Proceedings of the Subcommittee on
Transportation Safety
Standing Senate Committee on
Transport and Communications
Issue 5 - Evidence for the morning sitting
VANCOUVER, Thursday, December 5, 1996
[English]
The Subcommittee on Transportation Safety of the Standing Senate Committee on Transport and Communications met this day at 9:34 a.m. to study the state of transportation safety and security in Canada.
Senator J. Michael Forrestall (Chairman) in the Chair.
The Chairman: I want to emphasize that these hearings are concerned with safety and transportation generally and very broadly.
We are pleased to have with us today witnesses representing a very large cross section of interests. I will now call on Mr. Lloyd to introduce his colleagues.
Mr. G.N. (Jerry) Lloyd, President and Chief Executive Officer, British Columbia Aviation Council: Mr. Chairman, I will introduce the panel members who will in turn address the various sections which they wish to bring to this hearing.
With me are Terry Wolfe-Milner, a president of Heli-Logging Consulting and the chairman of the Training, Safety and General Aviation Committee for the British Columbia Aviation Council; Stan Kaardal who has been in the aviation business on the West Coast for the better part of his life and knows the upper coast of British Columbia very well; Terry Shields, a member of the British Columbia Aviation Council Air Operators Group and operations manager of Kwatna Air Service out of Chilliwack.
Mr. Terry Shields, Air Operations Group, British Columbia Aviation Council: Honourable senators, I have been flying the coast for 15 years now from Chilliwack up to the central and north coasts, so I do have a background in this particular issue. Aviators today face the single biggest threat to aviation safety ever encountered on the West Coast. The decision of the Coast Guard to destaff the entire lighthouse system and replace it with an inferior AWOS system is not only irresponsible but it shows a blatant disregard for the lives of those people who rely on the system. It shows a total disrespect for the users who came forward time and time again in public meetings to give good and legitimate testimony that destaffing would severely jeopardize aviation and marine safety.
The whole public consultation process carried out by the Coast Guard was preconceived; it was obvious the decision had been made prior to any public meeting. They came to hear but they had no intention of listening to the people who know what it means, who know what is at stake when trying to make safe operational decisions based on weather reports, decisions that, if wrong, can have fatal consequences.
It is time to stop listening to the politicians talking about budget cutbacks and to start listening to the users talking about safety. The price of safety should not be limited to fiscal constraints. If it is, then we have put a price on a human life and I would hope that we have not reached that point in government.
There is talk about how money will be saved by automating. This savings figure is yet to be disclosed. From a user's standpoint, if the entire AWOS system were to cost one dollar to operate, it would be one dollar wasted. The system is unreliable; therefore, it has no value to the users. As operators, we cannot in good conscience make safe operational decisions based on the information provided by AWOS, information that may or may not be current, that may or may not be accurate, that may or may not be complete, and that may or may not even be available.
Without reliable weather information, pilots are forced into a "go look and see" situation, the single most dangerous aspect of coastal flying.
Having said all that, I am not here to point out the shortcomings of the AWOS system. We as pilots feel that there is a requirement for AWOS but not as a primary reporting system. I am here today to offer what we at the Air Operators Group feel is a workable solution to a reliable, cost-effective weather reporting system.
At this point, all the parties involved agree that we need a reliable system; there is no doubt there. Where we disagree is on what each party considers reliable. On one side are the aviators and mariners, the guys in the trenches every day. They are exposed to the hazards and elements of the West Coast weather and are using every bit of information from every source possible to make the right decision. On the other side are the politicians and bean counters sitting 2,500 miles away in a climate-controlled office who have only heard that there are people living in lighthouses who cost the government $3.5 million a year. What they do, I do not think they really know.
Decisions on which weather reporting system is needed on the West Coast must come from the people who are using and working with the present system.
