Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
Fisheries and Oceans
Issue No. 7 - Evidence - October 27, 2016 (morning meeting)
HALIFAX, Thursday, October 27, 2016
The Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans met this day at 9:03 a.m. to continue its study on Maritime Search and Rescue activities, including current challenges and opportunities.
Senator Fabian Manning (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning everybody. My name is Fabian Manning. I am a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador and Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
I am pleased to be here today with my colleagues. Before I give the floor to our witnesses, I would ask my colleagues if they would introduce themselves, beginning on my immediate right.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
Senator Hubley: Elizabeth Hubley, P.E.I.
Senator Munson: Jim Munson, Ontario.
Senator Poirier: Rose-May Poirier, New Brunswick.
Senator McInnis: Tom McInnis, Nova Scotia.
Senator Enverga: Tobias Enverga from Ontario.
The Chair: This morning we will be hearing about and discussing maritime search and rescue from the point of view of certain industries that rely on the Canadian Coast Guard and their partners. We are pleased to welcome our witnesses. I would ask them to please introduce themselves.
Murray Hupman, Vice President (Operations), Marine Atlantic: Murray Hupman, Vice President of Operations, Marine Atlantic, situated out of the North Sydney office.
Captain Sean Griffiths, Chief Executive Officer, Atlantic Pilotage Authority Canada: Sean Griffiths, CEO, Atlantic Pilotage, here in Halifax.
Captain Shri Madiwal, Director Fleet Operations, Marine Atlantic: Captain Shri Madiwal, Director of Fleet Operations, Marine Atlantic, based in North Sydney, Nova Scotia.
The Chair: I would like to thank our witnesses for taking the time to join us this morning as we continue our study into the maritime search and rescue. My understanding is that we have some opening remarks from you, gentlemen. Mr. Hupman, you have the floor.
Mr. Hupman: Good morning, Mr. Chair. I would like to extend our appreciation for having the opportunity to come and speak on this topic. Obviously as a significant marine operator going between Newfoundland and mainland Canada it is a topic of concern for us.
I have circulated a little briefing note which I am going to cover very quickly. It won't be any more than five or six minutes. Halfway through that I will hand it over to Captain Shri Madiwal to finish it off.
What is Marine Atlantic? For the people who live in Newfoundland, Marine Atlantic is absolutely an essential ferry service. We provide a critical transportation link between Newfoundland and mainland Canada or Eastern Canada. We transport pretty much all the non-air passenger traffic. People who want to get to the island and don't want to fly pretty much have to take a vehicle or walk. We provide that service between Nova Scotia, North Sydney, to Port-aux Basques, Newfoundland and seasonally to Argentia, which is on the East Coast of Newfoundland.
We transport about 50 per cent of all goods to Newfoundland. That is the everyday products and commodities that people consume. Some 90 per cent of the perishable items are actually shipped through us. Those things that have time dependent deliveries, i.e. 24-hour or 48-hour types of deliveries, all come through us because we provide a two times a day daily service from North Sydney to Newfoundland.
For most businesses throughout the island and even on the coast of Labrador we are a key economic enabler for them. When our boats don't sail or there is a problem we hear about it. We hear about it very quickly because we are actually creating a business problem for a lot of people on the island of Newfoundland and on the coast of Labrador.
The second slide gives you an idea of what we have for vessels. I believe some of the senators were at the Coast Guard College a couple of days ago. Those who did a tour on the fast rescue craft probably went right by our facilities and would have seen depending on the time of day one or two vessels at the docks.
The Chair: Two.
Mr. Hupman: Two vessels. You would have seen the Atlantic Vision, our largest vessel by gross tonnage. We have four Ice-class vessels that are equipped to go through a certain thickness of ice. Three are Ice Class 1A and one is Ice Class 1B. If we were to fill all four vessels with passengers we would carry about 3,000 passengers at a time. We can actually carry a significant amount of people at any given time.
We consider our service speed to be about 18 knots on a typical sailing. However due to the regulations in terms of hours of rest we slow the sailing down at night time so that our crew will actually get their hours of rest. The night time sailing is a bit longer and the speed is a bit less.
Looking at the 2015-16 fiscal statistics, we carried a little more than 322,000 passengers. We had about 1,700 single sailings or one-way sailings, not return sailings. We carried over 116 passenger vehicles, so automobiles, trucks, cars and those types of thing.
In terms of commercial vehicles, for 50 per cent of the transportation of commercial product we carried close to 96,000 commercial vehicles. A couple of years ago we actually broke the 100,000-vehicle mark on the commercial side. There is a huge economic dependency on our service to the island of Newfoundland.
This past year we had an on-time service rate of approximately 91 per cent excluding weather delays. Every now and then we would make a cancellation due to high winds or sea conditions. Taking them out of the mix we were on time about 91 per cent of the time.
I am going to hand it over to Captain Shri Madiwal for the next couple of slides.
Capt. Madiwal: Given our operating environment basically when we talk about the North Atlantic Ocean, we have pleasant summers. People enjoy sailing and all that but at the same time we have a lot of wind conditions and the hurricane season during the fall and heavy and severe ice conditions during the winter.
Some of you might know that in 2015 one of our ferries got stuck in the ice. It was there for a few days and it was difficult for the ferry to come back to port. That is the harsh condition and the diverse environment we operate in.
Given that we carry a lot of passengers our topmost priority is passenger comfort and safety. That has always been our topmost concern. We make a decision from the operations perspective on whether we want to continue sailing with the weather conditions and all that. What is happening with the weather or what is the weather forecast looking like plays a major role in our decision making process.
We have good, highly trained and skilled seafarers and some office staff members who actually contribute toward this decision-making process to make the vessels safe and to have a safe passage for our passengers.
On the next slide we are talking a bit about the responder. Given the subject of this discussion and meeting today we wanted to touch base on that we operate in a very busy area. We are on the Cabot Strait where many vessels transit. As big vessels with almost a 1,000-passenger capacity, a helipad for landing and all those things, Marine Atlantic vessels can actually be a good support mechanism for search and rescue operations if and when needed. We have very well positioned large Ice-class vessels as Murray alluded to. With all the lifeboats and the fast rescue craft they will be definitely a good addition to the existing infrastructure of the Canadian Coast Guard.
As a rescuer we rely on the Coast Guard mostly. It is not that we had any emergencies in the recent past, but in the recent past we responded to some fishing vessel emergency rescues in the Cabot Strait. Most of the time we rely on the icebreaking services of the Coast Guard to ensure that the trade route is continued. It is a major issue for us to continue with our commerce.
The final slide gives you a little background on the commerce sector. We have almost 1,100 commercial customers that rely on our services on a daily basis back and forth from the mainland to the island. Most of our time sensitive products are transported through Marine Atlantic. Almost 90 per cent of the time sensitive products are transported through Marine Atlantic. It is a very critical mode of operation for the island and for the economy of Newfoundland and Labrador.
As the industry is moving through the adjustment time model we find that most of the big box and superstores actually have to put all the stuff within one trailer and then send it across to the island. It is very critical to ensure that the route is clear and the vessels keep running on schedule.
Just to give the statistics on the 2015 impact of ice conditions on our sailings, there were almost 39 delayed sailings, a major economic impact for the island, and16 trip cancellations. There almost 28 icebreaker service requests from the Coast Guard. The availability of the vessel, the location and the response times that keep changing affect our schedule. In total we paid about $66,000 in service fees to the Coast Guard for utilizing its icebreaker services.
The Chair: For somebody who lives 40 minutes from Argentia I would agree that every now and again there is a windy day in Placentia Bay.
Capt. Griffiths: My whole family hails from Placentia Bay.
The Chair: I figured out the name.
Capt. Griffiths: I have quite a presentation. Last week at one of these committees I had about an hour. I wasn't sure if I had the same time or not so we will skip through this quickly.
Page 2 goes over quickly the areas that the APA covers. There are 17 compulsory pilotage areas which cover about 32,000 kilometres of coast line on this side of the country. You can see how many pilots we also have in each of these districts from a peak of 13 down to some small areas that only have two. That is traffic dependent of course.
The ships that call the Atlantic coast of Canada are on page 3. We have everything from container cargo to the RoRos, auto carriers, foreign and domestic tankers, cruise ships that are not getting smaller as we see in the harbour regularly now, and coastal tankers as. The transfer of pilots still happens in the same way. Actually the safest way to do it is by ladder. We have rules, regulations, procedures and safety equipment to ensure the safe embarking of a pilot each time.
I will draw your attention to this picture on page 4. I want you to focus on it for a second because later in this presentation we will see why this becomes a challenge. That is quite a climb the pilot to get up and down that ladder.
We have a fleet of nine pilot boats that we currently own. We are actually to expand that fleet to 11 in the next month or so. We are to purchase two more pilot boats. We have about 13 contracted out throughout Atlantic Canada as well. We have a lot of fast, reliable pilot boats on the water at all times that are crewed. It is a good response. We have been tasked in the past, and we will get to that as well.
We have pretty robust man-overboard capabilities on these pilot boats as you can see by that picture. It is a mechanical basket with a launch master that will actually go back. There is a set of controls by that basket so we can maneuver the boat by looking over the stern as well in the interest of safety of the casualty of course.
All emergencies in Canada are the responsibility of the JRCC in Halifax. The transport of medical cases from vessels is the responsibility of the Coast Guard and they have dedicated vessels and personnel, be it air or water.
We have primary SAR as number one, multi-task SAR vessels as number two, secondary SAR vessels or others including Department of Defence helicopters and Coast Guard Auxiliary as number three, and the last one would be vessels of opportunity. This where we come in: Our pilot boats are tasked as vessels of opportunity.
We don't have to get into this but rescue specialist training is quite an in-depth program that SAR techs in Atlantic Canada and across the country regularly participate in. They are highly trained individuals. Our guys don't have that training. We have the advanced first aid marine and nothing that would even come close to search and rescue specialist training or SAR tech.
At page 9 we have been used in the past and we will continue to be as vessels of opportunity. I have cited the regulation about receiving any signal from a source. A person, vessel and aircraft in distress shall proceed and render assistance if at all possible and inform the person in distress of the centre of the signal. We are obligated to do that and we have done it many times in the past.
Our pilot boats are classed as vessels of opportunity due to their availability and ability to respond in an incident. About 24 boats scattered throughout Atlantic Canada as fast response vessels is a good resource to have. However we only have two crew members on each of these boats: a launch master and a deckhand. If we were to respond to a fairly significant incident it would be nothing to overwhelm the existing crew on the pilot boats. That has happened in the past. As I mentioned before our crews are trained in basic first aid and marine emergency duties. We do not have the necessary skills and proper medical training to respond to such incidents.
Again we go to our boats. Occasionally the rescue coordination centre may request a pilot boat to respond to a marine emergency if it is the only resource available. We all agree that a limited response is better than no response. However there is risk to the crew. They could be injured or the pilot boat could be damaged in these cases.
I have a couple of examples. In the mid-nineties we had two separate incidents off Saint John. The pilot boat was used to medevac a passenger on a stretcher from a cruise ship. No paramedics were on board and the crew put themselves at risk during these scenarios.
Again in the nineties the pilot boat crew rescued a captain from a sailboat heading out. He sustained life-threatening neck injuries on board. I believe the boom came around and hit him in a storm. The pilot boat arrived and the crew applied first aid until he was brought ashore.
