THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON FISHERIES AND OCEANS
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 17, 2018
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 5:30 p.m. to study on Maritime Search and Rescue activities, including current challenges and opportunities.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I apologize for our late start due to a vote in the chamber. My name is Fabian Manning. I’m a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador, and I am chair of this committee.
Before I give the floor to our witness this evening, I would ask that the members of the committee who have arrived introduce themselves. There will be other senators joining us afterwards.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Nova Scotia.
Senator McInnis: Thomas McInnis, Nova Scotia.
Senator Poirier: Rose-May Poirier, New Brunswick.
Senator Raine: Nancy Greene Raine, British Columbia.
The Chair: Thank you, senators. As I said, there are other senators who are en route and will be joining us shortly.
The committee is continuing its study on maritime search and rescue activities, including its current challenges and opportunities.
Today we have two panels. In our first panel, we welcome Maureen C. McLaughlin, Vice President, Public Policy, Iridium Satellite LLC. On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here today and joining us. I understand that you have opening remarks that you would like to make. Following your presentation, I’m sure members of our committee will have questions for you. Welcome.
Maureen C. McLaughlin, Vice President, Public Policy, Iridium Satellite LLC.: Thank you for the opportunity to speak at this committee.
Today I would like to summarize three issues that are important to both Canada and to Iridium. First, I want to highlight the services Iridium enables for Canadian government agencies involved in search and rescue efforts. Second, I want to describe the challenges now affecting maritime safety in the Canadian Arctic waters. Third, I seek to enlist the support of the Canadian government in authorizing a critical new service that will dramatically improve maritime safety communications in the northern latitudes.
What is Iridium? Iridium operates a 66-satellite, low-Earth-orbit communication satellite system. There are some unique things about the architecture that are particularly relevant to Canada. One, it’s a polar orbiting system. We have 12 satellites in six planes, and they all converge at the poles. One satellite takes about 100 minutes to go around the globe. What that means is that we are the only global, mobile communications system in the world, and we do full polar coverage. As a result, we have provided a lot of services in Canada where the terrestrial infrastructure either is not, or is sparse.
For nearly 20 years we have done this, and now is a particularly exciting time. We’re in the midst of replacing our satellite system with state-of-the-art technology, a US$3 billion investment. It’s the Iridium NEXT system. It’s a state-of-the-art system that will allow us to provide more bandwidth and higher speeds for the services relied on by many of our Canadian customers on the land, in the air and the sea. We are two thirds of the way through, and we anticipate to be done during this year.
Since 2001, Iridium has provided service to multiple Canadian government agencies that have the need for remote tracking and communication. Examples: Shared Services Canada recently announced the renewal of its contract with MetOcean Telematics, which is based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and Track 24 Defence, based in Ottawa. These two Canadian distributors support approximately 6,500 Canadian government subscribers.
Iridium is relied on for critical voice and data safety services also by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Department of National Defence, Parks Canada, Environment and Climate Change Canada and others. Iridium is proud to support the work of the Canadian government military as well as the many non-government actors necessary in providing search and rescue services.
Senators, as you know, Arctic shipping routes are being used more and more heavily, yet maritime safety communications, in particular, the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System, are limited, quite frankly, at the high-latitude areas in the Arctic Ocean. This poses a challenge to Canada’s maritime search and rescue personnel and one we are determined to help solve.
Iridium is poised to deliver reliable GMDSS for vessels in northern Canada, but there needs to be an international approval for us to be able to do this. For that, we need the continued support of the Canadian government.
What is this Global Maritime Distress and Safety System? GMDSS provides ship-to-ship, ship-to-shore, shore-to-ship emergency communications for distress calls. The communication goes to the rescue coordination centre, and they can coordinate the search and rescue activities from there. Importantly, it’s also designed to provide navigation and weather information to help ships avoid hazardous situations.
Technologically speaking, you can think of it as a system of systems. It depends where you are. If you are near the shore where you have terrestrial infrastructure, radio frequencies can be used to provide the information. But as you move farther out to sea, those systems won’t reach and you need satellite-based systems. Right now, there is one satellite-based provider authorized to provide the service, and the satellite GMDSS enables the two-way communications so these rescue coordination centres can talk to ships and facilitate inter-ship communications during an emergency as well as send and receive safety information. Unfortunately, right now, because you only have one authorized provider, satellite GMDSS does not cover all the Arctic waters.
We want to bring to the attention of this committee what is missing, how it can be fixed, and the opportunity for Canada to lead international efforts to fix it.
The international law requiring GMDSS was agreed to back in 1988 when the Arctic Ocean was largely impassable. As a result, no one considered the impact of having a blind spot over the polar regions. But shipping and authorities responsible for shipping safety are vulnerable without access to GMDSS at high latitudes. Ships are limited to using something called an emergency-position-indicating radio beacon, which is a mouthful. Basically what that means is it’s a one-way distress beacon. Think of it as an electronic flare. It might give the location, but you have no idea if anyone received the message. Most important, there is no two-way communication about the cause of the distress, what the situation is and what’s needed.
Given the ever-increasing traffic on Canada’s Arctic routes and the often harsh weather, more reliable emergency communications are critical not just for the Canadian people but for Canada’s search and rescue personnel, whose lives are put at risk when their communications capability doesn’t extend to where they may be called to do their most difficult and dangerous work.
Expanding the satellite piece of GMDSS also has environmental benefits. First, you don’t need any more terrestrial footprint in sensitive areas. There are no cables or towers. All the equipment is in the sky. Second, the GMDSS communication can provide safety information that can help ships avoid accidents, which would have an ecological impact in the first place, and also expedite the search and rescue operations that could hopefully limit environmental damage.
The benefits of satellite GMDSS are unavailable in the high latitudes today because the single provider's satellites operate in a geostationary orbit that is lined up at the equator so they can’t see them. If I can just describe satellite systems, we are the only commercial satellite system that is non-geostationary. That is that polar orbit that we are constantly going over. We are closer to the earth. The majority of satellites are geostationary. They are 40 to 50 times farther away from the earth, and they’re in an arc around the equator. There are lots of nice companies doing lots of nice things, but the physics is if you are in an arc around the equator that high up, you can’t see the poles. They can’t provide that service at the high latitudes, whereas we can. Because of its unique architecture, our system is the only system capable of bringing the essential functions of satellite GMDSS to all Canadian waters, and we seek your support to do so.
As the last part of my opening statement, I’d like to focus on how Canada can continue to ensure that maritime safety communications are fit for the future. Next month, at the Maritime Safety Committee at the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, Iridium is seeking approval to operate as a GMDSS provider. Iridium has spent many years putting in the work to meet the relevant standards. What is required now is for the IMO member states to approve Iridium as a GMDSS provider based on the rigorous technical assessments that have already been completed. We seek your support in obtaining this authorization and, with it, improve maritime safety services in all Canadian waters.
Unfortunately, what should be an objective technical assessment risks being buried under a complex multilateral process. Canada is a leading voice that encourages fairness and plays a significant role in the development of safety services. When Canada speaks, countries take note.
We encourage the Senate’s commendation of Transport Canada for their support of this initiative at the IMO, but we must ask for another effort from them next month to avoid the multilateral process being exploited to protect national interests.
If Iridium’s efforts fail because of administrative procedures or narrow national interest, wider consequences could be felt across the industry. If the industry sees the process can be derailed by politics, they may cease to take part in it. This would surely prevent the next generation of safety systems from emerging. Canada’s maritime search and rescue teams deserve better.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you for your presentation.
Senator McInnis: I read your paper, and I was confused then and I’m just as confused now, not being an expert on satellites. Why is your system more advantageous or effective than this oceanographic radar system that the European Union and the United States have? I mean, distinguish them for me, will you, from your satellites? You mentioned the Arctic as something that is crucial, and, of course, we all know that traffic is increasing there. What would Iridium do in the Arctic as opposed to some other system that could be put in place?
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s a great question. I’m not familiar with the nuances of that system, but, as you have described it, it’s a radar-based system. Radars can tell you where things are. Iridium is a satellite communications system. The idea here is you have a voice capability as well as a data messaging capability. Think of it as one unit and a red button. You hit the red button, and you have got the voice right next to it. It’s okay if radar tells you where the ship is, but what you really need to know is this is the ability of I am suddenly having an emergency and a distress, and those communications have priority over all other communications. So I hit the button and I get priority communications to the rescue coordination centre. They know exactly where I am. We open up a channel. They know exactly what is wrong and they know who to send and how to provide help. That’s the huge advantage.