In aviation we see advancements in technology almost daily, new airplanes, new systems, and new navigational aids. Many have helped to make flying safer and we welcome those. At the same time, when something is new we move cautiously. The first thing we ask is: Is it safe? Has it been tested and proven and can we rely on it? If it can pass those tests, bring it on and we will use it.
AWOS has not passed any of those tests. That is not to say it cannot be utilized. As I said, there are a number of locations where AWOS can be used. We must recognize its limitations and use it accordingly. I stress that it should not be used as a primary weather system.
We have a primary weather reporting system on the West Coast in the form of manned observation sites in airports and lighthouses. Mariners and aviators have used this system for over 50 years and it has proven itself time and time again. It is a reliable system and safety operational decisions can be made based on the information which it provides. We as users know that the system can be improved -- not replaced but improved -- and made more efficient.
This is where the Air Operations Group feels it has a working solution which recognizes the shortcomings of the present system and works together with other users, lightkeepers and government agencies to improve it. Everybody is and will be a valued part of this process. The users, the mariners and aviators, can tell us the best places for weather reports to be made and what kind of information they need and how often. The lighthouse keepers can tell us how their duties can be expanded and where costs of operating lighthouses can be lowered. The Coast Guard can look at cutting back management costs of these lighthouses and explore alternate means of supplying and servicing the lighthouse sites. Other government agencies could look at training keepers to perform duties needed for their programs, thus lowering their staff costs and also sharing in the costs of lighthouse operation.
These are only a few of the ideas that will not only lower the cost of an existing, already-proven system but will eliminate the need for the government to spend millions of dollars on a completely new system which is unreliable and will never fully take the place of human observations.
Honourable senators, you have a copy of the letter sent to the Coast Guard and other ministries stating our proposal and request. We strongly urge the government to take immediate steps to begin working with us so that, at the end of this process, we can all feel confident that we have a reliable weather reporting system which does everything it possibly can to ensure the safety of those who use it.
Mr. Lloyd: I agree with everything Terry has said. I have been flying aircraft on the coast for 43 years. I have used lighthouse weathers every day that I have operated an airplane up and down this coast.
We first started this exercise when the government first decided a little over eight years ago to start destaffing the lighthouses. We immediately formed committees to put forward our case as aviators. I happened to be in front of most of those committees. To my surprise, we found in our discussions at that time that people were very surprised that we as aviators used lighthouse weathers. Visual flight rule aviators who fly small- and medium-sized aircraft on the coast have used lighthouses as their primary source of weather information ever since those lighthouses began reporting weather; they do so to this day.
The problem with the AWOS system is that it does not give us sufficient information. If someone is flying an aircraft under instrument flight rules from one airport to another, that system will probably give sufficient information, although it is often noted that AWOS should not be used for alternate purposes because of their inaccuracies.
I have the government's own documentation. I have loads of it here. You probably all have copies of it because I think the last Senate committee wrote most of this. This report is called, "Pull Up! Pull Up! An Interim Report on the Safety Implications of Automated Weather Observation Systems (AWOS)," Standing Senate Committee on Energy and Environment, July 5, 1995. Another report is called, "Lightstations: People want People on the Lightstations." This study received 100 per cent response from the user groups to the issue of destaffing lighthouses. It contains quotations from Dave Larrigan, Transport Canada's then-Pacific Region Director of Civil Aviation who was opposed to de-staffing.
I was an inspector with Transport Canada for a period of time. I have varied experience within the aviation community. Transport Canada will, off the record, certainly state what we are stating here -- that it does not like to see the lighthouses destaffed and replaced with AWOS systems because those systems do not provide the weather needed to conduct safe flight planning and safe flight operations.
The northern jet stream runs across this province just north of Vancouver Island. When we have normal weather patterns, we frequently experience storm-force to lower-hurricane-force systems going through that area. When there is an abnormal situation where one of those systems comes through the Washington, Vancouver and Oregon area, it is big news. Those horrendous once-in-a-century storms are on television and in the newspapers. Up in the isolated areas of the country which we service on a weekly basis, most of the logging camps and the communities are built in very protected areas. You do not hear any horror stories about any loss of life or anything, but we must penetrate that weather on a continuing basis in order to service those communities. We prefer to do so on a safe basis.