In 1998 we responded to an overturned kayak just outside of Halifax. He was in the water. It was two degrees. It was cold. He was probably minutes away from hypothermic death. He thanks us quite frequently about saving his life.
On September 30 in the harbour you can see in this picture there is a navy buoy that one of the navy ships is tied up to. A pleasure craft hit that high speed and there were quite a few injuries on board. We were there because we were quick to get on the scene. However all we could do is provide light in the nighttime. We were in no position to receive casualties. The Coast Guard did that.
These next two are sort of the concerns we have from the authority. On September 20 of last year a pilot boat crew was asked by RCC to participate in a medevac of a crew member off Sydney. He had a heart infection that was worsening. We were told there was no cutter or helicopter available for a medevac. We felt obligated to help this individual out. As you can imagine, climbing down that ladder at night with a heart condition in rough seas is not the way to go. We actually put the casualty in more risk by doing this procedure than if there was another means to get him off.
As luck would have it in November of the same year it happened again. This time we were asked to take a crew member that had a detached retina off a ship. He couldn't look down. He couldn't look up. He had to look straight ahead. He had an eye patch on. It was three metre of seas off Sydney in the nighttime. I got called on that one. I said, "Guys, we can't do it. It is just too much risk for this person.'' They ended up diverting the ship to Halifax. I believe he got off here and went to the doctor's. Had we have done that I am sure we would have caused more injury or worse to this casualty that needed to get some medical attention.
Then in Placentia Bay, Senator Manning, we had a boat drift in a fairly good storm. It was heading toward the rocks with a husband and wife on board. Our guys were on the pilot boat in Arnold's Cove on Placentia Bay. They heard the radio call and left immediately. This is an actual picture from that day of the two people who were on the boat. We transferred them to the pilot boat and went back to shore. It is a good news story there.
In cases like that it is almost ideal for us to respond. We are quick and we can do these things, but we are not equipped or trained for casualty transfer or medevac.
You will see the conclusion on the last page. For 24 hours a day, seven days a week for 365 days without interruption the dispatch centre can take these calls from RCC at any time.
As a general rule since that Sydney incident we are trying not to participate in medevacs for fear we cause more damage and due to the assumed risk undertaken by the authority that further injury may occur during transport. JRCC should only request aid from our APA-owned boats or our contractor boats if we are deemed to be a vessel of opportunity and taking into consideration the risk involved for the casualty in hand. That is all I have.
The Chair: Certainly for myself there is great information here and I am sure our senators have some questions they would like to ask. As usual we will begin with the deputy chair of our committee, Senator Hubley.
Senator Hubley: We are looking at another side of search and rescue and it is certainly going to be interesting.
My question is for Mr. Hupman and for Capt. Madiwal. What is the protocol on any of your ships to respond to an emergency on board? When does the Canadian Coast Guard become involved?
Capt. Madiwal: In this case what happens is that the master immediately notifies the MCTS or the Marine Control Traffic Services that we need some emergency help or support. Then that gets relayed to the JRCC as applicable. We also have an internal process. Because our voyages are about seven hours long at the most we may also get in touch with the local authorities for response.
Senator Hubley: You would do that after getting in touch with the JRCC. You can do that on your own. You can look for other avenues of support in the case of an emergency.
Capt. Madiwal: That is correct. The first call definitely is to the Marine Traffic Control System so that they aware we have an emergency, we are speeding up and we are proceeding. Also our in-house organizational emergency response process kicks in. The terminal operations have been informed. The local authorities are informed. We have an ambulance and depending on the emergency the RCMP and other people are ready for support when the vessel docks.
Senator Hubley: You mentioned 3,000 passengers. Are you confident that the Canadian Coast Guard has the capacity to respond to a major incident at sea that would involve one of your boats?
Capt. Madiwal: At this time on any given vessel we would have over 1,000 passengers and crew members. One of the biggest challenges is how we conduct a mass rescue operation. It is not only about Marine Atlantic or the Coast Guard. A lot of other agencies and support mechanisms would be involved in the response. We don't have much information about the Coast Guard's capability and ability to respond to such emergencies.
Senator Hubley: I have another question I would like to ask Capt. Griffith, if I might. I want you to clarify what would be a vessel of opportunity as opposed to a response from a fishing vessel that might be near at hand.
In your presentation you have suggested that there is liability if any injury is perhaps worsened by an intervention. Can you clarify that for me? What would that mean in a dire situation that? May you have to pull back and wait for another vessel to respond?
Capt. Griffiths: As far as vessels of opportunity go, the pilot boat and the fishing boat would equal the same. The right place at the right time is a vessel of opportunity. If it is not a pilot boat and it is a fishing boat, they are classed as the same to us.
From a liability point of view it comes down to not being life threatening or being non-dire circumstances. If you have casualties in the water on the brink of death or hypothermia I don't think you can do any worse to them by trying to pull them up over the side of a pilot boat. If you have a ship that could easily go to anchorage or could easily have a SAR tech join the pilot boat if there is no available helicopter or Coast Guard ship, there are other options to deal with an injury that is not life threatening. We have been put in a place before that I don't think we should have.
From a liability perspective, senator, it is a bit of a loose word. I am not sure how much liability would exist. You are trying to help someone. There is a Good Samaritan clause. I don't know how much would be there, but I think there is something to be said if you take someone that was in better shape, put them on your boat and cause more damage.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I am sure you are all trained for ferry services. Your crews are trained. Are they trained in rescue as well?
Mr. Hupman: Yes, they are trained in rescue.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Do they attend either of the colleges here, the Marine College or the Coast Guard College?
Mr. Hupman: Yes, the Nova Scotia Community College in Port Hawkesbury. For instance, some of the regs are changing and all our crew members are required to have marine emergency duties refresher training. We are spending a lot of money and a lot of time getting our crews through that to meet the January 1, 2017 requirement. They had that previously. They are now going through refreshers. They go through a program of refresher training on all these. In terms of the response we also have people with advanced first aid and those types of courses.
Senator Stewart Olsen: For the pilotage is that the same with your crews? Do they get training?
Capt. Griffiths: Not to the level that Murray's crew would be trained, no. Our guys have marine first aid. They have their MED as well but are not required to do the refresher under the regulations. There is no advanced search and rescue tech training. There is no fast rescue craft training. There is none of that. It is a crew of two. We take pilots to ships and bring them back in. The need was never there for it.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Because your boats are so fast I would think that you may get called fairly frequently to attend. Do you think it would be an advantage if your crews had that backup training?
Capt. Griffiths: It could very well be. It is not our core business but as risk mitigation to industry possibly it could benefit, yes.
Senator Enverga: I myself lived in Newfoundland for one year when I arrived here, just to let you know.
The Chair: You are still living in hope. Can't you tell by the accent?
Senator Enverga: That is my lead case for this kind of situation. I actually was on one of your ferries when I decided to go back to Toronto. One winter was enough for me.
What is your capacity now of your ferry services? Have you reached your maximum or are you far from the maximum capacity of your ferry services?
Mr. Hupman: The transportation link and the demand for service have changed a bit over the years. Back in the early 2000s there was a huge demand for passengers. With the economics, the times and all that type of stuff the requirement for the passenger side has been reduced. At one time we had over 500,000 passengers. We are now down to just over 300,000 passengers. That happened over a 10-year shift but that flipped with the commercial side. Before the commercial was less. Now the commercial is much larger than what it was.
In the summertime the answer is yes, we are sort of at our max capacity. If we have to take a vessel out of service to respond to anything or for whatever reason we have cancel sailings and we have to disrupt the service. In the summer season we are pretty much at capacity.
In the off season it is not so much. For the months of October to March we take off the Atlantic Vision. We tie her alongside and plug her in on shore power to save fuel and to save energy. The second vessel will come off around January 1 for about a month and a half or two months and used on a 24-hour standby basis.
In the off season we are not capacity but in the summer season we are.
Senator Enverga: Do you have any contingencies in case something happens to your boat?
Mr. Hupman: Yes.
Senator Enverga: I know the oil platforms have their own security and rescue services. Do you have the same thing?
Mr. Hupman: I don't know what you are talking about.
Senator Enverga: Just like the oil platforms you guys are operating with more people on board.
Capt. Madiwal: We have our on board rescue operations stuff. In going back to Senator Olsen's question on the training perspective, all the crew members are trained on the personal survival techniques. It is not only for personal safety. It is also for evacuating the passengers from the boat in case of an emergency. That is one of the key components of training.
In addition all our vessel employees or the senior officers on the ships as part of their certification and examination through Transport Canada have a major component of search and rescue operations. If the master of our ferry has been assigned on any search and rescue operations they are aware of all the things they need to do. They know how they can incorporate that and be an on scene commander when directed by the JRCC. That part is there. We have regular drills that we treat with care both from the security aspect and from the safety aspect.
Senator Enverga: In case of major emergencies on the ferry do you have enough resources or enough equipment to be able to rescue your passengers?
Capt. Madiwal: Yes. The lifesaving appliances on our ferries are dictated by the requirements for Transport Canada. They are much higher because we always have a redundancy factor. It is a requirement depending on the number of passengers we can carry at any given point of time.
There is always an additional amount of lifejackets, lifeboats and fast rescue craft in a marine evacuation system. It is just like the slides we have on the aircrafts basically. They will definitely cover all the passengers, plus have a full reserve capacity just in case the ferry has listed and you cannot launch the life rafts on other side or something of that sort.
Senator Enverga: For the pilots are you 100 per cent funded by the government or how are you funded by the government?
Capt. Griffiths: We are not funded at all by the government. We are self-sufficient.
Senator Enverga: Not at all.
Capt. Griffiths: Not at all.
Senator Enverga: I am surprised by Atlantic Pilot Authority.
Capt. Griffiths: We are a Crown corporation. We are just not funded by any taxpayers.
Senator Enverga: I know you are more focused on certain areas of the Maritimes. Are there redundancies from the CCG? There is actually a very strong possibility you will be the first person to be in there. How many times are you called by the Coast Guard? Is it more often or less often? What do you think?
Capt. Griffiths: On average it is once or twice a year. It is sporadic. Maybe one year you will have one and one year you will have three. I would say one or two a year. You would respond to some, but get stood down on the way because someone else has beaten you to it or there is a better vessel of opportunity that it is closer.
One thing to keep in mind is that in all the areas we operate there are dedicated Coast Guard cutters in Sambro and Louisbourg. Our major areas are covered by those assets that are designed with trained crew members on board to act in these emergencies. I couldn't understand why one of those wasn't dispatched in the same area that our pilot boat was operating in Sydney.
Since we are a Crown corporation we are not allowed to infringe on someone else's business. If there is a vessel that can do a non-emergency medevac of a crew member and can get paid for it, they need to do that, not us. We can't infringe on other people's business that way.
They are dedicated pilot boats. They are built to spec. They are certified by Transport Canada and Lloyd's as pilot boats, not rescue boats. We do the best we can but we will not say no in the case of an emergency. We have to go. We are a vessel of opportunity.
Senator Enverga: Basically you are just doing it on a voluntary basis. You can do whatever you want but are there incidents when they really need you and you cannot respond to it?