If you contrast it with the electronic flares I was talking about, they will send the information as to where the ship is, but that’s it. The captain doesn’t know if anyone heard it or if anyone is coming. Also, the receiver doesn’t know what the problem is. Do I send a small boat? Are there too many people? Is it a gas leak? Do I need a different type of boat? They don’t know. But with our system, they can communicate that information more effectively to search and rescue.
Senator McInnis: The oceanographic radar systems measure the speed and direction of the ocean surface currents over a large region of the coastal ocean in real time from a few kilometres offshore to 200 kilometres. Can you do that with the satellite system that you have? Because they say that’s how they can access vessels that are abandoned.
Ms. McLaughlin: I think it’s two different systems that may have complementary functions. Just as an aside, on our system, as I mentioned, we’re a communications system. It’s interesting. We have 25 partners all across Canada. We have a lot of, just to expand it, interesting and different uses or ecosystems. For example, in tsunami warnings or in measuring sea temperatures, we don’t measure it. Someone else has a sensor and does that and gets all that data. Arctic ice, the temperature of the ice and those types of applications, someone else has a sensor that’s doing that, but we’re the communications link that gets that data out of there. We do those types of applications all over the world, in particular with shipping, but our main focus is safety communications, the critical communications.
Senator McInnis: Yes, I know. Why would the United States of America and the EU be doing this system of radars? Satellites are quite prevalent today, they are common, so why wouldn’t they be using your system?
Ms. McLaughlin: Why wouldn't the U.S. government?
Senator McInnis: Or the EU or Canada.
Ms. McLaughlin: Radar has a different function. We are used in Canada — special forces uses us for voice and tracking, the army uses us for two-way data, your navy uses us for ship data and voice, your air force uses us for tracking solutions, and the RCMP uses our PTT, which is a global walkie-talkie, if you will, push to talk. We are used by all of those areas. I think it’s complementary. There are different purposes being served. I don’t think it’s an either/or, from what you’re describing.
Senator McInnis: You’re saying this would be a supplementary service.
Ms. McLaughlin: I’m not as familiar with that. I’m saying I don’t think they are in conflict. I’m not as familiar with what the radar group is doing, but as you described it, it seems to be different uses and purposes.
Senator McInnis: I read that this system is the gold standard.
Ms. McLaughlin: It may be for its function, but I’m suggesting that its function and our function are different, as you’ve described it.
Senator McInnis: Thank you.
Senator Poirier: Thank you for the presentation. Cospas-Sarsat is currently working on improvements to its system by adding a new type of satellite in the medium-altitude Earth orbit, which will provide almost real-time detection and location of a distress signal from any point on the globe. What distinguishes these medium-altitude Earth orbit satellites from Iridium's low-Earth satellites in terms of capacity and cost?
Ms. McLaughlin: That's a very good question. In satellites, architecture really determines a lot. MEO, or medium earth orbit, is higher up than we are -- not sure the exact altitude they are at, but they’re higher up. So the lower you are, the better your latency because the signal doesn’t have as high to go up and come back down. I’m not familiar with how many they have. We have 66, and each one has overlapping beams so you have tremendous redundancy in any spot on the globe. It’s two architectural distinctions. With the nature of our system having six planes and all the satellites converging at the poles, it’s unique for the polar coverage.
Senator Poirier: And the cost?
Ms. McLaughlin: GMDSS calls are free. Distress calls are free, as they should be, I would think. There is no cost issue in this context, I don’t believe.
Senator Poirier: What is the current use of your satellites? You talked about the 66, but who uses them?
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s a great question. As I was mentioning, there are 25 partners in Canada, and the system is used by everything. We have more than just a maritime line of business. We are very big in aviation safety because of the reliability of the network. We’re not the back of the plane, the Gogo and the Wi-Fi. We are the critical communications in the cockpit, so pilot communications, black box streaming, the safety data on the tarmac doing the check-up. A lot of that is now automated. How is the fuel? What’s the pressure? Those things are automated back and forth, and we are relied on quite a bit for those types of communications.
We also have a very big “Internet of Things” growing business, and the reason for that is again the global coverage. You can manufacture something, as the Arctic, not just shipping lanes, but the Arctic polar air routes are being used more and more. Our antennas are very small, almost the size of my nail to the size of a credit card. You can put them on anything and track it all over the globe.
Senator Poirier: Have you talked about your system with the Coast Guard people, with the Canadian government?
Ms. McLaughlin: Absolutely. Canada has been very supportive in the IMO and we appreciate that. We have another meeting coming up and just the continued Canadian support would be extremely important. Canada is very respected in the international organizations for this sort of fair approach to things. When Canada speaks, people notice, and so they’ve been a great partner. We’re just hoping that that continues, given the importance of the Arctic coverage for these safety services. It’s a natural alliance.
Senator Poirier: Just on another line, I know there was a fact-finding mission that some of the committee members went on in British Columbia a while back. The members heard that through the very high-frequency radio system, there were some blind spots where distress signals cannot be relayed to the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre. In your system, are there any blind spots?
Ms. McLaughlin: No. It’s global coverage.
Senator Poirier: So there are no blind spots.
Ms. McLaughlin: No, it’s global coverage across the globe. You have 12 satellites in six planes all over the globe, and each satellite, as I said, only takes 100 minutes to go over the globe. We pick them up and we track them from 5 degrees over the horizon until 5 degrees on the other side. One is constantly coming up, one is overhead, depending on where you are, every 10 to 15 minutes, so we’re constantly tracking them so one is constantly overhead.
As an aside, one of the interesting things about that, again with architecture being so important, is we are very big in the aviation area in the rotor-craft, helicopter space. Why is that? Because you have that look angle. It’s not one satellite way up in the sky that doesn’t move relative to the earth. They are constantly coming off and coming overhead, so helicopter pilots can pick them underneath the blades. The blades cause distortion with a lot of signals, as you might imagine. It’s not a problem for us because you can get a look angle that’s actually underneath the blades.
Senator Coyle: Thank you for your presentation. It’s fascinating. Actually, Senator Poirier asked a number of my questions, but I have a couple of others.
I’d like to know more about your company. I didn’t get a chance to dig in or do a Google search on your company. I would like to know more about the company itself and who its clients are, not just in Canada but elsewhere. I’d also like to know why you need Canada’s support for this international approval. Are there any other obstacles that you’re anticipating at that level?
Ms. McLaughlin: Those are great questions. Iridium is based in the United States, it’s a United States company, and we have been around since the late 1990s. We have a long history in the critical communications, critical infrastructure of communications. We have value-added resellers, so we don’t sell directly to the consumer. We are partners with MetOcean Telematics and Track 24 Defence. We are used in a wide variety of applications, and a lot of times it’s very clever people coming up with applications of what they can do with the signal. It is everything from industrial companies, sea mining companies that need to monitor their equipment, because if the equipment goes out it’s a lot of cost to revenue, and they can get all that information off of the equipment — how’s the oil pressure? All of that they can get from our system remotely. There are tuna buoys in the Pacific monitoring fishing. We are used in a lot of countries for long-range identification and tracking of ships, tracking of fishing vessels, those types of things, because we can see the whole globe. In the aviation space, I mentioned a lot of the major airlines are customers because of the critical cockpit communications. As I said, IoT -- the Internet of Things -- is the largest growth area. Right now, just recently, we hit our one-millionth subscriber, so the business is growing and doing very well. A lot of that is the unique functionality of the system because of the global coverage.
The other question you raised, which is a very important one, is why am I here and why do we need Canada? To get the authority, you go through the International Maritime Organization, or IMO, which is part of the UN. It’s a consensus-based organization. But any time you have 173 countries, it can be a slow-moving process, and it’s an easy process to stop progress. The larger the organization, usually the easier it is.
We have been going through this process because they must certify us as a first step that you’re ready to provide this service. The IMO Maritime Safety Committee was looking at it. Basically, the International Maritime Safety Organization, IMSO, looked at the technical things. They did a rigorous technical evaluation and testing. There was a check list, and all those things had been met. So they reported positively to the group that, yes, Iridium was technically ready for this. And then it’s layers. At the subcommittee, the majority of countries recognized that that was the case, and so that’s then going to the full committee, which is in May.
There’s currently a monopoly provider, and the country that is the home of that monopoly provider was thinking maybe we need to study this a lot longer before we get somebody else in there who can help with this. It’s one of those situations where the support and voicing support is very important to sort of sway the room, and Canada has been very helpful. But when you’re faced with that kind of situation and you have a clear economic and competitive reason, I don’t think that country will change its view. Therefore, it’s much more important that your allies speak loudly and strongly for what they think is right.