The fact is that can be done. The reason I am sitting here after 43 years and 30,000 hours of flying in that environment is because I had lighthouse weather to guide me. There is no question about that.
The systems move across the coast and, in the summer, when the weather is nicer, there is fog. You cannot see in fog. You have to know when that fog is lifting and when you are getting a break so that you can get a bit of a jump on it and get up there during daylight hours.
The whole concept was probably based on a good premise that they were going to save some money. I do not think that will be the case if they indeed do as they said and put AWOS and RAVOS systems at every lighthouse site. I do not need to be an accountant. I know enough about running small airlines to know that they cannot put those systems in place, service them and keep them operating to put out even inferior weather information for less money than it presently costs to man the lighthouses. I have a strong feeling that the concept is that we will not get AWOS and RAVOS systems at all the lighthouse sites.
Having been involved in this process for over eight years, I have seen the various organizations such as the Coast Guard, Fisheries and now NAV CANADA step back from their original positions of promising that no further lighthouse stations would be destaffed prior to a suitable, safe AWOS system being put in place as a replacement. As I see it now, they are probably looking at 17 sites out of the 35 to replaced with these systems and probably not more than 8 sites to be replaced with RAVOS systems cameras. That is totally inadequate even with an inferior system. We cannot be forced into that situation.
The big problem is that the AWOS and RAVOS systems have not yet been proven. If they ever do provide us with the information that we require for safe flight planning and safe aviation operations on the coast, then we would welcome them because they could probably give us information minute by minute. However, they will not replace the lightkeepers and the manned observers. There is no question about that. VFR flying safety on the coast will be jeopardized and, in my opinion, jeopardized severely.
The Chairman: Thank you. That was very forcefully put.
Mr. Stan Kaardal, Campbell River Aircraft Operators Association: Honourable senators, in addition to wearing a hat on the Aviation Council, I am also a sailor and I sail the coast extensively. I have found, and this can be backed up from the aviation side of it, that not only is the AWOS information inaccurate; it is also quite frequently non-existent.
A couple of years ago, I planned to make a 24-hour passage from the north end of the island up to the Queen Charlottes. The automated station at Cape St. James was unserviceable for three consecutive days. This is one of the many problems we have. Not only is the information inaccurate and insufficient, but it is unserviceable. The serviceability rate is low.
Furthermore, the automated stations quite often give information about wind conditions which are not true out over the water. Again, I refer to Cape St. James. I have heard comments that the wind will be reported northwesterly at 15 to 25 knots when that is a fact in the lee of the island while the wind over the water is 45 to 70 knots. This can have a very serious effect on a fixed-wing aircraft or a helicopter making a ferry flight across to the Charlottes from the mainland because the pilot is working on an estimated wind and ground speed to work out his fuel. If the winds are much higher, he can get in difficulty. Therefore, there is a problem with the reliability of the system.
The Chairman: Redundancies have been built in to guard against failure or misadventure. Is every AWOS system backed up with a second system right beside it?
Mr. Kaardal: Not to my understanding, no.
Mr. Terry Wolfe-Milner, President of Heli-Logging Consulting, Chairman of Training, Safety and General Aviation, British Columbia Aviation Council: As I understand it, I would have to say no to that question. We do get a great number of unavailable weathers, in particular during stormy weather when it is needed. These systems have a tendency to blow out at wind speeds in the neighbourhood of 65 to 70 knots; they remain unserviceable until a helicopter and a couple of technicians can get in there to repair them. That can take anywhere from three days to three weeks.
I would to like to make a brief presentation which is not specifically about AWOS. We have probably made our points on that.
One of the important functions of the Aviation Council is to examine safety issues on the general aviation side of things. This information is contained in the package that has been issued to you.
