is assistant lightkeeper and a spouse. Many times there are kids. Those kids could be anywhere from toddlers to almost grown adults.
Should there be an incident off a station where it is safe for the lightkeeper to go out on their own in a station boat, they would go out. This is what we always did. We didn’t go out two people in a boat except in extreme situations. We went out one person in the boat, and it might be a broken-down boat. This is a vessel that has had a mechanical problem or is possibly going to catch fire because of it or whatever. We would bring a fire extinguisher or a fire pump, or just go out there and get a line on them and tow them to safety. That would be one situation. And, of course, they would be in radio contact with the other lightkeeper who is on the station, or the spouse of either lightkeeper on the station. That was always acceptable, no problem.
If it was people in the water, then it was all hands on deck. Two keepers in the boat go out. There were nine people, I believe, off Entrance Island near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. They were pulled out of the water; all nine of them were pulled out of the water by the two lightkeepers. That was because they had a station boat, a small boat. They pulled them out, brought them in, treated them for hypothermia, and transferred them to the Coast Guard search and rescue vessel that came and picked them up, and then they went to an ambulance.
This has happened on the West Coast at Cape Beale. It has happened at numerous other stations, and it has never been a problem. It has been made a problem somehow within our litigious society, where people are saying, “Well, you can’t have one person out there; you need two, and therefore we’re not going to send anybody out if you don’t have two.”
For a lightkeeper, that would be a total slap in the face. It would most likely be ignored. I’m sorry, but if we broke the law, we broke the law, and we did it for good reason.
We used to always be told, by certain managers who were on our side, that in an emergency, all bets are off; you do whatever needs to be done. That included whether you were licensed to be a radio operator or not, whether you were licensed to run a rescue boat or not. If you knew how to do it, you could do it.
That was another thing that we were always trained in. We had to take radio operator courses in order to operate a VHF radio. We were licensed radio operators. This is not just Joe Blow or a kid picking up a radio and saying, “Hello, hello.” We’re out there doing it properly and by the book.
As far as your question, Senator Raine, the picture I paint now is that lightkeepers are being told they have to have two keepers in the boat or they can’t go out. Well, in my opinion, that is ridiculous. If that is the case, if that is the law, it needs to be changed. I’m not sure who it is that needs to change it or what level of bureaucracy or policymakers or whatever says that’s the law. They need to be targeted and they need to change the law and make it so that, in a distress situation, rules can be changed. They’re policies, and policies can always be changed.
The Deputy Chair: We’re going to a second round.
Senator Coyle: Thank you again. This has been really enlightening, actually — no pun intended. I’ve learned an awful lot from your testimony here today.
I’m curious. Of course, we’ve heard, as you can imagine, from witnesses from the Coast Guard. What do you think the Coast Guard bureaucracy would say to us, or the leadership of the Coast Guard would say to us, if we fed back to them what we’ve heard from you?
Mr. Abram: I would imagine it would depend on where you were. If you were in your chambers, they would say one thing. If they were at the local pub, they might say another thing. I am sure they would dispute everything I have said to you today because it does not fit their program. I find that very distressing because I was always brought up to tell the truth.
The truth, in the last Senate committee where I appeared in Ottawa — I was sitting in that chamber — I had every single government department’s testimony sitting next to me, highlighted and underlined, as to the issues that they spoke on that were untrue. I was willing to share that with all members, but we ran out of time, so I just had to state it.
If the Coast Guard commissioner were to come in tomorrow and tell you that, “Well, the law has changed and we have to have two people in a boat,” then fine; change it again. Make it so you don’t have to have two people in a boat, or allow one of those people to be the spouse of a lightkeeper.
Just so you know, the spouses that are full-time lightkeepers, most of them have been trained just like the lightkeeper who actually gets paid, only they don’t get paid. The Coast Guard is actually getting four employees for the price of two at all of these stations. In my case, and many other keepers’ cases, they have more than four; they have six. I had two kids who were both in their teenage years, who saw — and reported to me and my wife — people fall overboard. Had it not been for their eyes and ears, looking through binoculars and reporting it, those people would have died. They were in tide rips in extremely cold water, bad weather, underdressed, no flotation devices. I was able — because the weather was bad — to call the search and rescue station; and they dispatched a boat immediately, which pulled them out of the water and saved their lives.
If that kind of thing is happening and has happened, then I think the Coast Guard bureaucracy at the highest levels needs to acknowledge it and to say, “We’re going to support our employees, because our employees are supporting this nation.”
Senator Coyle: Clearly that’s the truth.
I am imagining you are a man who doesn’t go quietly into the night. You must have been advocating for the sorts of things you’re talking with us about. What reaction do you get?
Mr. Abram: I have gotten reaction from pretty much 100 per cent of the people who I have spoken to about the efficacy of doing what I have been speaking of; using light stations to the fullest, rescuing people, having good communications.
At the beginning of the program, before people were educated as to what actually happened on light stations or marine communications stations or search and rescue stations, before they actually knew, there were many who felt like, “Why can’t we just automate the light?” Of course you can automate the light. You can automate anything that is sort of electronic. That doesn’t take care of the rest of it. Those people now are adamant defenders of staffing.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much.
Senator Hartling: Sorry I was late. I saw Senator Manning in the chamber and I thought the committee wasn’t happening. Anyway, I got it.