Capt. Griffiths: We have gone. Yes, sir. We will not turn down an emergency. We are obligated to under the Shipping Act anyway. What we are trying to get away from is the non-emergency medevacs that can do more harm than good.
Senator Enverga: Are you insured to handle medevacs?
Capt. Griffiths: We cannot handle medevacs, no, unless it was life or death and there was no other opportunity. I am sure the casualty would much prefer our option than no option at all.
Senator Munson: You had 16 trip cancellations and I am wondering how that determination was made. At what point was it? Who do you contact? Who is out there to tell you the ice is so thick and the winds are so strong that you can't make it through? How does that work?
Capt. Madiwal: We follow the weather reports provided by Environment Canada. On the basis of that prognosis we can actually have a good sailing and we can make it to the port.
Going back in Port-aux-Basques, the wind condition is a major component. Given the size of our vessel, which is almost to 200, it is a very risky operation for our captains. To ensure that we keep the safety and comfort of our passengers as topmost priority we take that decision before the vessel leaves the port.
Senator Munson: Do you have a special line to Environment Canada? We all can get a hold of Environment Canada to get the weather forecast. Do you have something special that alerts you to the fact that it is going to be tough?
Capt. Madiwal: We don't have a special line to Environment Canada. We monitor the website which is updated regularly with the weather forecast. In addition we also have contact through the emergency management because other events are reported through that channel to us. We use that data in the decision-making process.
Senator Munson: What percentage of the total amount of sailings would the 39 delays and 16 trip cancellations be? I suppose it is in the statistics. Is it 5 per cent, 10 per cent or 2 per cent in a year?
Mr. Hupman: On an annual basis you are talking about.
Senator Munson: On an annual basis.
Mr. Hupman: It is probably under 2 per cent. Further to the operational side of it, just to be clear, as an organization we have daily operations meetings to talk about all the considerations that go into whether we go or don't go. When we talk about things like ice we depend on the Environment Canada ice charts.
Senator Munson: Environment Canada what?
Mr. Hupman: Ice charts. We look at those charts on a very regular basis during ice season to see where the ice is, which way it is flowing and how thick it is. We actually will alter our routes necessarily to avoid any concern around being stuck in the ice. We are looking at it every day. We are taking information not only from Environment Canada but from available local weather stations. We have weather stations at various locations from where we actually take the information as real time as we can.
Capt. Madiwal: In addition we have installed our own weather station in Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundland. We monitor the winds gust and the real time wind data. It assists us in the decision-making process.
Senator Munson: I have a few nuts and bolts questions here for Capt. Griffiths. I noticed in your chart on page 2 there are pilots all over the map so to speak. Quebec comes into play in the middle of it. Are the pilots who work in the Gaspé and through the southern part just below Labrador with the federal Crown too? Are you in touch with them?
Capt. Griffiths: Yes, sir. There are four authorities in the country. We cover what you see here. Laurentian Pilotage Authority covers the river and up to the north shore of the Quebec. The Great Lakes Pilotage Authority covers the seaway and the Great Lakes. The Pacific Pilotage Authority covers the West Coast of the country.
If you see a town called Restigouche in blue in Northern New Brunswick, just north of it on the south shore of the Gaspé Peninsula in the Bay of Chaleur there is actually a small sliver of Quebec that falls within our jurisdiction. It is a very small portion of Quebec. Outside of that it is all the Laurentian Pilotage Authority.
Senator Munson: Do you have any language issues?
Capt. Griffiths: We don't have any language issues with us, no.
Senator Munson: Your pilot authorities in that area dealing with Quebec are bilingual.
Capt. Griffiths: Yes, the northern New Brunswick pilots are.
Senator Munson: I am sure there is a language of the sea and so on and so forth. Does the pilotage authority have any language issues at all dealing with foreign ships coming in? Can that become a problem from time to time? I have heard it could.
Capt. Griffiths: Absolutely, senator. The international language of the sea is English. Everyone is supposed to speak English but varying degrees of English are used in different ships and in different ports. That is a necessary evil our pilots deal with every day in all our ports from foreign flag ships. It is a challenge but there are a lot of ways you can deal with it. Our guys do a very good job at it so it is dealt with.
Senator Munson: I have a final question here. I am just curious all the time. Who trains the pilots? Do they just have local knowledge or have they been part of perhaps the navy at one time? Have they been fishermen at one time?
We see the immense amount of work they do particularly in this harbour moving these ships around. I understand they are now heightening the bridge because of the massive containers that are coming in. I am sure Senator McInnis knows the story but I don't. I understand they are only doing three metres. How do you work in conjunction with all of that?
Capt. Griffiths: To your first question, masters come to us from varying degrees of disciplines from tugboat captains to ferry captains, the Coast Guard, the navy, commercial shipping or you name it. They all come to be pilots.
The training program in Halifax can take about three years. When a master mariner joins our authority he starts off as an apprentice and basically watches and learns for three to four months in about 100 different jobs. At the end of that they will be examined on local knowledge of the harbour. It is a written and oral exam that takes about a full day to do. They will be questioned on every corner, every contour, every buoy, every nook and cranny in the harbour he has to know by memory.
If he passes that, which they all do, he will get the lowest of tonnage licences to conduct pilotage. For all ships under 10,000 tonnes he can do on his own but he still has to train on every ship above that.
Senator Munson: Is he or she a salaried employee?
Capt. Griffiths: In our authority they are all salaried employees. That is not the case in the river or in B.C.
Senator Munson: The new container ships that are coming in are obviously posing another risk. Just taking a look visually sometimes the size of these things defies gravity. They are higher than the buildings in Halifax.
Capt. Griffiths: They are all calculated before they arrive. We take into consideration their air draft. That is basically from the waterline to the top of the whip of the VHF antenna. That is usually the highest point of the ship. If it is 41 metres or less it can go into The Narrows. The tide comes into effect.
How many containers are on the ship will drop it down further into the water. The more weight on board, the lower it will sink which is better for us. Those are taken into consideration every time.
During The Big Lift project our pilots were at biweekly meetings with the bridge commission and the Halifax Port Authority every week from the day it started to make sure that shipping wouldn't be impacted in Halifax, to make sure there was communication with industry about the new heights of the bridge, when works were continuing and when work would stop. You name it: Everything that was going on with that bridge for shipping had a seat at that table.
Senator Munson: My final question is one that one of us usually asks because of our report. The question can be put in a positive way or a negative way. It is about the satisfactory aspect of communications dealing with the Coast Guard and dealing with other rescue operations.
Should more be done? Should there be better lines of communication? Is it working 100 per cent? On the negative part of the question, what are you dissatisfied with?
Capt. Griffiths: Communications as far as I am concerned can always be improved on every level. For the most part communications or improved communications are free. You don't have to pay for them. You just have to put an effort in to make it work.
On a level of satisfaction from our point of view I guess it might be a misunderstanding on when the Coast Guard would kick in or when a vessel of opportunity would be the right tool for the job. That could just be communications, sitting at the table with RCC and going over these things which we have yet to do.
Time slips by so fast, but communications can always be improved and we plan on doing it.
Senator Munson: I am sure others will explore that crucial aspect of it all.
Senator McInnis: We have noted your concern about being called by the JRCC. I am not going to get into that in any detail but you mentioned it several times. You are funded by member ports or by user pay?
Capt. Griffiths: It is user pay. Our tariff structure is based on a tariff, or charge for each ship. This will pay the pilot's salary, boat operations, my salary, our rent and leasehold improvements, everything.
Senator McInnis: How does the port get designated that you must have a pilot on board?
Capt. Griffiths: It is through a process that is called a PRMM. Senator Manning knows all too well what that acronym stands for. It is essentially a risk assessment conducted by a third party facilitator on behalf of the board of directors of the APA. A study would be conducted on the risks of a new port being developed or traffic being changed significantly in a port if they are starting to send oil in now that was never there before and the risk is so low that it doesn't need compulsory pilotage. A recommendation would be made by that third party facilitator to say it should be compulsory pilotage from now on or it can remain the way it is. That recommendation is put to the board. They either accept it or reject it. Then a regulation is put through into The Canada Gazette. That is how a port becomes compulsory or non-compulsory.
Senator McInnis: Take a port like Sheet Harbour which requires a pilot. Does the pilot have to have another person to take him to the ship or how does that work?
Capt. Griffiths: Today Sheet Harbour is non-compulsory. A pilot is not compulsory in Sheet Harbour.
Senator McInnis: Oh, really.
Capt. Griffiths: No.
Senator McInnis: It used to be.
Capt. Griffiths: It used to be. Traffic dried up dramatically years ago but funnily enough we are studying that port again. We are going through all our ports in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and P.E.I. and doing an overview of traffic to see if things have changed in the last five years. Does it warrant a closer look? Should we study this again?
With the traffic in the last couple of years increasing in Sheet Harbour we are taking a look at it. Is there enough risk that tips the threshold to warrant compulsory pilotage or should it remain the same today? We are studying that today.
Senator McInnis: You can have some fairly inclement weather. We saw your pictures of the pilot going up the ladder on some of these huge vessels. What happens in inclement weather when they are just unable to do that? Does the ship drop anchor? What happens?
Capt. Griffiths: A few things can happen. First, Ships don't come into port if we can't board them. That can happen.
Second, depending on the geography and what port we are talking about, some weather might exist right at the boarding station but conditions might be okay to board a pilot just inside the boarding area. In that case if you flip to the page 5 where it shows our pilot boats, our new pilot boat fleet is equipped with advanced technology to lead ships in. We have provisions and regulations that allow us to have a pilot on the pilot boat to lead a vessel in through the pilotage zone and a safe place where he can board. That is another option.
Third, if it is departure we are talking about we have overcarried pilots many times. If the weather is not fit to get a pilot off he will just stay on board the tanker or the container ship and get off at the next port of call. Shipping companies are more than willing to do that. It is a small fraction of charge compared to what delaying their schedule by one or two days would be. Our pilots pack a bag. They join the ship and see you in a couple of days.
Senator Poirier: Actually a good part of my questions has already been addressed by somebody else. I am just going to expand a bit on what Senator McInnis mentioned. The pilot boats belong to the Crown corporation. Am I right?
Capt. Griffiths: They belong to us, yes.
Senator Poirier: And the pilots are employees?
Capt. Griffiths: They are employees, yes.
Senator Poirier: I know you mentioned that the Coast Guard usually just reaches out to you maybe a couple of times a year. On a typical day are there any times that you have had to go out to respond to a call that you would have received but ran into trouble and needed to call them to come and help you guys?
Capt. Griffiths: No.
Senator Poirier: Going back to the first group, and again one of my colleagues touched on this also, the capability or capacity to have 3,010 is that per vessel or is that the total of your four vessels?
Mr. Hupman: The total of the four vessels.
Senator Poirier: I know the question was asked whether you felt that you had the ability in the case of an emergency to evacuate all your boats at one time. The reason I want to touch on it again is that in our visit to Greenwood yesterday a concern was brought up about the increased number of larger vessels coming in like cruise ships over the last few years and as we go forward.
They continue ongoing training to make sure that they have the ability to be handled if ever there was a disaster. Right now their fear is if there ever was something major do they have with all their partners the ability to be able to save and rescue as many people as possible. Do you feel very confident that you would have that ability within your ferries at this point or you would reach out to your partners?