Senator Coyle: Are you publicly traded?
Ms. McLaughlin: Yes, we are.
Senator Raine: I take it the company that has the monopoly right now is Inmarsat?
Ms. McLaughlin: Correct.
Senator Raine: You have customers but not in this particular field; is that what it is?
Ms. McLaughlin: Yes. We compete commercially, and that’s fine. That’s no problem there. It’s a function of the history of this. Way back in the day, Inmarsat started as an inter-governmental entity. At least in the United States, our public utilities used to be all monopolies and not privatized, because the thought was that this is so big and complicated that it has to go that way. In the late 1980s, when these treaties were established and the requirements were established for this type of GMDSS service, there was only one provider because that’s the way things were looked at at that point in time, so the authorization was for just the one provider that had been created in that situation.
Now we move forward and their situation has changed. They’re a regular company now, and so the question is updating the rules and the treaties to allow others in to provide that unique safety service. It’s for this GMDSS safety service that we need IMO approval to start the process to launch the commercial service.
Senator Raine: I take it that’s because the maritime distress service is international in scope.
Ms. McLaughlin: Yes.
Senator Raine: So a ship could be from one country, transiting through another country, so you need to deal with more than one country.
Ms. McLaughlin: Right.
Senator Raine: You said in the beginning you had 66 satellites, but later you said you have 12 satellites and 6 planes.
Ms. McLaughlin: I’m sorry; I was speaking too quickly. We have 66 satellites.
Senator Raine: You definitely said you have 12 satellites and 6 planes, but is that a different sector of the business?
Ms. McLaughlin: No, I was just speaking too quickly. Forgive me. That was an error.
We have 66 satellites, and there are 12 on each plane. No, 11 on each plane. Now you’re getting me confused. I’m sorry.
Senator Raine: I thought a satellite was a body that orbited the earth.
Ms. McLaughlin: I'm sorry. “The plane” meaning the circle around the earth.
Senator Raine: I interpreted “airplane.” I was envisioning kind of big AWAC up there flying around.
The satellites that are going on these planes — so a plane is a line around the earth, and there are six of those, and those cover the whole of the earth?
Ms. McLaughlin: They do.
Senator Raine: And the satellites, 12 of them on each plane, are spread out and they’re travelling around, or are they fixed?
Ms. McLaughlin: No. We pick them up. That’s what is unique about our architecture. If you are familiar with other satellite companies, they are in the geostationary arc. That means they are higher up and their position is fixed.
Senator Raine: When you’re lying on the beach looking up at the sky and you see a satellite going over, that’s one of the low satellites moving around the earth?
Ms. McLaughlin: Right.
Senator Raine: With yours, there's one, and then a couple of hours a second one will come by?
Ms. McLaughlin: It’s not a couple of hours; it’s about eight minutes. Interestingly, with our original satellite system, which we are now replacing, the way it was designed, it would hit some of the panels of the sun. As they went over, you would see what’s called an iridium flare. If you go on your phone, there’s an app where you can track the iridium flares. It’s the satellite going over.
We are the only commercial satellite system that functions this way. So we’re lower, and it only takes 100 minutes for one satellite to do a lap around the earth. They are going overhead very quickly. Depending on where you are, one is overhead every 10 minutes or every 15 minutes. They are going overhead very quickly. There is one after the other. We’re picking them up. We’re different. We’re lower, and they are constantly going overhead.
Senator Raine: And you have earth bases, obviously.
Ms. McLaughlin: We do. We control them from the earth. But the unique thing about our architecture is that our satellites are cross-linked.
I’m talking about a “plane” meaning the arc — not on an airplane but an arc. If you have them here and you have another group here, they talk to each other — north and south, and east and west — on either side. It’s like a giant mesh network in the sky. Something goes up, bounces around up there and then comes down. We do have facilities to control them on the ground, but the communications can really go around the globe up in the sky and come down anywhere.
Senator Raine: It’s not like you’re going back to a fixed land base per se, the way the radar system would be?
Ms. McLaughlin: No. The communications can go anywhere. That’s why we can use it for tracking. The signal is going up to the satellite and it’s bouncing down, and it can come down anywhere.
Senator Raine: Does your system do agricultural radar scanning for crop development and things like that, or is that not the field you’re in?
Ms. McLaughlin: We don’t do radar. Radar is a separate technology. Some of the applications in agriculture are more IOT, Internet of Things, based. Some of the agriculture equipment would be no different than the mining equipment. They need to check the performance and they need to know the maintenance and what’s going on, so we are often how they get that information to where it needs to go to process it.
Senator Raine: There’s now satellite tracking for farm ploughing to make it very efficient, but the stationary satellite would be doing that.
Ms. McLaughlin: It’s not us. I don’t know who is doing that, but it is not us.
Senator Raine: I have another question about getting the IMO authority. What branch of the Canadian government do you need to work with on that? I don’t think it’s the Senate Fisheries and Oceans Committee. It’s very interesting for us to learn about it, and certainly in the study we’re doing it would probably be appropriate to support it with a letter, but obviously somebody is going off to negotiate this.
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s Transport Canada. We would appreciate it very much; a letter of support would be very helpful. It’s Transport Canada, and they have done a nice job. They are the ones who represent at the IMO.
Senator Raine: Again, you said there is no cost for this to be involved in our search and rescue.
Ms. McLaughlin: For the GMDSS call, by treaty. You cannot charge for a GMDSS call, by law. It’s a distress call.
Senator Raine: But we do have to belong to your organization somehow, pay our annual fee, if you like, or monthly fee?
Ms. McLaughlin: No.
Senator Raine: You’re going to provide all this wonderful service for nothing? That's a strange business.
Ms. McLaughlin: We have a commercial business or multiple lines of business that I’ve laid out. This is a separate issue. This is being able to provide the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. We have other communications we provide on planes or ships or other things, but this is a safety-of-life issue. If we’re going to be out there on other ships and we have the ability to provide the coverage in the Arctic to save lives, we would like the authority to be able to do so.
Senator Raine: Do I understand that you’re currently doing this? You have this network and you’re not allowed to be set up to assist with maritime search and rescue?
Ms. McLaughlin: We are not currently authorized. We are applying — it’s been a five-year process — to the IMO to get recognized to provide the GMDSS service. In the meantime, because, as a practical matter, we have very good equipment that works, people can have one of our phones and call if they’re in distress and try to get themselves some help. It’s not the same. People recognize the utility in the system.
Right now we’re looking to be authorized to officially provide the GMDSS service. If you’re on a ship and it’s going down and you have a satellite phone and your GMDSS button isn’t working, I imagine you would pick up the phone and call to try to get some help, but that’s not the most efficient way. What you’re talking about with GMDSS, and why it’s so important, is a priority communication right to the rescue coordination centre. You hit the red button and it tells them where you are and you have the ability to talk to them and describe what the problem is, and they can coordinate the rescue from there.
Senator Raine: I must be missing something because I don’t understand why the IMO would not let you do this.
Ms. McLaughlin: I don’t understand it either, but hopefully they will in May. We’ve been moving through that process.
You’re right. On the technical and safety of life merits, it’s absolutely a no-brainer. You’re absolutely right. However, the U.K., the country that is the home of our monopoly provider, is trying to stop or slow roll it.
Senator Raine: It isn’t a question of them having a monopoly on a business, because you said the service is free.
Ms. McLaughlin: But they’re the only ones who can provide the GMDSS service.
Senator Raine: For free?
Ms. McLaughlin: Correct.
Senator Raine: So why would they mind if somebody else did it?
Ms. McLaughlin: I can’t answer that. What I’m concerned about is if we want to compete commercially for sat com businesses, that’s fine, have at it. But the problem, which is concerning because it’s a safety-of-life issue, is that we should be able to go forward because, as you correctly point out, there’s no logical reason not to be authorized to provide the GMDSS service, a safety-of-life service. To me, this is a matter of life and death. Countries can protect their commercial interests and, as you point out, in the commercial space, we can compete in the market. That’s fine. I have no problem with that. More power to you. This is a safety-of-life issue, and it therefore would seem to me, in the high latitudes where that provider can’t reach with this service because of the nature of their system, we should do everything we can to have every option available for ships in distress.
Senator Raine: So Inmarsat cannot reach the high Arctic?
Ms. McLaughlin: Correct. Geostationary satellite systems can’t see. They’re over the equator, they’re high up and they can’t see the extremes, like the poles.
Senator Raine: Thank you. I still can’t fathom this.