Thank you very much for your presentation. I grew up in the east of Canada, so lighthouses are a part of us. I am always fascinated by lighthouses and people who work there.
My question is around looking at retirement and recruitment. Would it happen that generationally, your sons or daughters would become lightkeepers, or do they say, “Oh, no, I don’t want to do that because we did that all our lives?” How does recruitment happen after retirement?
Mr. Abram: In many cases, there are keepers who have kids who have become lightkeepers. The keepers at Carmanah Point Lighthouse, both of their kids, one male, one female, became lightkeepers and have worked their way through the system and up the system into principal lightkeeper positions.
That’s not the main recruitment. The main recruitment was always done by the Canadian Coast Guard who would put out an ad annually and they would interview people and shortlist 20 names who may be suitable to use as a lightkeeper. When a job came open, they would take the top person and interview them even further and actually grill them and see if they were capable of doing that job. If they were, they would hire them.
That process fell by the wayside. What has happened now has been a hodgepodge of, “We need a lightkeeper at such-and-such a station,” and they would try to draw one from another station to bring them in to fill the position, in the meatime creating another hole that may be filled by a spouse.
We started get more and more stations that had two married people being the lightkeepers because the recruitment had not kept up with the times. You know that succession planning is certainly something that every corporation needs to do. It hasn’t been done well with the light stations and right now it is an extreme problem. I mentioned it in my presentation, the staffing by the person in Victoria is not being done at all and we are facing situations with lightkeepers who cannot go on their leave, even if it’s for, say, medical reasons, because they don’t have a person to plug in. That’s just unconscionable. They need to have a backlog of people they can call on.
This pay system I mentioned earlier, Phoenix, that maybe some of you are familiar with, it’s killing the light stations. You want to hire a term lightkeeper to come in for a couple of weeks or a few weeks or a couple of months to do a job and then tell them, “Sorry, we’ll pay you six months from now,” that doesn’t sit well with people, because most of them need the money. I know this is throughout the public service right now and it needs to be changed. It needs to be scrapped. I don’t know who the programmer was who put that one in but somehow it needs to be dealt with.
Senator Hartling: You kind of half answered that question. I was thinking about gender and women. If women did this job, I can see that’s a good occupation for women. Then I was also thinking about what you were saying, couples. Has it ever been that you wouldn’t have to be a couple, but you could be a pair who would work together in the lighthouse?
Mr. Abram: Certainly. As far as women are concerned — let me step back. I missed the question or part of the question.
Probably 50 per cent of the women or the keepers on the stations today are women and they are the principal keepers. They’re the head honcho, as far as that goes. They’re great keepers. They can do anything that needs to be done. They can get all the training that needs to be done. It doesn’t matter what your gender is.
Sexual orientation makes no difference whatsoever it can be female-male, male-male, female-female. I’m just talking about pairs of people, basically, when I said “couples.”
Senator McInnis: A brief question: Did you mention the Oceans Act?
Mr. Abram: I certainly did.
Senator McInnis: And you mentioned —
Mr. Abram: Sorry. May I correct? I mentioned the Oceans Protection Plan, I believe is what I said. That’s the OPP. That’s the announcement that was made a couple of years ago about the $1.5 billion that will be injected into the West Coast.
Senator McInnis: That’s right. Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Mr. Abram, before I formally thank you, this was a fascinating and challenging hour or so we spent with you. Thank you very much. I share the view of my colleagues that you’ve brought issues to our attention of which we were only dimly aware, members of this committee. We really do appreciate that.
Allow me, though, to ask you this: You have made a number of quite serious allegations with regard to the Coast Guard, gag orders and alluded to their motivation for some bureaucratic actions and so on. They’re serious and we take them seriously. If you had evidence of this, or information to substantiate that, it would be helpful if you would send it to the clerk of the committee. That would put us in a better position to assess your testimony and give it the proper consideration I’m sure you and Canadians deserve.
On that, I want to thank you on behalf of the members — I’m sorry. Were you about to say something? I didn’t mean to cut you off.
Mr. Abram: I would like to say that I have approximately 20 file boxes of the type of information you’re talking about.
The Deputy Chair: I’m a fast reader, but I’m not sure I can manage that. I’m not asking you, obviously, to disclose things that would put anybody in a compromised position. It’s simply that it is somewhat difficult for the committee to give weight to your testimony, sincerely offered as it was, notwithstanding. I’m inviting you, if you think things would be helpful for us to properly assess it, I invite you to communicate with the clerks and we would be happy to receive whatever material you’d like to provide to us.
Mr. Abram: I appreciate the offer and I think it’s an extremely valid point on your part. I know my allegations have been serious. I have been cautious. As you know, I am a local government representative. I am always cautious. As a human, I try to be cautious and not offend. At the same time, when things are being done that are just outright wrong, it needs to be brought to the attention of the appropriate people.
In my mind, you are the appropriate people. You are the people at the Senate able to have the ear of government and let government know you have done the fact-finding and you have done the footwork they need in order to make good decisions. I absolutely appreciate the work this committee has done. Senators before you and with you now who have worked on this issue, you’ve done an incredible service to this nation.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you for that, Mr. Abram. I will now thank you once again on behalf of the committee and conclude the meeting.
(The committee adjourned.)