Mr. Hupman: Start with the requirement that we have as Capt. Madiwal said earlier. If we were in a situation en route where we had to evacuate the vessel we have the capacity to put everybody into life rafts and lifeboats in the water. We have the ability to evacuate the vessel. Once you evacuate the vessel and you have all these people in the water that is when you get into the mass rescue operation we were talking about. Potentially you have 1,000 in the water in rafts. Given the harsh conditions of the gulf you don't know what the conditions could be like in any length of time say in the middle of February or even in July it can get really cold.
When Captain Madiwal talked about the mass rescue services or operations that is the area where we don't have a lot of knowledge as to whether there is a capacity there within the Coast Guard to actually help or whether they would have to call upon a bunch of partner groups.
Senator Poirier: I think they would have to go to a bunch of partners from what I am hearing, yes. My very last question to you is: Being on the water, which is what you do every day, how many times would you have had to reach out to people to come to help you rescue, compared to how many times you would have had to help somebody else in distress out there?
Mr. Hupman: I have been with the organization about 18 years. I can't ever remember us actually reaching out to an organization to come help.
Senator Poirier: But you have reached out to help.
Mr. Hupman: We have been reached out to help probably on average twice per year. I think it is sort of like what Sean said. We have become a vessel of opportunity.
Our vessels have fast rescue crafts. We can deploy a fast rescue craft and go quickly to the emergency. We have a lot of trained individuals. We also have hospital rooms on our vessels for medical emergencies. They are more for onboard medical emergencies but in the event. We also have helipads, as Capt. Madiwal said, in the event that we needed to do some type of air medevac. We have those capabilities as well.
The big issue is that we have a big vessel. It is a 200-metre vessel. When you are coming up on a small fishing vessel you have to make sure that you know what you are doing. Sometimes we actually just provide coverage. We will actually go upwind in a situation and just provide some lea of the wind or lea of the weather so that people can perform emergency duties as necessary.
Senator Poirier: Would that call come from JRCC?
Mr. Hupman: Yes, but we will respond to hails on the set as well. If we think that we are the closest we will actually hail in and say that we are responding.
The Chair: I have a follow-up question. Earlier, Capt. Griffiths, you mentioned the fact that at one time you had to make a decision not to go and participate in a request for assistance. Trying to make that decision has to be very tough because the situation could turn into a life and death after you made that decision.
I understand the corner that you find yourselves in sometimes when the request comes in. I am just wondering what process is in place? Is that a decision of your own? Is that a joint decision? How is that decision reached?
Capt. Griffiths: That particular decision was reached over taking all the facts and putting them on to the table at once. We had a ship that was passing by Sydney on its way down the coast of Nova Scotia. The Coast Guard or JRCC didn't see the severity to warrant a medevac by cutter or helicopter. It was night time. The seas were three metre to four metres. The pilot boat wasn't equipped with emergency response. There was no training. With all those things together I felt there was too much risk for the casualty for us to go based on his condition at the time. I believe the ship just continued on to Halifax. The ship came in under pilotage. He got off and was taken to the hospital by the agent.
The Chair: Was there a follow-up discussion with JRCC on that? I am just wondering about how they make the request. I fully understand where you are coming from with the decision you made. With regard to the decision that was made at JRCC to make contact with you in the first place, was there any follow-up discussion on that or a plan B put in place for the next time something like that would happen?
Capt. Griffiths: Yes. Since that time we developed a protocol for when being tasked by JRCC for different responses and put an excerpt in the program about medevac or non-life threatening medevacs. They shouldn't be done by the authority at all.
We had a follow-up conversation with RCC after the fact. They agreed with our position. They just wanted to ask to see if we would be willing to do it. It seems to be on speed dial sometimes in different companies that there is a pilot boat always in the harbour, always manned and ready to go; let's just call them. We just can't. It is not our business. It is not our core.
They agreed with our decision not to do that. It was too risky for the casualty and they continued the vessel on to Halifax.
Senator Enverga: Whenever you help CCG there is a cost to you to do it. Do you get reimbursed? Do you ask for reimbursement?
Capt. Madiwal: Negative. Actually we do not ask for reimbursement because I think under the Canada Shipping Act it is our duty to assist in a distress. Depending on the area where the vessel is and as we may be the vessel of opportunity there as Murray alluded to we will have to go and rescue. That is the primary responsibility for any mariner and any ship operator.
Capt. Griffiths: It is the same thing for us. We don't ask for reimbursement or charge for those services. We are mandated to do them anyway as the captain said.
Capt. Madiwal: It is covered under not only the Canada Shipping Act but also the International Convention on Marine Search and Rescue, UN Convention on the High Seas and UN Convention on Laws of the Sea.
The Chair: There was certainly some candid conversation. We thank you very much for taking the time to join us here this morning.
As our next order of business, senators, is it agreed that we can have parts of the meeting recorded without causing any disruption to our hearings?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: I would like to thank Senator Poirier for taking care of our media requests in the French language. I come from Newfoundland. There are days I am still working on the English language so I am going to let Senator Poirier take care of the French.
For our next panel we will be hearing about and discussing maritime search and rescue from the point of view of fishermen and the fisheries industry. I would like to ask our guests to introduce themselves first, and then I understand some of them will have opening remarks.
Mitchell Jollimore, Secretary, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association: Mitchell Jollimore, Secretary, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association.
Craig Avery, President, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association: Craig Avery. I am President, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association and a member of Zone 3, Prince Edward Island Coast Guard Auxiliary.
[Translation]
Jean Lanteigne, President, Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters: My name is Jean Lanteigne. I am the CEO of the Fédération régionale acadienne des pêcheurs professionnels, located in Shippagan, New Brunswick. In that capacity, I also am the President of the Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters, which represents fish harvesters all across the country.
[English]
Stewart Franck, Executive Director, Fisheries Safety Association of Nova Scotia: Good morning, my name is Stewart Franck, Executive Director, Fisheries Safety Association of Nova Scotia.
The Chair: Mr. Avery you have the floor.
Mr. Avery: Good morning, Chairman Manning and Senate committee members. I am Captain Craig Avery. I am also President, Prince Edward Island Fishermen's Association, the PEIFA.
In addition to my association duties I have fished various species for over 40 years. I have been a member of the Coast Guard Auxiliary for 16 years. With me today is Captain Mitchell Jollimore, an active fisher and member of our PEIFA executive.
Search and rescue is an issue that is very important to me and the 1,300 core fishers I represent. We are a key component of the overall search and rescue activities that take place in the coastal waters off P.E.I. We take our responsibilities very seriously and appreciate the opportunity to offer input on the challenges and opportunities from an auxiliary member's perspective.
On Prince Edward Island the Coast Guard Auxiliary consists of 99 members. There are two zones, my zone 3 which has 50 members and zone 4 consisting of 49 members. The majority of our auxiliary fleet consists of fishing boats that are between 40 and 45 feet in length.
We also understand that there is a target number of 20 per cent of rescue calls to be handled by the Coast Guard Auxiliary as per the information on the Coast Guard SAR site. In the past few years we have seen an increasing dependence on the Coast Guard Auxiliary to do boat tow-ins during our active fishing seasons. We are referring to situations when the disabled craft and crew are not in danger.
We suggest that when a Coast Guard boat is available there should be a function of full-time Coast Guard staff as a callout could represent a significant loss of income for auxiliary members depending on the timing of the season. Generally these financial losses are not recoupable.
At present P.E.I. has two boats out of 44 Coast Guard boats based in Atlantic Canada. It is our recommendation with the availability of a third search and rescue boat on Prince Edward Island most of the recreational boat tow-ins could be carried out by the Coast Guard during fishing season.
The Canadian Coast Guard and the Prince Edward Island Coast Guard Auxiliary have a strong history and longstanding relationship on P.E.I. There are many instances of both fleets standing side by side in times of great risk and danger to carry out the common goal of saving lives.
We are hopeful that these recommendations for improved service are seriously considered by the Senate committee in the crafting of its report as a way to better serve the marine community in saving lives.
The PEIFA and I appreciate the opportunity to address our concerns to the Senate committee and would welcome any questions regarding our recommendations that the senators may have.
I would also like to mention that we had an email this morning from a colleague of ours that represents the Mi'kmaq Confederacy of Prince Edward Island. Most of their vessels are in the same area where we are looking to put the new vessel.
I am going to let my friend, Mitch, read that email off if you don't mind. It is just a short note.
Mr. Jollimore: This note is from Ed Frenette, Fisheries Liaison Coordinator for the Mi'kmaq Confederacy of Prince Edward Island. It reads:
The Mi'kmaq Confederacy of P.E.I. fully supports putting a search and rescue vessel on the western end of Lobster Fishing Area 24, to be of support to the Lennox Island and Abegweit band fishermen.
[Translation]
Mr. Lanteigne: Good morning. I am going to speak in French.
Mr. Chair, senators of the committee, first, I would like to thank you for the invitation to appear before you. As the fish harvesters' representative, I can assure you that our members take marine safety very seriously.
The Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters, the CCPFH, is a not-for-profit organization that supports the health and vitality of the Canadian fishing industry. Founded in 1995, CCPFH is made up of fishing organizations and is governed by a board of directors. The directors come from fish harvester organizations from across the country representing the Atlantic, Pacific, freshwater and First Nations fisheries.
The CCPFH's main objective is to ensure that fish harvesters have the required knowledge and skills for their trade and to meet the human resource needs of the Canadian fishing industry now and in the future. Of course, this objective includes the knowledge and skills required to safely sail the vessels of the Canadian fishing fleet. These vessels number more than 20,000, the vast majority of which are less than 65 feet in length and are operated by independent owners.
Over the years, in an effort to strengthen the industry's culture of marine safety, the CCPFH has held a number of national workshops and conferences. The council has also helped to coordinate industry efforts through its participation in the Canadian Marine Advisory Council, the CMAC. The CCPFH has established marine safety training programs, such as the Master Class 4 distance education program. The council has also developed an electronic fishing vessel stability simulator in order to increase the understanding of stability and to reduce accidents.
There would be no virtue in talking about search and rescue, SAR, activities without linking them to prevention. After all, the most effective SAR activities are those that never happen. In the last 15 years, the fishing industry has helped to reduce the number of accidents on the water and to strengthen the culture of safety with the following initiatives: participating in CMAC, developing training geared to the needs of fish harvesters, establishing training across the country either by delivering the training directly or by collaborating with educational institutions, establishing regional health and safety organizations for fish harvesters, and hosting national workshops and conferences.
However, the industry considers that there is much left to do in terms of the awareness and distribution of safety information. In 2012, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, the TSB, published a report on marine safety entitled "Safety Issues Investigation into Fishing Safety in Canada.'' The following passage appears on page 59 of the report:
As early as 1990, the Board recommended that TC "evaluate the effectiveness of its distribution practices for all marine safety information aimed at fishing masters and fishermen.'' In 1995, the Board again recommended that TC, together with other government departments, agencies and organizations, "immediately undertake a national safety promotion program for operators and crews of small fishing vessels to increase their awareness of the effects of unsafe operation practices on vessel stability.''
I am sorry to inform you that, if such a program were undertaken, it was without the knowledge of fish harvesters and their organizations. In the same TSB report, we read:
. . .there is still work to do to make safety information more practical, easier to read and easier to find.