The Chair: When we visited British Columbia, one of the issues raised with us as a committee from the people involved in search and rescue was the peaks and valleys, the landscape and the fact that people could be unable to communicate well in a situation where they would be requiring search and rescue assistance. If I’m hearing you correctly, and I think I am — I’m from Newfoundland and Labrador and I talk fast, but you also talk fast.
Ms. McLaughlin: Sorry.
The Chair: So you’re telling us that if you had this GMDSS system, that wouldn’t be an issue?
Ms. McLaughlin: Well, if I can just modify that a little bit. The radio HF transmissions, which you’re talking about, are part of the current GMDSS. It’s a system of systems. If you’re close to land and it works, fantastic, but there are certain areas, which I think is what you’re getting at, where it doesn’t. You’re too far offshore and you may have seen some particular topography that would be a problem.
In those situations, if you take it when you’re offshore, you need a satellite base because the terrestrial infrastructure isn’t there. Part of the unique thing about the satellite GMDSS and the Iridium system is in an area of the spectrum — and I won’t bore you with the details — that is particularly resilient. Regarding many of the interference concerns, you can get interference anywhere in the radio spectrum, but rain fade and other things that can happen in different bands don’t happen in communications in the part of the spectrum we’re at. That’s why the spectrum we use, which I can tell you is called the L band or the Big LEO Band, is particularly reliable for critical infrastructure communications. That’s why we’ve been doing critical infrastructure communications for 20-some years.
The Chair: I’m still not clear. The issue of being able to communicate, if this system was in place, that would pretty well eliminate that concern, or would it address the concern of being able to communicate?
Ms. McLaughlin: Well, I don’t know specifically what you were shown on the tour, but what I can say is —
The Chair: Excuse me. In different areas around the coast of British Columbia, for example, there may be situations where communications are not the best. I live in a part of Newfoundland and Labrador where we don’t have cell phone coverage, for example. What we heard from people out there is there are several places in that area where communication are an issue with boulders or people in the mountains skiing. If it was in place, would this system you’re talking about today solve that problem?
Ms. McLaughlin: Yes. We were tailor-made do that because of the nature of the system. When you’re talking about mountains and hills, one of our partners is Garmin. If you’re out hiking anywhere in Canada and you have your Garmin device and you have a problem, that red button you hit to get help, that’s my system.
The Chair: As a supplementary to Senator Raine’s question, you said the sole, main provider now is in the U.K?
Ms. McLaughlin: For the satellite, the company authorized for satellite GMDSS, correct.
The Chair: This process you talk about here is a free service as part of your overall system?
Ms. McLaughlin: The GMDSS calls are not charged because it’s safety of life.
The Chair: You’re going through a process now to get approval for that service. Am I following you correctly?
Ms. McLaughlin: Yes, for IMO to recognize Iridium as a satellite GMDSS provider, yes.
The Chair: What advantage would that give your company over the company in the U.K. that you mentioned? It seems to me somebody is slowing this process for you to get approval. I got the impression it may be because the company in the U.K is providing a similar service in some aspects. What advantage would it be for you to be given approval to apply the system here in Canada, or wherever, over the company that’s there now? I’m just trying to figure out why they wouldn’t approve something that seems straightforward and would save lives.
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s a great question. You know, I can’t answer for them.
The Chair: Is there a clear advantage?
Ms. McLaughlin: It’s a holistic service. If we’re doing GMDSS as well as the other commercial things we do —
The Chair: It’s a package deal?
Ms. McLaughlin: You could just choose Iridium in the marketplace. You wouldn’t need two systems.
Ships over a certain tonnage have to have the GMDSS in some form of capability. If you can keep the one company you’re competing with commercially away from providing it, that would be an artificial advantage, I would think.
But as I said, the real concerning thing about that is that if you want to compete in the marketplace on the commercial stuff, I have no problem and we do that all the time, but to me, if you’re out at sea, you should have the best available technology to save lives. That’s where it stops.
The Chair: It’s a free service, but it would be an added service for your company that you don’t have now?
Ms. McLaughlin: Correct.
The Chair: We’re getting there, I think.
Senator Coyle: Like others, I’m trying to grapple with a couple of questions. Picking up on what Senator Raine said, I don’t mean to be crass, but what’s in it for your company? What’s the motivation? Perhaps it’s humanitarian. Do you see it as part of your CSR, corporate social responsibility? If it is, wonderful.
I’m always interested in what’s coming next. You described to us a fairly sophisticated technology that could be very useful in this area that we’re studying as a committee. What’s the next frontier? What’s your company working on in R&D that could further advance the technology that we’re talking about here tonight?
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s a good question. With regard to why are we bothering with this, that’s a fair question. The answer is twofold. First, it’s part of the corporate ethos of the company. The company was built around these types of critical reliability lifeline communications. The aviation examples I gave in the cockpit go to that. It’s the same thing in the maritime area. It’s the safety-of-life communications. So it does track with it.
The polar areas are also in the ethos of the company. We designed the system to be polar orbiting. We have a special relationship and capability with the Nordic countries that no one else can cover.
It’s another service. As I said, if it’s a safety-of-life service, why shouldn’t additional companies who are doing satellite communications in maritime be able to do the global distress service as well? Why would you keep one company from being able to provide it, especially when they’re uniquely capable of providing it in the Arctic waters as they open up to more and more shipping?
Senator Coyle: I definitely get that part. I was more interested in the motivation side.
Ms. McLaughlin: It’s a complement to the services we do now. There’s a strong origin in the company of critical safety reliability communications.
Senator Coyle: And the next frontier?
Ms. McLaughlin: With the next generation satellites and equipment, we have the ability to do more speed and things of that nature. We’ll see where that leads with regard to applications on weather maps, automated shipping and those types of applications. Right now, with the additional speeds, there’s a problem with a lot of illegal fishing and sustainable fishing and those kinds of things. You could now have a camera watching the catch. We have the speeds to take that data out. There’s an anti-piracy application to it in the real sense.
We have a joint venture with NAV Canada for ADS-B airplane tracking. As our next generation satellites launch, they have what we call a hosted payload on board that will enable global flight tracking. So the incident with the Malaysian airliner that disappeared a few years ago will never happen again because we can see them. That’s very exciting. We hope to revolutionize the safety of air flights with that.
Senator Coyle: Thank you very much.
The Chair: We’re getting close to our time here, so I would appreciate keeping the remaining questions and answers short,please.
Senator Poirier: I know this is complicated, and it’s kind of hard for us to understand everything you’re getting at so we’ve been going around, but I think we need to question this if we want to get to it.
I’m having a hard time understanding. It’s a safety-of-life issue. If I understood correctly, you told me this has been an ongoing issue you've been working on for five years to get permission from the IMO to be able to offer this service at no cost. So what have they been telling you for the last five years is the big issue that they won’t give you permission? Something doesn’t make sense. You’re offering something for free that is a safety-of-life issue, and I’m having a hard time understanding what’s taking so long. Why are they not saying yes? What’s missing in the picture that we’re not seeing here?
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s a fair question. Part of it is the process takes the time it takes. It’s been five years. The process has been proceeding along during that time. There’s just multiple layers. The maritime safety committee has to look at it and then refer it to the technical committee, which is the IMSO. They have to take time to study it. They looked at our facilities and tested it in Denmark and so on. Those things take time. You go through the process and that’s all fine.
I’m raising it now because that process was done. IMSO favourably reported that indeed, technically speaking, with all the rigorous analysis that went into it, we absolutely are okay to provide it. The majority of countries on the subcommittee agreed. However, at the last minute — right as we were about to get it over the goal line — the U.K. raised objections; that is, maybe we need to study it a little longer, or whatever it is.
You raise a good point. That’s one of the reasons I’m here raising it to you.
Senator Poirier: Did the U.K. tell you why they need to study it longer?
Ms. McLaughlin: In the UN process, it’s more of, “Gosh, maybe we should just study it.” Let me put it this way. If you want to slow roll something or stop a competitor, you don’t pipe up and say, “Hey, I need to stop a competitor because I’m protecting a company.” You say maybe we’ll just delay. We need more time, or whatever it is.
The fact of the matter is the checklist that was put out by the body, which was appropriate, indicated that we had to meet certain technical factors. We met them. Their report says we met it. Our position is let’s get this over the finish line and get that authorization because, in these higher latitude areas, we can provide that service. On a satellite basis, there’s not a lot of coverage now and it’s a safety-of-life issue.
Senator Poirier: So they’re the ones putting a stop to it right now?
Ms. McLaughlin: They are.