By the TSB's own admission, current communication efforts are not bearing fruit; the report also states:
Despite these recommendations, TSB investigations continue to find deficiencies associated with distributing safety messages and information. Following a 2001 accident involving the Alex B. 1, the Board found that SSBs [ship safety bulletins] "do not seem to be yielding the anticipated results.''
Fish harvesters' organizations and safety associations in some regions are working to promote marine safety. However, we consider that the lack of coordination and collaboration on a national scale between the industry and Transport Canada remains an issue. In addition, the CCPFH produced a report on the national consultations it held with the industry on training. Although the consultations were not specifically focused on issues of marine safety, those issues occupied a major place in the discussions. The 2014 report reads:
More than ever, the fishing industry desires the implementation of a clearer, more coherent and more detailed communications strategy to inform fish harvesters about the Transport Canada's Marine Personnel Regulations
One of the recommendations from the participants was for the industry and Transport Canada to join forces to increase awareness among all fish harvesters.
We recommend that Transport Canada collaborate with the industry to establish a clear, consistent and detailed communication strategy to promote marine safety and that Transport Canada support industry groups in their activities to promote marine safety to fish harvesters. We also recommend that Transport Canada maintain CMAC's regional consultations, and CMAC's two national meetings annually.
For search and rescue operations, as you know, the critical element is response time. I have to express our members' great concern at the closures of some SAR stations.
For example, it is difficult to imagine how the closure of the Rivière-au-Renard station can improve response time. In effect, that closure hands responsibility for a major part of the St. Lawrence River and the gulf to the stations at Escoumins and Halifax. In addition to requiring longer response distances, these closures can compromise SAR activities in two ways: first, by compromising the ability to be fully understood in one or other of the official languages when communicating about emergency situations and second, the stations' increased coverage distances and areas make it very difficult for the operators to become intimately acquainted with the territory to be covered. This increases the risk of badly targeted responses and, as a result, the risk of a tragedy.
As for the response fleet, Coast Guard rescue boats are moored in a number of ports along the coast in order to meet the quick response times. However, it seems that some of the equipment is not adequate to meet the needs of all the fishing fleets. For example, the Cape 47 Motor Life Boats are able to meet the needs of the coastal fleet, which is made up of boats less than 45 feet in length, generally with a crew of three, sailing in coastal waters. However, that type of equipment would have difficulty responding to the mid-shore fleet, with boats of 65 feet in length or more, often with crews of five, and sailing several dozen miles offshore in the difficult conditions of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence or the open sea. In addition, that kind of vessel is not designed to operate in winter conditions.
The ARUN 52 lifeboats are able to work in all conditions and have a range of 100 miles. That type of vessel is used mostly in Nova Scotia. Because of the crab and shrimp fleets in Quebec and New Brunswick, with about 200 fishing boats in the 65- to 80-foot category — 19 meters to 24 meters — we feel that it is important to cover those regions with lifeboats of that kind. To finish on this point, we just add that we witnessed the Cape 47 MLB being taken out of the water in Shippagan while two seiners were still actively fishing. Weather conditions for the Cape 47 were dangerous, so it was taken out of service. If there had been an emergency at that moment, no lifeboat would have been in the vicinity to provide assistance. That is playing with fire!
So we recommend that the positioning of equipment be reviewed with the industry so that it matches the fishing fleets being served.
In terms of distress protocols, we understand that search and rescue activities spring into action when a vessel is in distress. With some mechanical breakdowns, it may be that a vessel is not in distress in calm seas. However, the vessel may suddenly be in peril if weather conditions deteriorate.
We recommend that the Coast Guard review its response protocols with the industry in the light of the vessel's geographical position and potential meteorological changes.
Under the heading of climate change, in some areas, we are seeing more and more extreme weather events that bring an increased risk of loss of life and of shipping. We recommend working with the industry to make weather forecasting more accurate and more frequent, to improve safe harbours and to make SAR response appropriate.
Under the heading of fisheries policy and of marine safety, in 1996, Transport Canada and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, DFO, signed the memorandum of understanding respecting marine transportation safety and environmental protection. Since that time, a lot has been accomplished, including matters such as the opening dates of what are called competitive fisheries, dates that can be pushed back if dangerous weather conditions are forecast.
We recommend that Transport Canada and DFO work more closely with the industry to make sure that the specifics of different regions and the practices of different fleets are understood so that adequate SAR resources are in place when the competitive fisheries open.
In conclusion, the industry is seeking greater collaboration with regulatory agencies and the Coast Guard so that we are consulted to a greater extent on prevention and on search and rescue issues. The industry also strongly recommends that service be re-established to the levels before the closures of SAR stations in order to ensure an adequate response to distress calls.
Mr. Chair, honourable senators, thank you for your attention. I am available to answer your questions.
[English]
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Lanteigne. Mr. Franck?
Mr. Franck: Good morning, Mr. Chair, senators, fellow witnesses and guests. Thank you for the invitation to present to the Senate Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. It is an honour to brief you on the Fisheries Safety Association of Nova Scotia. I will call it FSANS.
The FSANS was started in 2010 by industry for industry. We are a small, not-for-profit, non-government organization led by a dedicated volunteer board of directors representing processing, harvesting and aquaculture operations with strong support from government advisers including DFO small craft harbours, conservation and protection. Attached to my notes is a list of our board of directors and advisers.
The Fisheries Safety Association may advise, consult and make recommendations with respect to workplace safety matters affecting the fisheries sector in the province of Nova Scotia including fishing boats operating out of NS harbours. We do not and will not profess to be an authority or an expert in the detailed workings, affairs or operations of the Canadian Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary or the search and rescue system.
The mandate of the Fisheries Safety Association is to enhance safety, creating an industry attractive to new workers while protecting existing workers, advising on risk assessment, prevention of injuries and loss control that inevitably leads to reduced costs, and including reduction of workers' compensation costs over time. FSANS and its partners in prevention are working to make fishing and processing industries safer sometimes one person, one wharf and one community at a time. Industry is responding with noticeable improvement and good performance results.
I submitted a slide presentation. I don't know whether you will be going through that. However the information is all contained in the notes. I am going on to slide No. 4 at this point.
FSANS endeavors to make safety part of the new tradition in an industry that is often known for its history of tragedy, loss of life, acceptance of risk and resistance to change. It takes a variety of approaches, initiatives, partnerships and strategies to adjust a culture to focus on awareness and a prevention mindset.
In slide No. 5 we talk about in recent years conversations have shifted to the wearing of personal flotation devices, making better risk decisions, better equipped vessels, and doing whatever it takes to come home safely. Work continues but there are now far more good news stories with happier endings and a significant reduction in serious incidents and related costs.
Slide No. 6 talks about June 2015 when the five-year fishing safety action plan Fishing Safety Now was launched. Again fishers stepped up to the plate as the plan was developed by industry for industry. As such, the plan was turned over to industry to implement through the Fisheries Safety Association and the Nova Scotia Fisheries Sector Council. The objective of the plan is to see the fishing industry become one of the safest industries in Nova Scotia.
Slide No. 7 indicates that fishing remains a very dangerous industry. The WCB of Nova Scotia stated as late as 2015 that a Nova Scotia fisher is up to 40 times more likely to lose his or her life at work than the average Nova Scotia worker. What if it were only 20 times more dangerous or 10 or 5? We will continue to build on these incremental improvements until fishing is better and safer than average.
We are acutely aware of the excellent work performed by the Canadian Coast Guard, the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, and the entire maritime search and rescue system in search and rescue, prevention, aids to navigation and other areas. These dedicated personnel routinely put themselves at tremendous risk and in harm's way to help and protect others including our Nova Scotia fishers. Indeed many Nova Scotia fishers also serve as Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary member and volunteers. At any given time the SAR commander, Coast Guard or JRCC may call upon the incredible resource of thousands of fishing boat vessels of opportunity to assist in rescue and recovery operations and to help other vessels that may be disabled or in distress. We are truly thankful for these efforts.
With respect to challenges in maritime search and rescue activities the Fisheries Safety Association is primarily an occupational health and safety organization. We are most concerned about the safety of our Nova Scotia fishers and any other persons on or near the water including SAR operations personnel and volunteers. It is enough to have a fishing crew put at risk by known or unforeseen circumstances with the variables of operating in North Atlantic waters but to have would-be rescuers at risk is very much a cause for concern.
The last Monday in November is known as dumping day along the South Shore in Southwest Nova Scotia. It is the start of lobster fishing season. The same procedure occurs at various times in other areas of the province and in other Atlantic provinces. It concerns Fisheries Safety Association that at a time when hundreds of fishing vessels set off from many small harbours in a hurry to reach their preferred fishing grounds it is possible that SAR resources may be stretched, affecting their ability to respond in a timely manner. In the event there are simultaneous calls for SAR or emergency assistance the potential for confusion and duplicate or conflicting information could affect response times and prioritization of the most urgent cases.
Opportunities for maritime search and rescue activities, outreach and creating relationships with industry, safety organizations and fishers at the wharf should be respected. Groups can help deliver key messages to stakeholders in the fishing industry, create further awareness and help minimize the number of emergency situations. Individual fishers can influence their fellow crew members and the community at large.
Search and rescue experience should be used to promote more public education and awareness, help with lessons learned and develop case studies based on actual emergency situations and response while respecting sensitivity and privacy concerns.
Increased search and rescue presence at the wharf helps promote and assist with overboard drills, simulated activities, rescues, et cetera. We understand it takes a very long time to have the Coast Guard come to an event with a helicopter,
There could be a major shift in resources from SAR activity to SAR prevention. Safety organizations need additional resources and could use more upfront support with promoting personal floatation devices, risk-based decision making, education, industry-focused case studies, Safety Town Hall Meetings, et cetera.
Slide No. 10 talks about effectively communicating the specified approval of the use of PFDs or personal floatation devices, personal floatation aids and lifejackets to ensure fishers understand what must be worn when there is a risk of drowning. Personal floatation devices or aids are not designed for floating for several hours around in the North Atlantic. This is when life jackets, immersion suits, life boats and life rafts have very important roles, but the PFD will keep a person afloat and visible so that he or she may be rescued promptly by the crew or neighbouring vessels. In worst case scenarios they may assist in a recovery operation. We must work together to encourage the use of a personal floatation device at all times when on the working deck of a fishing vessel and where there is a risk of drowning.
On the use of SAR resources, what if there were one, three or five fewer major rescue or recovery activities each year? Actually we may be headed there now. Could resources be shifted to help more with safety equipment, training, education, awareness, wharf activities, safety town hall meetings, case studies, et cetera?
The Transportation Safety Board as my colleague recently mentioned released a safety issues investigation report in 2011 identifying 10 key issues where action is required for real and lasting improvement in fishing safety. SAR resources can help with coordination and implementation of actions to address several of these interdependent issues.
When each area opens the lobster fishery on dumping day we suggest that there is an increased focus for most search and rescue personnel and equipment to be located in that specific area or areas.
Thank you very much for this opportunity. I would be very pleased to take any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you all for your presentations. I look forward to questions from our senators. We are going to begin, as we usually do, with deputy chair of our committee, Senator Hubley.
Senator Hubley: Welcome to each one of you and thank you for coming and sharing your information with us today.
I am going to try to clarify a situation. Under the Canada Shipping Act, it is a responsibility if you are on water to respond quickly to an incident of a vessel you may close by. I was wondering if there is a connected reporting requirement connected if you respond to that situation.
Another thing I might ask you is: If it is a humanitarian act and you are not contacted by the Coast Guard to intervene, I understand you do not get paid. The only thing you are reimbursed for is probably your gas.
Could you share some of that information with us? I will speak to Mr. Avery on this.
Mr. Avery: If somebody is in immediate danger then basically it is your duty to try to help that vessel in distress or anybody. I have helped lots of vessels that were in distress before I was in the Coast Guard and after I got into the Coast Guard. You just automatically go. We have had boats capsize right in the harbour and everybody just goes there knowing there is no reimbursement.
You want to know if we had to do a report. No, we wouldn't. There would be none unless we were maybe approached by Transport Canada that was doing an investigation.
On the other side, if I get a call from Coast Guard Auxiliary I have to get a tasking. I get hooked in with the JRCC right away and they coordinate the whole search. They look after me as I am moving toward that vessel, especially if it is a bit of a dangerous situation where. I went out before by myself because I couldn't get anybody to come with me in the middle of night. You are kind of putting yourself at peril a bit.
In those situations there is a report I fill out after and send in to the JRCC. We get an expense reimbursement based on a mileage claim for somebody travelling to a meeting. It is depending on the size of your vessel, the size of your diesel motor and whatnot and if you happen to have incurred other expenses.
We have insurance that the Coast Guard Auxiliary looks after but that is only providing I do get a tasking. Sometimes I will respond when I am not even tasked to go but I am on my way in the harbour. I usually report that I picked up the person but I don't bother to get a tasking number if I am close.
I have brought in vessels before just like any other fisherman would do. I was right there. I don't bother with a tasking but I like to report it just so that they have it for their records.
Senator Hubley: You gave us the figures for the number of Coast Guard Auxiliary members on Prince Edward Island. What are the criteria for becoming involved with the auxiliary? Is there an educational program, first aid, water safety or things of that nature? Who is responsible for administering or presenting that?
Mr. Avery: Actually my colleague is going to be speaking to that this afternoon, Lois Drummond. Lois is our zone 3 rep and she probably would have more answers.
In my particular situation, yes, there are courses I have to take. You have to take RBM-1 course for your radio licence and learn how to tow a vessel in distress. Your first aid has to be updated. When I joined I didn't think there were any criteria. There may be something new since then.
You don't necessarily have to have a vessel. We have people who work in the Coast Guard Auxiliary that do administration stuff for us or training officers who maybe only have a small speedboat or something. All those people are helpful. They can be of assistance.
There is one gentleman in the port where I fish who doesn't have a vessel at all but he is there if I am going out. I had mentioned going out by myself but it is nice to be able to have a person that you can call and say, "Look, I have a task. I would like to have somebody with me.'' I will go alone but it is not a good situation, especially if somebody is in trouble.
I have been broken down before. It is probably one of the worst feelings you could ever have. It is not like being on the side of the road where you can pick up a phone and call a tow truck. Sometimes you wait a long time to get somebody to come.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I am beginning to get a clear picture of perhaps some of the discrepancies and holes in our system that we could hopefully be of use in plugging.
I am very heartened to see that all your presentations are quite similar. That is good because it reinforces your suggestions. One of the things you emphasized was doing a better job at public information on safety.
I found interesting the review of the positioning stations, to have another look and review what is happening. I think that was one of Mr. Lanteigne's recommendations. Could you elaborate on that a bit? Did you find that when stations were shut down that perhaps we need to have a rethink of that?
Mr. Lanteigne: First of all, I would like to apologize that you will be getting a translated version of the presentation that I gave. That will be circulated to you probably by tomorrow. The translation system in Ottawa was kind of slow to produce the Shakespeare version of my presentation. Let's put it that way.
To get back to that, maybe it would be good to start with an anecdote. This guy from Quebec called search and rescue. Nobody was able to understand exactly what he was saying. The captain this morning mentioned that English language was to be an international affair. That is okay as long as you speak it. In calling the system he ended up talking to the Vatican. As funny as it may be that is a documented affair. They thought he wanted to talk to the pope, I guess.
I think the language issue is actually not that bad. Whenever you call 911 there is assistance in both languages. Even if Rivière-au-Renard station is now closed I think there is good service. It could be better but it actually works.
The response time is the other part of it. That is where the placement of the equipment within the gulf area becomes important. That is a very delicate situation. A senator asked whose responsibility it was to respond and Craig answered. The closest ship has to provide assistance. That is okay. That is a good concept. It works.
At this time of the year there are not many vessels on the water. There are some locations or areas where you are basically alone on the water. Normally rescue situations don't happen on sunny days. It is always on stormy days. That is why you are at risk.
The distance the Cape-class 47 can cover is 50 miles. For inshore fishermen it is okay. They won't be at risk because they are close. When you get to the type of fishing where you are farther from the shore and the boat that is supposed to help you has the capacity to travel 50 miles then he can't provide assistance. That is where the type of gear that is being displayed on location has to be reviewed and addressed.
You hear all kinds of stories about Cape-class 47 vessels. If you ever visit one of them there is a place for four crew members who are strapped in those seats. It has to be able to travel fast and secure and you are fastened in there. There are no bathroom facilities. If you ask them how many people they can bring on board, they say they will try to bring as much as they can. You hear horror stories.
I heard a story not too long ago about when they went in the gulf to rescue people on a sailing vessel. There were seven people on board including three women with no bathroom. This is a rescue operation. We understand each other there. This is not a yacht service. We have to be aware that maybe the Cape-class 47 is a fast boat. It can get there but in many instances it can't. The display of the equipment is a problem.
Senator Stewart Olsen: You can correct me if I am wrong, but if you want to know about safety on the sea you can ask fishermen and people who actually are out there in boats. The picture I am beginning to get is that we have a great coastal service. Our Coast Guard is great but it is small and we are a big country. We need to rethink a lot of this.
Would you say when fishermen go out to sea they are comfortable knowing if something happens they would be rescued by a SAR team, or would it be most likely a vessel of opportunity?
Mr. Avery: As a fisherman I have been around the water for 40 years, especially in the area where I am fishing right now. I would have to say no. We have two SAR vessels equipped for search and rescue. From the harbour on in they are upward to 80 miles away. It would have to be a vessel of opportunity or a friend.
If it is a serious situation it is not a problem, but like I said you can run into a situation where the weather is not that bad, people are fishing and you have to wait. It is not a very nice situation when you are waiting two or three hours for somebody to come and tow you in.
We have another situation now too. If it is not an auxiliary member who is responding people are starting to think about insurance. If I am an auxiliary member responding to a vessel in distress or whatever is the situation, it could be a half-million dollar sailing yacht. These situations are not like you are backing into somebody in a dock. You are in rough weather. I have picked up vessels by myself, alone in the boat. I am trying to get tow ropes out to them alone and out on the deck by myself and blowing sou'west 35 knots or 40 knots, 40 miles offshore. I have had tasks like that before.
I would have to say no now in the area I am in. If you were close to Summerside or close to Souris there is a SAR vessel there with a 30-minute response time. You probably would have a good chance.
Like you just mentioned, it is a vast coastline. It should be looked at to see that every person in our country has the opportunity of the next person, that there is somebody there. This is what we are paying taxes for and we should have the right to that service.
Mr. Franck: I second that. Generally the fishermen are quite comfortable going out knowing that there are resources there. It may not be Canadian Coast Guard or Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary services. They might be farther away as Mr. Avery pointed out. It is more likely they will look at their friends fishing nearby. Often most of our fleets fish in groups or together or nearby. They would be looking at vessels of opportunity to assist if needed, with the exception of the eastern shore of Nova Scotia. There might be one singular shrimp fishing boat going out of there. It is a concern to them which has been expressed to us that they are out there alone. No other fishers are around in the area. If they do need help where is it going to come from? It is going to be coming from Canadian Coast Guard or Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary which may be a long way away.
Mr. Lanteigne: I will add to this. Fishermen, and we have a one next to me, are exceptional hunters. You can compare them to hunters. They know the sea very well and they work with nature. In a sense they become in French "téméraire.'' I don't know what it is in English.
They know the weather well. They feel it is not going to happen. You would not go out there at that time, but for you it is taking a chance. For them it is normal and they become used to it. It is a kind of gamble that they take all the time. For them it is part of the job and they don't see that at all there. "Holy Jesus, you are going to go out sea fishing today. You should stay home.'' "No, it is kind of normal.''
I would add as well that in some types of fisheries, particularly in the shrimp fishery right now, fishermen are telling me the worse the weather, the better the fishing. It is kind of awkward in the sense that the performance of the catch rate is better in those windy and bad situations.
They are taking chances because it is bad out there. They should be sailing home or on their derrieres but they will stay there. We have large fishing vessels with strong windows and all of a sudden a boat comes in and those windows are blown. It must have been pretty tough that day but they take chances there.
Three weeks ago while fishing in the Esquamine part of Newfoundland the Atlantic Provider, a vessel based in Shippagan, totally burned and sank. Luckily enough the Coast Guard was able to save the four people on board. They were about four hours from Port Saunders. They were rescued safely. It happens many times.
Senator Enverga: I felt touched with some of the stories you guys have mentioned. Basically you are one of the recipients of the services the Coast Guard provides. I listened to all of you. It seems that you have more questions or more recommendations. You are not totally satisfied with the services that you are getting. Is that how I hear this? You want us to make a recommendation. If there is one very special thing you want us to recommend to the government can you tell me what it is, please?
Mr. Franck: I will be brave and step up as the first to make a recommendation. It relates back to coordination of efforts, activities and information especially respecting Transport Canada and DFO. We need to coordinate the rules, the regulations, the education, the response, the equipment requirements, the equipment certifications and the approvals.
I mentioned during my introductory remarks the Fishing Safety Now action plan. One of its 10 working groups is the agency to agency co-operation and improvements group. When agencies affecting health and safety in the fishing industry are in the room together they learn an awful lot from each other. We need that microscale to expand to a macroscale right across the country so that the memorandum of understanding or other relationships between Transport Canada and DFO are coordinated in their response whether it is resource management or whether it is equipment requirements on vessels to satisfy certain fisheries in certain seasons and that sort of thing.
I think that a lot of that co-operation would result in better information and education and less confusion to the fisher, the person that is out there doing the work. It would reduce the number of search and rescue episodes should we have better and safer people on the water supporting one another and making good risk decisions.
Mr. Lanteigne: Information and training are the two main points. Your question brings out what we are talking about all the time: Who is going to be the next fisherman? What is the future of the fisheries? Who is going to be on board those fishing vessels? The next generation of fishermen is a big concern to all fishermen associations in the country.
All kinds of situations make it not appealing. Putting that aside, for a long time the job of a fisherman has been some kind of a last resort job. If you don't succeed at university, if you don't want to become an electrician or if you don't want to become whatever, go fishing or work at a fish plant.
It is very easy to get taken on. You are on the wharf with your hands in your pockets. All of a sudden this guy asks what you are doing today. "I am not doing anything.'' "If you want to come fishing, jump in.'' What about safety? What about training? What about the danger? I am just giving a small picture but a lot of those guys have become fishermen that way.