The Chair: Your main competitor is in the U.K.; correct?
Ms. McLaughlin: That’s correct.
Senator Raine: You mentioned that Garmin is somehow related to Iridium?
Ms. McLaughlin: They’re a partner. They’re not related. We’re separate companies.
Senator Raine: The Garmin devices can be picked up by Iridium satellites?
Ms. McLaughlin: No. If you’re out hiking, the Garmin device has a red emergency button on it. When you hit that button, the signal goes through the Iridium network to search and rescue.
If I can give you an example, a friend of mine — not in Canada but in the United States — was hiking in the middle of nowhere in the western United States. He and his wife had one. They came across a hiker who didn't have anything. I don’t know why he was out there so remote without anything. Unfortunately, the young man was trying to show his girlfriend how to get down a hill, slipped and fell on a cactus that pierced his eye. So he couldn’t move and was in significant condition. My friend had the Garmin and hit the Iridium button. The sheriffs and the search and rescue came out and it all turned out okay. Does that explain how they partner together?
Senator Raine: The reason people like the Garmin to hike in the mountains is because they work anywhere.
Ms. McLaughlin: They’re a great partner. We have a very good partnership.
Senator Raine: Can you describe the difference between that and the EPIRB that operates on 406 megahertz, which is used now for fishing vessels and so on? Could a fishing boat carry a Garmin and be just as safe as with an EPIRB?
Ms. McLaughlin: I don’t think Garmin’s hand devices are meant to be out at sea. It’s more land-based.
Senator Raine: They both have satellites. It doesn’t have to be based anywhere.
Ms. McLaughlin: I don’t work for Garmin. The device is more for hiking and terrestrial. What you’re talking about with the EPIRB is basically a digital flare. That’s effectively what it is. It shoots off the flare and it can give you the location, but it can’t tell you anything else. The captain or whoever on the ship doesn’t know whether the signal has been received and it doesn’t help coordinate the rescue in the sense you don’t know what the problem is. There’s missing information. Unlike if you have the Iridium system with the GMDSS, you hit the button, open up a talk channel and describe what’s going on, and it’s an efficient way to coordinate the search and rescue.
Senator Raine: Is the Garmin two-way or an emergency beacon when you hit the red button?
Ms. McLaughlin: I think of Garmin as a walkie-talkie. We are the emergency alert on it. This is a separate issue from maritime shipping.
Senator Raine: The reason we’re doing the study is there are a lot of fishing boats that have accidents of serious consequences that don’t have radio signal beacons on them. One of the big problems is they’re expensive. I’m wondering if the Garmin is similar to the Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beam, the EPIRB?
Ms. McLaughlin: I can’t speak for Garmin. I can tell you what the EPIRB is, and I can tell you my understanding of where people use Garmins.
Senator Raine: My understanding is the EPIRBs rely on land-based communication. Maybe it’s something we should look into.
The Chair: My understanding is we have a lack of understanding.
I have two quick questions. Can Inmarsat and Iridium systems coexist globally?
Ms. McLaughlin: The two systems can communicate. If you’re on one, you can communicate with the other. With regard to GMDSS, we’re beginning to talk. There’s no real definition in this kind of context as to what interoperability is. Yes, the two systems can talk now but in this context, so that’s something I think when we get the recognition is something we’re going to continue to work on.
The Chair: If Canada wanted to use Iridium, even if the IMO does not recognize it as a GMDSS provider, can the country of Canada do that on its own?
Ms. McLaughlin: My understanding is that the IMO has to approve. The first step in the process is the IMO has to approve a provider. In the United States, for example, the FAA decides whether or not you can be on aircraft. The IMO has to authorize or recognize or approve someone as the GMDSS service provider for that option to be there.
The Chair: So even if we wanted to, we couldn’t take advantage of what you’re offering unless they approve it?
Ms. McLaughlin: We can’t provide GMDSS unless they approve it.
The Chair: To say it was interesting would be an understatement. We learned a lot. We live in a large country with a lot of issues and concerns with search and rescue. We’re just trying to find our way. As I mentioned in the opening remarks, we’re looking mostly at the challenges we’re facing. One of the challenges in many parts of the country is proper communications. Hopefully we have learned something today to give us insight into how to improve that. On behalf of the committee, I thank you for your time here today and explaining as best you can. You live it every day, and we might be a bit slow in catching on to some of these things. This was certainly an eye opener.
Ms. McLaughlin: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
The Chair: On our second panel, we’d like to welcome representatives from the Canadian Coast Guard: Mr. Greg Lick, Director General of Operations; and Mr. Sam Ryan, Director General of Integrated Technical Services. On behalf of the members of our committee, I thank you for being here this evening, and I apologize for our delay due to voting in the chamber. I understand you have some opening remarks. Following those, we’ll get some questions from our senators.
Gregory Lick, Director General, Operations, Canadian Coast Guard: Good evening, chair and committee members.
[Translation]
Thank you for affording me another opportunity to discuss the Canadian Coast Guard’s vital area of responsibility related to Canada’s marine search and rescue system.
[English]
I would like to first introduce my colleague, Dr. Sam Ryan, Director General of Integrated Technical Services. You just heard from the previous witness discussions around the satellite systems that we use and she was proposing. Dr. Ryan is actually our Coast Guard expert and has a team of experts that actually can speak to that if necessary.
My remarks will focus on the Coast Guard’s role in the federal Search and Rescue system, which includes the Marine Communications and Traffic Service System, MCTS, as we say. Dr. Ryan and I will be happy to take your questions afterwards. I will try to keep my remarks as short as possible because I’m sure there will be a lot of questions.
Through the committee’s ongoing review of maritime Search and Rescue activities, I have no doubt that all members are well aware of Coast Guard’s on-water responsibilities within the federal SAR system.
[Translation]
Our marine search and rescue services are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to mariners in Canadian waters and on a seasonal basis in certain waters.
[English]
All Coast Guard assets support Search and Rescue operations across the country, which include SAR lifeboat stations and inshore rescue boats strategically positioned across Canada. Currently, we have 10 SAR lifeboat stations and four inshore rescue boats off the coast of B.C., 15 stations and 12 IRB’s across the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence, and 13 stations and 9 IRBs on the East Coast, just to give you a picture of what we have strategically located across the country.
[Translation]
We also work with our partners in the Canadian Armed Forces who have responsibility for overall coordination and primary responsibility for air search and rescue, and with the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, which has a Canada-wide network of over 4,000 volunteers who contribute vital resources to Coast Guard-led marine rescue efforts.
[English]
Additionally, as the committee is aware, we are presently building and strengthening our partnership with Indigenous peoples and communities, who possess thousands of years of ancestral knowledge and experience in local waters, and we are actively seeking to integrate this expertise into the federal SAR system.
In our Western region, which you just experienced, we have been providing training over the past year, which includes marine advanced first aid, environmental response internships and Coast Guard Coastal Nations Search and Rescue courses. These courses introduce Indigenous participants to the federal SAR system and fast rescue response vessel operations in the Pacific offshore environment at our world-renowned search and rescue school in Bamfield, British Columbia. I myself have been to this school and witnessed the incredible value our professional instructors can provide to these students.
[Translation]
These indigenous students are already experienced sailors and fishermen, and career mariners with training in small vessel operations and marine radio.
[English]
During the training, students learn search patterns, how to establish and cope with drifting search objects, how to work safely and effectively in darkness, in foul weather and with other search units and aircraft, as well as learning and practising how to recover persons safely from the water once they’ve been located.
[Translation]
We are doing this training through the implementation of the oceans protection plan, a $1.5-billion investment that is allowing the government to engage communities, first responders, and all partners to work together effectively to enhance our response to marine emergencies. The oceans protection plan is strengthening the Coast Guard’s marine communications and traffic services (MCTS) network by the addition of radars, by modernizing the operational network, and by adding staff at all centres.
[English]
I understand that the committee has specific questions regarding the operation and area of coverage of our MCTS network and its technical elements. The Coast Guard monitors distress calls through its 12 MCTS centres across the country, and these calls are relayed to the rescue coordination centres for action.
That work is made possible by our MCTS officers who, day after day, week after week, monitor all calls to ensure each and every call for help is heard and actioned without delay. Our officers are the finest in their field. Thanks to their efforts and hard work, the MCTS network plays a pivotal role in saving lives and protecting our waters. Through our vessel traffic services system, they ensure the safe and efficient movement of vessels for the smooth functioning of Canada’s maritime economy.