In closing, the jobs of a fisherman and a cab driver are the two easiest ones to start doing without proper training and information. Safety should be a mandatory part of becoming a fisherman today.
Mr. Jollimore: Information and training are definitely very important preventative measures. They would likely lead to less SAR calls, responses and things like that. From our point of view as fishermen consistent safety coverage for all areas would be important.
There are two places on Prince Edward Island at Souris and Summerside that have the vessels. Craig and I fish in the very middle of Prince Edward Island on the north shore and it would be one of the longer response times to get to our area. A consistent coverage model would be ideal for a lot of fishermen. As he alluded to for the younger fishermen it would be a safety net for them to look at, knowing that they have the same safety coverage as the next harbour or whatever.
Senator McInnis: Mr. Avery, you said that when the Coast Guard is available rescue efforts should be their responsibility and not shoved off to the auxiliary. How serious a problem is this?
Mr. Avery: It is quite serious. I will give you a quick example. About two weeks ago I had a call from a fisher looking for an auxiliary vessel, if there were any in the area. I said, "Is the cutter not around or the patrol boat not around out of Alberton?'' He said, "Apparently they are not in the area right now.'' He called JRCC and JRCC couldn't get a hold of an auxiliary member. They basically told the fisher that was calling that he had to find another fisherman to tow him in.
I mean that is getting harder and harder all the time. I will give you an example of what happens and one of the reasons that sometimes I am at a point where I am thinking about getting out of the auxiliary. We try to educate the fishermen and explain what the auxiliary is and how it operates, but a lot of fishermen think that because you are in the auxiliary you are at their beck and call.
I have had all kinds of conversations with fishermen about that over quite a few years. I have tried to explain to them the situation of the auxiliary. If I am engaged in my own fishing activities I am not at liberty to leave and tow that person in, unless the person is in grave danger,
I will give you a quick example of quite an argument I had with a fisherman on the herring grounds. When the herring are mesh'n and it is eleven or twelve o'clock at night you probably have a two-hour window. One of the herring boats broke down. I had to refuse to tow him in because I was trying to get my load of fish the same as anybody else. I didn't want to miss out on that. He was going to lose out on his. That is all he was worried about. He wanted to get in, try to get fixed up and get back out. I told him, I said, "Look, it is a nice calm evening. You are going to have to wait until somebody else comes along or somebody gets their load.'' I had to refuse him because I was right in the middle of trying to get my load of fish.
It is not a very nice situation. To me, there should have been a SAR vessel within an hour or an hour and a half somewhere that could come out and tow that person in. It is their responsibility. They should not have to hope there is a fishing boat that is going to tow them in.
Right now my boat is worth $350,000 to $400,000. Everybody will remember that the Coast Guard sunk a boat up in Newfoundland towing them in. I realize the danger if somebody goes to hook on to me. If I put that boat under and somebody drowns, am I liable? Yes, I am. That is made clear.
That is why I follow all the procedures. I am actually supposed to go aboard and get the captain of the vessel I am going to tow in to sign a waiver, which I very seldom do. Mostly when I am going to pick somebody up it is rough weather. You do well to get a tow rope on them, let alone get them to sign something.
I have the JRCC person who is taking care of the task on the radio. I ask permission to go aboard and put the tow line on. He has all that taped so that covers me and it covers the Coast Guard Auxiliary.
Senator McInnis: Mr. Lanteigne, you mentioned there should be more collaboration with the Canadian Coast Guard and regulators. The Canadian Coast Guard was transferred from Transport Canada to Fisheries and Oceans. Has that been a problem? Is the governance that is now in place under the auspices of Fisheries and Oceans as good as it should be? Have they been accepted?
Oftentimes when divisions are transferred to another department it takes a while for them to settle in. Are collaboration and governance of the Coast Guard problems, do you think?
Mr. Lanteigne: I don't think the organization — Transport Canada, the DFO or whoever it is — is important to us. The big problem we have is how to deal with them and how they deal with us more than who is who above that.
There has always been some kind of a conflict between the fishermen and Transport Canada. The mechanism being used is CMAC, the Canadian Marine Advisory Council. That is where we meet to talk about rules and all that stuff.
Transport Canada is dealing with everything that is at sea, everything that is on the water: all the marine traffic, all the pleasure boats, the ferries and all that stuff. The fishermen address those situations but the communication line is not always that great. It used to be two CMACs a year. Now it is going to be a year. The last CMAC was last year. I don't think we are getting one this fall. Maybe next spring there will be a meeting.
They used to also have regional CMAC meetings. It was a good way to reach the region. Now it has been quite a while since they have been having those. Transport Canada decides on what is going on there. On a scale of one to ten I would classify the relations between the industry and Transport Canada as probably a four or a five. It is not what it should be. We have to address that but I don't it is important if it is Transport Canada or DFO.
Senator McInnis: You mentioned in your presentation the fishing vessel stability simulator. How does that work? Is it only available in Newfoundland? Was it put together by Memorial University?
Mr. Lanteigne: By Memorial University, yes.
Senator McInnis: Is it available online?
Mr. Lanteigne: Yes, it is available online to every fisherman who wants to download that.
Senator McInnis: How important is it? How does it work?
Mr. Lanteigne: You can enter all the specs of your fishing vessel. You can simulate weather type, load and engine to see how your vessel will perform in those conditions. It is a great training tool. It gives you a feel of what the performance of your boat would be in all type of conditions. It is being used right now in all fisheries schools. They are using that tool.
It was a $1.5 million project that we had with Memorial University. They did that part. We would need extra money that we don't have to make it a lot more user friendly for everybody to use on their own computer. It is possible to do that. We feel it is not user friendly enough for fishermen at the moment to be able to use it adequately and easily but for trained personnel it is a very good tool.
Senator McInnis: We are here talking about safety at sea. These are important things. Yesterday we talked about the SmartBuoy off Herring Cove that recreational boaters and fishermen alike use and can prevent. I am not sure that these are put out as much as they should be.
This is wonderful research. Memorial University does some great work. I was intrigued by it. Do you think it is the wave of the future and it ultimately will get out there?
Mr. Lanteigne: Definitely it is. We are having all kinds of demands from all over the world for access to the program developed by Memorial. Spain, the U.S. and different countries want access to that software.
Senator Munson: I want to dig a bit deeper into what you have all been saying about training, mandatory safety and talking to unknown bureaucrats. Those in charge of Transport Canada or in Fisheries would probably argue if they appeared before us that they have your best interests at heart. Mr. Lanteigne talks about some of the equipment that is not adequate, detection, responding more frequently, so on and so forth.
We have all discussed these things. Is there an attitude problem that father knows best? We know what is best for you but you seem to know what is best for you. Is that kind of paternal thing happening that no matter what you say they are just not going that extra distance? Is there a financial argument here? At the end of the day we are talking about people's lives and people's livelihoods.
Mr. Lanteigne: I am sure that Craig can also comment on this and probably Mr. Franck. In competitive fisheries the dollar sign makes the fisherman. They don't want rules because any rules may have an effect on revenues. Craig was talking herring for example. The herring fishery is a good example. When the fish are there the weather may not be good but there is good herring tonight. If there is a rule that prevents me to take all that is there, who are those bastards at Transport Canada? They are directly in my wallet that night.
I don't think there will ever be a place where everybody is comfortable in this type of situation. You won't change that. It is nature. It is okay to have rules. It is okay to have safety rules. When you are trying to put some rules in place that will limit or increase the security that may be possible to do, but it may affect a lot the revenue and income of the fishermen.
Everybody would agree with safety first. It is the number one rule but the reality is what is going on. That is where you have those two lines of conflicts many times. Where do we draw that line?
Mr. Franck: May I chime in here on this question? I believe that all people in departments are focused. They have the right attitude. They want to do well. Maybe it is because I choose to believe that personally. Everyone is trying to do their job. I think they are trying to do it well and to the best of their abilities.
Sometimes those jobs might happen in a silo and it is easy to say it is not our responsibility. They may not say it is not my job but it may fall somewhere else. It may be another department or division or so-and-so is looking after that. What might be needed in this regard to try to answer your question is perhaps oversight to look at all things that happen which affect the industry.
I only came into the industry with a health and safety background five years ago. Immediately I found going to CMAC and industry meetings that there is a tremendous amount of legislation, codes, rules and standards to follow. To someone that is out there on a fishing boat it is extremely difficult for them to know all there is to know. We see that when sometimes we lose someone overboard and they don't come home. The captain, the owners and the authorized representatives find out very quickly all the things that Transport Canada requires to meet your conditions under DFO were not enough.
A whole realm of occupational health and safety standards in each province must also be met. There is a lack of knowledge of all those pieces of legislation, codes and standards. There is no coordination that is trying to get all the information in the right hands so they can do their jobs safely.
The fishers want to do their jobs and come home safely at the end of every trip: "Tell us what we need to do in a clear, concise manner and we will do it.'' It gets very confusing when there are different pieces all over the map.
Senator Munson: I have another question. It is probably the most naive question for a person who was from New Brunswick and the north shore but now lives in Ontario. That is when you see the picturesque scene of the term you used, dumping. When you look at it from the perspective of a consumer it doesn't look like dumping. It looks like a frantic race to one section of the water to find the spot where you believe the lobster is. Yet it repeats itself every year at the beginning of every season. With that comes safety and so on because, as they would say, buddy gets out a little earlier and takes off or whatever the case may be. You would think by this time after all these years that each of the fishers would know exactly where their spot is to prevent the start of the race to get there.
As I say this could naive. I was just thinking along the lines that if you were a farmer and not a fish harvester you would know where your wheat is going to grow, where things are going to happen, and so on and so forth. Why couldn't there be designated areas that have been in perpetuity for every family or whatever?
I understand what is happening out there. I would just like to throw it out there in the interest of the chaos that happens on the sea.
Mr. Avery: I will respond to that. In a perfect world that would be good. There are places where fishermen have their own areas they go to. I will use lobster for example. I fish in area 24 and I fish probably an area of 20 miles. If I was designated to one area there are years the lobsters don't come to certain places where I fish.
Senator Munson: I know. I am just saying if it is going to continue the way it is then you need more search and rescue people available in the area.
Mr. Avery: It is a very vulnerable time when you have boats loaded. Some of the pictures you are seeing of the rushing to the grounds are not as bad as they look.
Senator Munson: But aren't you all friends out there?
Mr. Jollimore: Not during the season.
Mr. Avery: If somebody is in trouble everybody responds. People that you don't get along with who are your natural enemy they would be there to help you out.
Senator Munson: I will put the question another way. What has search and rescue or the Coast Guard said? You are obviously pursuing this because once again there are lives at stake. What is their response to not providing adequate search and rescue during those particular times? I know the timeframes because I almost follow the coast when I come home to see where the lobster is.
Mr. Avery: Mr. McInnis answered that question a little while ago when he opened up. If they respond to it they would say they have adequate protection to look after us until something happens. If you are talking to the bureaucrats they would say that they have things in place.
I want to give you a little example. I want to go back a bit to your first question when you talked about safety equipment aboard vessels. There are new regs coming into place right now that you guys are probably aware of. They are coming in July. I think they are gazetted now. They are going to become law in July 2017.