Navigation and communications technologies have advanced significantly in the last decade. I think you heard a bit of that from our last witness. As such, in 2007, Coast Guard began to make significant investments to modernize our MCTS systems to bring them into the twenty-first century. I think I’ve even mentioned to this committee and pervious one that this upgrade is similar to moving from a touchtone phone to a smartphone — kind of a simple analogy.
[Translation]
We now have top-of-the-line technology at our disposal and we possess the largest marine communication system in the world. Because of these new systems, we have the infrastructure in place to allow for continuous modernization in the years ahead.
[English]
Let me point out that the MCTS network not only monitors marine radio communications but also answers cellular calls through a dedicated speed dial number, what we call Star 16, and MCTS also has a dedicated, published landline telephone number.
When we look at the West Coast, our MCTS Business Continuity Plan, and our Co-operative Vessel Traffic Services Agreement with the U.S. Coast Guard, our current overlap with adjacent centres in Seattle and Port Angeles covers a large portion of our area of responsibility. This serves as a mitigation measure, if needed, when we have technical challenges.
[Translation]
We have fully investigated all reports of missed calls using full engineering testing and on-water tests. We have found no indication of any missed calls of any kind.
[English]
These results were also substantiated with other partners, such as the U.S. Coast Guard. As such, we have not seen any issues with our ability to hear people in distress. It is important to remember that no communication tower site was removed from the system as a result of the modernization of our communication system. We continue to monitor distress calls to the same level as before modernization and are investing heavily today in this infrastructure to improve our services.
[Translation]
We have been reporting all progress and issues to the House committee as requested when the MCTS centre in Comox was merged into Victoria. These reports began in October 2016 and are publicly available on our website.
In conclusion, the Canadian Coast Guard is proud to be the on-water arm of the federal search and rescue system. Marine safety is our top priority, and each of our members is dedicated to ensure that our search and rescue system remains one of the best in the world.
[English]
That concludes my opening remarks. I would like to thank all of the members of the committee for this opportunity to come before you, and we welcome your questions.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lick.
I have a quick question. On page 3 of your remarks, you mentioned the assets that support Search and Rescue operations across the country and some fine assets on the West Coast, on the East Coast and in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence. One of the questions that has come before us — and we plan on travelling there in the latter part of May — is to do with up North, with the climate change, the opening up of the North for vessel traffic. Former Senator Watt raised the issue many times in relation to the assets on the ground up North in relation to response times. I’m wondering if any of those issues have been raised with you and your colleagues. We’re looking for some suggestions. We would be looking as a committee at addressing some of that in our report and how to address the concerns that have been raised in the North. We’ll be hearing more when we travel there, but I just wanted to give you the opportunity. While I understand the service has been provided, it’s from another part of the country. I’m wondering if you would want to elaborate on that.
Mr. Lick: Absolutely. I will be appearing before you next week as well. The focus of that session is the Arctic, so I can elaborate more when we get to that point. Simply stated, we focused in this case on our three regions. We focused more on Southern Canada, knowing that next week we would focus on the Arctic.
Certainly in the Arctic, even before the Oceans Protection Plan, during the summer season, we have our icebreakers up there which provide on-water federal support both to icebreaking as well as to primarily search and rescue as well. Also in the Arctic, in the past, we have had units of the Coast Guard auxiliary that have taken part in the federal SAR system up North. As well, under the Oceans Protection Plan, we are now investing even more heavily in the Arctic, including a new IRB station in Iqaluit, including expansion of the auxiliary across the Arctic, so getting more members into the Arctic.
What I also mentioned in my opening remarks was the initiative to include more Indigenous communities, more Indigenous peoples in the system of federal SAR. That includes the Arctic as well. We are expanding into the Arctic, providing more training and more search and rescue assets to those communities as much as we can to provide them with capacity to respond.
I didn’t even talk about the investments that we are doing in terms of making sure our MCTS system has a better reliability as well. That’s something that Dr. Ryan can speak to.
Just in terms of assets on the ground, in terms of search and rescue, our assets are growing, and even the MCTS network is building in reliability too.
The Chair: I certainly look forward to next week’s presentation.
Senator Poirier: I’m going to go back to a question that I mentioned to the other witness a while ago. From my understanding, during the fact-finding mission to B.C., the committee members were told that the very high frequency radio has advantages, that a call can be heard by the coast Marine Communications and Traffic Services centre and also by ships in the area, which would provide immediate assistance. They also heard that there were blind spots where the distress signal cannot be relayed to the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre. Can you explain to us precisely where these blind spots are located and what type of communication equipment is required to have coverage in these areas?
Mr. Lick: Dr. Ryan will expand on our infrastructure and what we’re doing to improve it, but one of the advantages of VHF — very high frequency radio — is not only the ability to communicate with our MCTS centres but also the ability to communicate with vessels in the area. Communicating over a satellite phone can get you directly to another ship, but radio you can hear, because on a ship’s bridge, you always have channel 16 on, which is monitoring the distress frequency over radio. So you have the ability with VHF, and it is also a cheaper system generally. Every ship has to carry marine radio. You have the ability to communicate also with ships in the area. So that’s definitely one of the benefits of VHF. And VHF has been around for a long time, so many people are used to it.
In terms of blind spots and what you heard out West, I will ask Dr. Ryan to talk about that and what we are doing to improve the system.
Sam Ryan, Director General, Integrated Technical Services, Canadian Coast Guard: As Greg mentioned, communicating with the ships on the VHF, you have your voice communication which is on channel 16, and then there are several other systems as well. We’ve talked about the VHF portion that is part of the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. The previous witness talked about the GMDSS.
When you’re close to shore and on the West Coast of Canada, the East Coast and the Great Lakes as well, we have the VHF Digital Selective Calling, or DSC. That has a button, and if there is an incident, you can press that. That’s in addition to the VHF channel 16. So you have both your voice communication and digital communication, and both can be received back to our Marine Communications and Traffic Services centres.
Based on the topology in given areas, and it doesn’t matter if you’re talking about a cellular communication or VHF communication, there can be shadows, and that is just the physics of the radio propagation in that area. It goes back to the point that other ships in the area can pick up the signal, whereas a signal going back, if there is a mountain in the way, that propagation cannot go over the mountain to our remote site.
What we are looking at doing is a full coverage analysis, looking to see if there are any holes in our coverage and how we can fill those holes. That’s probably what you were hearing, that in certain areas — again, it’s the physics of the propagation — there may be some small areas where they cannot pick up the signal because of the actual topology of the West Coast.
Senator Poirier: How can you fill those holes?
Mr. Ryan: It would be looking at whether an additional site would be needed and what is the risk in that area. Both a technical and operational analysis would go into how we can get into that area with the actual signal so we can pick up the signal from a ship.
Mr. Lick: I would like to add that one of the important factors in looking at the whole SAR system is that layering of various ways and means of both responding and also communicating. The SAR system is actually, in a sense, very redundant because it has a lot of layers that allow us to communicate in different ways.
You have VHF radio, which is pretty well the most basic way unless you’re shouting across to another ship, using semaphore or something like that. That’s the old way. VHF is your basic way of communicating.
You can communicate by cellular if there happens to be coverage. That’s becoming more and more prevalent, particularly close to shore and certainly in more populated areas.
Then you start to get into the GMDSS systems, as the previous witness talked about. You have satellite phones that are able to communicate.
All that layering of different systems provides for a much more redundant and reliable system in case one fails. As technology evolves, some of those will tend to disappear over time, as other systems of communication have disappeared over time. Morse code and the telegraph have disappeared. Other technologies will take over.
Senator Poirier: Do you feel the system the witness before was talking about would be the solution to your problems?
Mr. Lick: I’m the requirements person for the national SAR program, so any system that provides better coverage and more reliability. Any system is never perfectly reliable, but a system that provides us more reliability, I would love that.
I cannot comment on whether that particular system can provide us with a better coverage. That’s certainly for when we evaluate certain systems. That’s what the IMO has done in looking at various systems. That’s the type of thing they’re looking at.
In terms of procuring systems, would I like a more competitive environment out there? Likely, because it would provide us with a better means of procuring systems.
Senator McInnis: Thank you very much for coming. What is the Oceans Protection Plan? Is it some sort of strategy? Are there stated objectives? What is it?
Mr. Lick: I will try to do this. I could probably spend the entire hour in explaining it.
The Oceans Protection Plan is exactly what it sounds like. It is a set of initiatives in place ultimately to improve marine safety on the water. There is a set of initiatives or projects in the plan that outline ways and means in which we can improve marine safety on the water. Some involve our department, some of them involve the Coast Guard only, some of them involve Transport Canada and some involve Environment Canada and so on. It is also there to improve the protection of the marine environment and ultimately, as well, to allow us to have better, safer and more environmentally friendly movement of goods in our waterways.