We definitely have some concerns over those. A lot of our fishermen right now are in older based fisheries. No matter what they do the most they could fish any species would probably be three months. That would be big. An awful lot are only two months like lobster fishing. You need to have the other species licence. They have asked us to put some equipment aboard our boats. Like I said life rafts are a big one. We are going to need probably 15,000 life rafts in Canada. Somebody is going to be a big cash cow and make a lot of money off those things. They have to be opened up every year.
I just want to lighten up a bit in my comment here. In the 40 years I have been fishing I have got into a few situations, I will say, but nothing really dangerous until I am entering the harbour where I come in when I am going back home.
We talked about the CMAC meetings. We had to bring a bureaucrat right down to our harbours and show them the types of boats we were fishing in. They were talking about engine rooms. Back at that time about 15 years ago my engine room would be comparable to a six-foot coffin. It would be pretty hard to walk inside of it. It is usually not what it was meant for.
They had no idea what our boats were like. They had no idea that I had a 43-foot boat and I had to go in through an area where it got down to as low as four feet and five feet of water. Even if I had a life raft on the roof, if something happens there chances are you are not going to be able to deploy it.
You can go too far and say put this and put this aboard. You are adding a lot of extra expense. To me those regs should be seriously looked at right now. We need at least a time period where maybe we could work at bringing somebody in to supply those or get better prices. Right now it is just going to be a big expense.
The safety record of the fishermen I represent is very good. We are fishing within five miles or ten miles of shore most of the time when we are fishing. I always like to say that the biggest lifesaver I had in the times when I was in trouble was two or three good Hail Marys before I put the throttle down.
Senator Munson: You are asking for safety. You use the words mandatory and safety yet you seem to say there is too many regulations in place. I am trying to find a balance in your argument.
Mr. Franck: In response to that last point there are a lot of regulations. They need to be clarified and coordinated somewhat. The fishers need to be continually involved in creating these and with the implementation plans.
The new fishing vessel safety regulations come July 2017 will cause a lot of difficulty for some people with respect to having written procedures. That is something fairly new in the fishing industry. The other industries have had written health and safety manuals and procedures for 50 or 100 years.
In fishing this is a rather new concept to some of our smaller fishing boats. We have an awful lot of work to do in that regard. It would be nice to see various departments and divisions working together and helping to communicate those requirements.
Senator Poirier: Thank you, gentlemen, for all being here.
[Translation]
I have some questions for Mr. Lanteigne. You mentioned that your council was founded in 1995 and that it represents a majority of fishing organizations. Do you deal with port authorities or is it more with individual fish harvesters? You also mentioned at the beginning of your presentation that you offer a number of workshops, national conferences and training courses. Are fish harvesters required to take part? Do they all take part? If they are not required to participate in your activities, do they?
Mr. Lanteigne: The Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters is a sector council formed under the auspices of the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development — I think that was the department's name at the time. Every sector had a council. The one for fisheries was founded under that program. The CCPFH represents its members, which are all fishing organizations. So the council has fishing associations as members from Newfoundland and Labrador to British Columbia.
As for the council's training activities, no, they are not mandatory. They are optional activities that we promote. For example, we talked about the electronic simulator. It has been made available to fishery training schools, but it was designed by the council. So those are the kinds of things that we do. The online Fishing Master 4 course was developed by the council, but always working with the training organizations in the provinces.
Senator Poirier: You also talked about a report that you prepared containing recommendations for Transport Canada. I believe the report was published in 2014. You also listed about six different recommendations. I imagine that those recommendations are in your report, are they not?
Mr. Lanteigne: Yes, exactly.
Senator Poirier: Have you had responses from Transport Canada to any of your recommendations? Have any steps been taken in response to your recommendations? Or are you still waiting for some action or some response from the department?
Mr. Lanteigne: We always have ongoing discussions with people from Transport Canada. We have always had a relationship with them; we are always in communication with them. But as Craig described earlier, the reality is that our impression is that we are often talking to people who do not really understand fishing. It is extremely difficult for Transport Canada people to actually come to see what a fishing boat is like, to see the reality of fishing, and to determine which issues have to be addressed. It is also difficult for us to make them understand everything involved and the implications. Are they now taking steps that really respond to our requests? No.
[English]
Senator Poirier: In the last few days we have met with many people. We have heard and seen many of the activities that are happening and how they work.
I am going back to the beginning of the fishing season that is coming. We discussed that a couple of times with different people when we were going around, either from the people we met in Greenwood or the people we met at JRCC. There were different places where the Coast Guard told us about certain times of the year when there was a higher demand for their services due to a large number of fleets going out at the same time.
We heard a lot about partnerships. There are a lot of partnerships that the Coast Guard have. The need of the rescue depends on which partnership is best able to answer that need. It reminds me a bit of when you go into the emergency at the hospital. There is triage where they ask you to come in and look at you to see the problem. Then they direct you to who can best answer that problem. From speaking to some of the people we have met, some would say depending on what the emergency is they would look at what is the best way to answer that emergency right away.
I think it was in Greenwood yesterday that they mentioned that sometimes it is just somebody who is waiting to be rescued but all is okay. Nothing has happened on the mountain or whatever but they are out of food. Then maybe just dropping them a bag food is the first thing we need to do as the first responder and then make sure the other help comes in after.
I know the partners involve many different people including the volunteer people who are the auxiliaries. We met some yesterday. It can include the private fishermen. He might be the best person to help because he is right next door and sees that person. It can be the pilots that are in the harbours. As I said there are many different partners out there.
Do you feel the partnership is working well? Do you feel that there is a lack there? Is there something you can recommend that could be better looked at? I know even with the beginning of the fishing season in early November we understand from the people we have met that they are aware of that. They will have people flying above and keeping an eye on them. They will be out there if something happens.
I had the feeling from some of the comments here that you felt you are not 100 per cent comfortable this is the best way to go about it or to work at it. Is there something you could recommend to us that you would see as a better system than what is there already with this partnership and all that is going on?
Mr. Avery: I would have to say more resources for the auxiliary. More funding and training would be good for the auxiliary. Something that I have suggested in the past in the area where I fish is that it is 80 or 90 miles to the closest actual SAR vessel which could actually do a search and rescue operation. Maybe they could approach auxiliary members from other areas that aren't opening that fishery at that time to be in the area for high risk situations where a lot of fisheries are opening up at one time. That would definitely be a recommendation I would make that I think could work.
Like I said there is a need for more training and more education for people who are on the water. It is frustrating staying in the auxiliary not only for fishermen but for recreational boaters. I saw a recreational boater that was broke down in the bay. He thought he was in the gulf and he was actually in the bay. I knew when the Coast Guard from joint rescue called me he gave me the lat and long. In my head I kind of know those numbers. I said, "I don't think he is in gulf. I am pretty sure that number is in the bay.'' He did have a machine.
Anyway I live in Freetown, which is close to an hour from where my boat is in the off season. I have a cottage where I live when I am fishing. They asked whether I would go. This is a recreation boater. He is concerned and he just has a small boat. It ended up I did, but by the time I drove to Alberton it was an hour and by the time I got my boat going and got to where he was at it was probably close to two hours. The guy was really annoyed. It came to a point where I asked, "Do you want to get towed in or do you not? I don't need this either.''
Situations like that just show the need in a particular area for the Coast Guard. They are paid people and the resources should be there to look after it. Maybe there should be more resources for the auxiliary. Every area should have the opportunity to have a SAR vessel to respond.
Mr. Franck: May I add just a bit to that? Indeed appropriate resources for the circumstances and situations are necessary. We are concerned at the Fishery Safety Association about the large number of vessels going out on dumping day. Especially in some parts of Nova Scotia the fishing boats are getting bigger, longer and wider. There are large platforms heading out.
Another section of DFO has to be concerned about the shapes of the wharves in those harbours and the ability of all those vessels to get through the opening out to the fishing grounds in a timely manner without colliding and causing more emergencies and damage to the equipment, to the wharf and to the vessels.
I don't see the Canadian Coast Guard or Coast Guard Auxiliary as being primary a water taxi or your sea tow vehicle of convenience. The triage is really important to identify if it is a broken down vessel but everybody is okay. That is one thing but let's not take resources away from real emergency situations and direct situations where there might be a broken down vessel to where someone might be going overboard.
There have been responses to the wrong vessel where they may not have been a difference. That concerns us. If we have 1,600, 1,700 or 2,000 vessels going out on November 28 from the South Shore and southwest Nova Scotia, what if one or two incidents happen simultaneously or if something happens in another part of Atlantic Canada simultaneously? That takes the resources away from where they are needed at this time. It is really important that those fishers respond to their own situations and help out their buddies and their friends. They fish together for that reason. Largely it is because they are available.
If I may just circle back to Senator Hubley's question from earlier about reporting when these situations happen, these incidents are supposed to be reported to the Transportation Safety Board and other agencies. That report may not include all other fishing vessels that have broken off from their fishing to conduct a rescue operation or a search operation.
In May 2011we lost a fisherman off southwest Nova Scotia. Reportedly there were 25 lobster vessels involved in that search for eight to ten hours, breaking off their fishing activities to help with a search. Unfortunately it came up empty.
Can you imagine a whole day of Coast Guard vessels, search and rescue vessels and 25 fishing vessels flying around looking for someone? When you start looking at the cost of that search and rescue operation a lot of it is totally avoidable. These are preventable incidents largely. We can do an awful lot more in preventing these injuries from happening than throwing a whole lot more resources into responding. We need the resources there appropriate to the work being done but at the same time we need to focus on prevention.
Senator Hubley: I believe my question has been answered but it did have to do with getting the strategic location of equipment at high risk times. We learned yesterday that there is aerial surveillance on the water on the South Shore when the fishing season begins just as a precaution to support that. Equipment becomes a critical part of the work that you do in the auxiliary. I think that would have been my only suggestion.
During the summer there are times when there are more pleasure boats on the water. They try to adjust the times they are on major duty and things of that nature. Perhaps we can look at them as well to make sure fishermen get the protection they need while they are on the water.
Senator Enverga: Going back to searching and finding people on high seas, what do you think of the beacons? Would you suggest each and everybody who is actually off shore or far away from the shore be required to get those personal beacons?
Mr. Avery: I think that is a good idea. Even though you are close to shore something can happen fairly quickly sometimes. If it is foggy weather I have seen where there are probably 40 boats around me and not seeing any of them for long periods of time. Those are definitely going to be a good help to search and rescue.
Mr. Franck: I may add that a personal location beacon is a wonderful thing to have if it is attached to a PFD. If you don't have it attached to anything you might find a body. We want to try and get people home alive. If people are wearing a personal floatation device with a personal locator beacon attached it would be an incredible improvement.
Mr. Lanteigne: In more than 65 it is already mandatory to have that. Of course we totally support the fact that it should be on every vessel on the water.
Senator Enverga: In addition every cellphone now has the GPS app. I am hoping that everybody who goes to sea will have the application if they don't have the beacon.
The Chair: It has been a great conversation. I think we have learned much from you. Certainly we will contemplate the suggestions you have made to us on the different aspects of search and rescue over the next while as we prepare our study. We thank you very much for your input here today.
(The committee adjourned.)