That is the general overall objective of the Oceans Protection Plan but it’s a set of approximately 38 or 40 different initiatives. I could probably not cover them all in a short period of time but, certainly, some of the ones that I mentioned.
We are adding a number of SAR lifeboat stations both in British Columbia as well as in Newfoundland and Labrador. That’s one of the projects that we are managing to improve, again, marine safety services to Canadians on the water.
To pick another one, going back to my opening remarks, we have in many ways a hugely untouched group of people who have been there for thousands of years working on the water whom we have not been able to effectively bring into the system. Indigenous peoples have incredible local knowledge not just because they are out there but also because also they understand what the sensitive areas are environmentally in that particular area. When we have a spill, they probably understand better than anybody what the sensitive areas are. They’re helping us to map that.
Ultimately, they’re an untouched resource that wants to contribute to marine safety and environmental protection because it’s their livelihood and their life. It’s the lifeline of their community, in many cases. Ultimately, we also want them to be part of the system so that we have a much broader system able to respond to some places more quickly. Vessels of opportunity, whether First Nations or not, tend to sometimes be the first vessels on scene because they happen to be out there already, fishing or pleasure boating.
When you’re crossing the ocean, if there happens to be a search and rescue issue, it’s typically other commercial vessels or cruise ships that are first on scene. It’s a very much untouched resource we want to tap into.
Senator McInnis: You don’t cover marine protected areas, do you? That would be under Fisheries and Oceans.
Mr. Lick: Marine protected areas are under Fisheries and Oceans. Some of the initiatives we have under the Oceans Protection Plan will help in managing marine protected areas. One of the things we are doing is adding more resources into MCTS centres to allow us to better manage the traffic and reduce some of the workload on our officers. That will also help us to monitor marine protected areas for Fisheries and Oceans as well. Some of these initiatives will support that.
Senator McInnis: Ocean Networks Canada are the ones that are putting in place this radar system or recommending it. Is that correct? Who are they?
Mr. Lick: It’s not my area of expertise, so I’m a little bit hesitant to comment. When I come back next week, I can comment on it a bit better. I’m unaware of the radar network you’re talking about. I certainly know what Ocean Networks Canada is and the network of underwater facilities they’re putting in place to allow us to monitor the ocean bottom, particularly in the B.C. area. I think it’s not so much radar, or not the radar Dr. Ryan and I are used to. I think that’s what you’re referring to. We’re aware of what they’re doing. Some of our scientific colleagues in the department are a big part of that network in supporting and gaining knowledge for what’s happening underwater, but it’s less a part of the search and rescue system than what I think we’re talking about here.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, Mr. Lick and Dr. Ryan, for being here with us this evening.
Can you tell us about the challenges, as you see them, in maritime search and rescue as that relates to your role?
You mentioned climate change. I’m also on the Arctic Committee. I’m not anywhere an expert on what’s going on environmentally in the Arctic, but I’m catching the general drift, and that means that there is going to be a lot more melt and shifting in the ice. I know you’re not talking about the Arctic right now, but there are implications for the oceans off the East Coast of Canada, in particular, when the ice off Greenland starts to melt and break out. What kind of scenario planning is the Coast Guard engaging in, and what are you doing to anticipate over the next years? I understand things are happening faster than anybody anticipated. How does that impact you and what are you doing to really anticipate those scenarios?
Mr. Lick: On the first part of the question around SAR challenges, as I mentioned previously, in terms of coverage, I would say any technology or system that gives us a better view of what’s happening on the water is a good thing.
As large a country as we have, it would be almost near impossible to have an eye on everything going on in every water we have in Canada. That’s why we depend upon that layering of systems to provide us with knowledge of what’s going on on the water, which we typically call maritime domain awareness. Anything that gives us better knowledge of that is a great thing.
One of the challenges that we have, and every country will have this, is that as traffic patterns change, whether it’s in the Arctic, on the East or West Coast or wherever, sometimes because of economic reasons, we need to be aware of that. We have many forums in which we discuss this with industry to understand where traffic is going for various economic reasons, or other reasons.
Ultimately, as part of the Oceans Protection Plan, our job in the government, as this collection of partners, is to ensure we understand those traffic patterns and understand where risk is changing. What I mean by risk is primarily search and rescue risk and environmental risk. Where is that risk typically growing? Sometimes it’s decreasing if traffic patterns are changing, but we need to understand that and we need to understand what resources and technologies are available to us to address that risk.
One of the initiatives that we have under the Oceans Protection Plan is an initiative called RAMSARD, which is the Risk-Based Analysis of Marine Search and Rescue Delivery. It’s a long acronym, but its primary purpose is to look at risk, analyze that risk and what’s out there to address that risk and to develop strategies to help us deal with that.
That will also feed into the risk-based regional response planning that is also undertaken under the Oceans Protection Plan to build that into what I would call geographic plans that identify how we will deal with certain scenarios — environmental, SAR — in those areas. Those are some of the SAR challenges.
In terms of the network of communication infrastructure, I’m going to ask Dr. Ryan to talk about what we’re doing there to improve, and then I will come back to the Arctic climate change piece.
Mr. Ryan: Especially on the West Coast, if you can visualize the mountaintop sites, we have microwave communications links that link the mountaintops, and we bring them back to Prince Rupert at the Marine Communications and Traffic Services centre or the one in Victoria.
One thing we noticed as part of the Oceans Protection Plan is we are upgrading our network not only on the West Coast but in the entire country to ensure that we have a reasonable backup for the communication links.
In the eastern part of Canada, we use a lot of telecom service providers and other physical paths so that the communication from a remote site can get back to the centre and improve the reliability and the availability of the actual communications with mariners. We’re doing the same thing on the West Coast and East Coast as well. That will increase the availability and reliability of our network.
If there is a problem at a centre, we’re also looking at firming up our business continuity planning, or BCP, with the modern network that we have. In the opening remarks we highlighted the improvements we’ve made in the network over the last ten years. We’ve gone from an old-style phone to a smartphone. It’s a very good analogy. Now we can actually leverage that technology so that we can have very good business continuity planning within the modern network that we have.
So again, it’s ensuring we have the most available, reliable network for our marine communication traffic services centres.
Mr. Lick: I will touch on the climate change piece in regard to the Arctic and the implications for down south.
Certainly I think we can all understand that the Arctic is definitely changing. It’s affecting both shipping patterns and traffic patterns for shipping. It’s affecting the peoples of the north most dramatically, obviously — their livelihoods, ability to survive and changing lifestyles and so on.
It’s also affecting other types of shipping that have typically not been there, cruise ships being the first one. Big cruise ships coming into the north create different risks for us.
The one probably causing me the most sleepless nights are the adventurers who tend to want to go across the north either on Sea-Doos or want to swim across the north or snorkel. Those are the ones that tend to cause me sleepless nights because they’re the least prepared of all. Many times we’ve had to go and rescue them.
There are definitely implications, though. We’ve started to see them probably most publicly last year as the Arctic tends to change, tends to melt. The ice patterns, the ice conditions in the Arctic are changing. Typically some of the ice bridges that we call multiyear, which is very hard, much more dangerous to shipping ice, those ice bridges have kept the ice from coming down into southern Arctic waters but also kept it even more so coming down into southern waters of Canada.
Last year in the spring, we saw the ice coming down the Labrador coast, piling up against the northern coast of Newfoundland and causing issues of search and rescue there, having to delay the Amundsen to go north because we needed to have that search and rescue asset there, as well as to provide ice breaking support to the ferries and the peoples who live there. So we’re definitely seeing more implications for down south, even sooner than we thought, but I don’t pretend to be a climate change expert.
In terms of scenario planning, I referenced RAMSARD, one of the tools we’re using in order to identify risk and how we address risk in a more rigorous manner, I would say. We have a variety of exercises and plans that help us deal with search and rescue. Certainly each region has search and rescue plans.
One of the more important ones in reference to the Arctic and certainly reference to the shipping and cruise ships going across the Arctic, those large cruise ships, if there was a search and rescue tragedy — I always knock wood because I’m a superstitious sailor — where a cruise ship grows aground and people have to get off and lifeboats going to land, we call that a major maritime disaster. We have plans right now in place, and we’re updating and modernizing those plans currently to address what we call a MAJMAR disaster or possible disaster.
We exercise those plans. We exercised one of those plans out west last summer with a planned exercise called Salish Sea. That exercise exercised a MAJMAR disaster with a ferry having a fire on board and us having to evacuate people in distress and people who are injured as well as people who are not. Getting 1,000 people off a ship is not easy. Knowing what to do with them when you get them ashore and having to treat them, that’s the most difficult thing. If you can imagine in the Arctic, with very remote facilities, very few facilities across the Arctic, getting them ashore and keeping them warm, fed and treated medically is very difficult.
As part of MAJMAR, one of the parts of the plan we depend upon is a MAJAID plan, which is a major air disaster plan which the Canadian Armed Forces has situated in CFB Trenton. That system of air response can be up and into the Arctic within I think 12 to 24 hours to provide capability to house people ashore, keep them warm, fed and medically treated as well. But again, at this point in time, it’s not fitted up to deal with a 2,000 to 3,000 person cruise ship disaster.
That’s one of the major concerns we have in the Arctic as traffic patterns are changing.
Senator Raine: Thank you very much. It’s interesting to hear, especially, Dr. Ryan, because we just had a session that was quite a huge learning experience for us. I’m sure you listened to it as well.
I guess I’m concerned because I have come across instances where, because of the topography and the mountains, communication is difficult along the B.C. coast, and I’m sure it is in Newfoundland as well. I have correspondence from people out west. You said you have found no indication of any missed calls of any kind, and again, “We have not seen any issues with our ability to hear people in distress.” I’m hearing with the closure of the Comox station, that there have been some incidents. When you hear two different things being said, it begs the question as to what is really happening there.
I was interested to hear that you’re now looking at actually doing a map that would indicate where the shadows or the holes in communications are. We have to be very careful. If you look at it from somewhere in eastern Canada and you look at the map, oh well, it’s just a little piece that doesn’t really matter, but that might be a very well-known fishing hole that has a lot of traffic. So we need to know where they are, and the mariners need to know that if you go in these areas, take extra precautions. I’m not saying full coverage, if you can ever even arrive at that.
My question is: Are you sure there haven’t been any incidents of missed calls? I have it right in front of me, letters from people where calls were missed. They called a “Mayday” and communication was weak and they were told to use their cell phone, so they used their personal cell phone to call in. Can you explain that? I don’t think these people are making it up. This letter goes back to November 28, 2016. It was copied to the Minister of Transportation and the Minister of DFO, so it’s on record.
Mr. Lick: Certainly, senator, I can answer that.
One of the factors in this is that certainly as you talk to people, you certainly get views of certain things that happen. You could explain that in a retail store type of thing. You have a certain view of things.
One of the things we committed to and certainly committed to the house committee was that we would report back to them about how the consolidation went and the modernization that went along with it in parallel, particularly focusing on the West Coast and how the change had gone.
What I can say categorically is that we investigated every one of those reports of missed calls and found that there were none.
I will put a little caveat to that, though. There are a variety of reasons why you might not be able to hear someone. In some cases, in fact in many cases, you might find — Dr. Ryan is actually much better at this than I am — that the radio that’s transmitting that information may be weak. It may have broken its antenna, particularly if it’s in a distress situation where rough seas have broken an antenna. There are other reasons other than our system of listening, the infrastructure that supports it and the radio operators that are there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, that may be the reason for that particular issue.
In some cases, we’ve found that it’s sometimes very difficult to understand what people are saying in distress. Our officers are well trained in order to maintain calm as much as possible in distress, the same as 911 operators are trained to do. When you’re out at sea in a huge storm and taking on water, you’re in a sense of panic. Our officers are trained to reduce that panic, absolutely, but sometimes it is difficult to understand them.
One of the issues we sometimes have is when people communicate their location, as an example. They may communicate it but give us a wrong position. It doesn’t happen that often. That’s where other layers of the SAR system come into play — an EPIRB, for example. One of the reasons for an EPIRB is that it can be automatically deployed if a vessel is sinking and you don’t get to it and you’re not able to make that call. One of the reasons the EPIRBs tend to be expensive, other than the technology inside them, is they are meant to be industrial reliable for a marine environment, but they are also automatically deployed if a vessel is sinking so that, if you don’t have time to get to the radio, the EPIRB will give a distress signal and a location.
I’m going to pass the floor to Dr. Ryan to talk a little bit about the reasons why a call may not be picked up.
Senator Raine: I should have mentioned that the communication I’ve had is from lighthouse keepers. These are not amateurs dealing with radio; they’re well-trained people.
Mr. Lick: I wouldn’t want to get into a debate about lightkeepers. Certainly lightkeepers provide a resource on the coast. They may have their radio on 24 hours a day, but as a single lightkeeper, you have to sleep. They may not be able to hear all radio calls. That’s just a factor of human life. However, with our MCTS system, 24 hours a day, someone is always listening on the radio. That is the advantage and why we have in place that MCTS system, to be able to hear it 24 hours a day.
Again, there may be other reasons why the call could not be heard as well by a lightkeeper, say, over the radio. If anybody has experience with listening to radio over VHF, sometimes it can be scratchy. That is not the right technical term, but sometimes it’s difficult to understand what’s being said because of the quality of the radio that’s transmitting. There are other reasons why a radio may not pick it up.
Senator Raine: How do the lightkeepers factor into the SAR system on the West Coast? What is their role? They have done a lot of rescues. The light stations are located in areas where there were accidents; that’s why they’re there. Some of them had boats and don’t have boats anymore. How are they integrated into the SAR system?
Mr. Lick: On the first point, lighthouses are there as an aid to navigation. They’re there — and were traditionally there — to notify mariners that there’s a danger in the water or a piece of land they should avoid. That’s the main reason they’re there, whether they’re manned or unmanned. Traditionally, with the older technology, they needed to be manned because they needed to be maintained. With modern technology, they don’t need to be. However, the government has asked us to maintain them, and now they’re an additional resource for search and rescue. They’re an additional set of eyes and ears on land, but able to monitor the water. Certainly I will take on any resource that allows us to see and hear better on the water, as I talked about.
As part of the federal SAR system, they’re very much like a vessel of opportunity, another boat on the water. Like our own boats on the water, our MCTS system, they’re another set of eyes and ears that let us see what’s on the water. They’re like any public member; they can provide us notice if something is happening on the water, and we will respond.
I will state — because we did have this conversation a little while ago — that the idea of a single lighthouse keeper going out on a boat is not what I will do, because my first job is to ensure that the people that go out to rescue, the people who actually carry out rescues, are safe, the same as on land with firefighters. For lighthouse keepers, you need to have at least two people on a boat to be safe. They can be eyes and ears on the water. I understand the passion of lighthouse keepers in terms of seeing something out there that they could respond to, but ultimately I have to maintain their safety.
I keep coming back to Dr. Ryan to talk a little about missed calls and how the technology might fail us.
Mr. Ryan: Going back to your question on Comox, again it was something that I think we touched on in the opening remarks. In the consolidation of the Marine Communications and Traffic Services, we made no change to our remote radio sites, whether it’s a remote radar site or a radio communication site. There was absolutely no change in any of our coverages. When we actually did do the consolidation, if there was a radio site at one location, the radio site is still there. Again, I think there may have been some misunderstanding from some people when we did the consolidation, but it did not touch those eyes and ears out to the marine public.
As my colleague Mr. Lick highlighted, there can be many reasons why you cannot pick up a call. If it’s a voice call on channel 16, if two or three ships are calling in at the same time, that is just the very nature of channel 16. You can hear the closest ship, but you can't hear one that’s further away. That doesn’t mean that the system isn’t working; that just means that is the limitation of basic communication when everyone is talking on the same frequency. Again, channel 16, in different areas, can be a very busy frequency.
Other issues are with the actual installation on board. It doesn’t mean that the installation was poor. However, in an emergency, as Mr. Lick highlighted, is the radio itself operating? Is the antenna there? Is the grounding correct? There are many things that can cause the actual communication to not be received, which has nothing to do with the land-based infrastructure. It’s because it’s an emergency situation. Again, I think that a layered approach to all the different technologies — and you’ve highlighted EPIRBs and the 406 beacon. That is another part of the GMDSS that can allow a completely independent communication back to our Joint Rescue Coordination Centres.
The Chair: Thank you for your presentation. It’s always interesting to hear from the Coast Guard. Many of our discussions have been about the service provided, and we hope to be able, through our study, to improve a vital service to Canadians. On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you for your time this evening, but also for your service in regard to the Coast Guard and all those who provide that service, including the Coast Guard Auxillary and all the people involved.
(The committee adjourned.)