The Training, Safety and General Aviation Committee has been running in the council as a main committee for a good number of years. Its purpose within British Columbia is to promote aviation safety and education and training in the aerospace industry, as well as to promote general aviation and recreational flying which is being hit more and more frequently by rising costs.
One objective of the committee is to provide safety seminars to the aviation communities in British Columbia. We have a lot of assistance in that from Transport Canada and I certainly commend them on that. At times Transport Canada receives a lot of criticism, but the System Safety Department of Transport Canada has been very helpful to our council.
We also act as a liaison between federal and provincial government agencies and the aviation industry in British Columbia with respect to general aviation safety and education. We try to facilitate a networking and communications system between members of the council within British Columbia.
Since the representatives on the committee are volunteers, membership varies. Generally we have representatives from flying clubs which are obviously in the training sector of the industry; the flight training schools and aviation technical schools such as the British Columbia Institute of Technology; float plane operators are represented in the organization, as are helicopter operators. There are many recreational pilots in British Columbia and ultralight pilots. Transport Canada and the Transportation Safety Board also offer representation on the committee, which is very useful because we do not want to operate in isolation.
The committee, through the council, has been involved in many activities over the years such as sponsoring and conducting safety seminars in conjunction with the System Safety Branch of Transport Canada. These seminars are held in B.C. communities outside the lower mainland as we, again, try to unite the aviation industry in the province, rather than focusing only on the lower mainland area.
One very important subcommittee of the Training, Safety and General Aviation Committee has been the cable-marking subcommittee. This has been running for something in the order of 40 years. It was instrumental in the early days in designing and developing the cable-marking system. That system consists of the very large, round, plastic balls which hang on high-tension cables. This was developed in British Columbia by the cable-marking subcommittee and has subsequently been used around the world.
More recently, we have seen the development and design of a system to warn pilots of skyline logging operations. These are cables used for logging which can be as high as 3,500 feet above the valley floor and as long as 8,000 feet. The new system will have an automated voice-recorded system and a strobe light. A pilot flying in valleys in the coastal areas will be able to tune into a discrete frequency on VHF and hear a warning of the location of any skyline cable system. Then by clicking the VHF transmit button three or five times, the pilot will activate a strobe light at the location of this skyline logging operation.
Skyline logging is an ever-increasing activity in British Columbia because of the Forest Practices Code. There are now more than 20 skyline logging operations. Approximately six or seven years ago, a helicopter ran into a cable and killed all four on board. Since that time there have been a number of near misses. One incident was related to us last year. A skyline logging operation had finished for the day and had lowered the cable which had been at 2,000 feet above the valley floor. Shortly after the cable was lowered, a couple of CF-18s from Comox went through the valley at approximately 250 feet and 520 knots. Fortunately, the cable was down. If it had not been down, there could have been quite a disaster.
That new system is receiving support from Transport Canada and we are grateful for that. Unfortunately, at the present time, with the devolution of the air navigation systems into NAV CANADA, we are going back to square one because the people involved in the development of this system within the regulatory authority have all changed position in the last couple of weeks. However, we hope to continue development of this system and to eventually have it in operation throughout British Columbia and in other parts of Canada.
Three years ago we conducted a public seminar on the proposed substance-use legislation which has subsequently been dropped. It was very interesting for members of the aviation community in British Columbia because there would have been a fairly large impact on operators.
The presentations made to the previous parliamentary groups on automating the lightstations in British Columbia have been mentioned; I need not go into that any further.
We have also made representations on behalf of the aviation community in British Columbia to the regulatory authorities about the proposed closures of remote communications outlets in British Columbia and about cutbacks in air navigation services and communications systems which have potential impacts on aviation safety.
Finally, the committee had much input on the introduction of the Canadian aviation regulations, particularly with respect to the proposed implementation dates. This committee has made a very worthwhile contribution. We depend entirely on volunteer effort. We receive support from the regulatory authorities, and for that we are very grateful. I am glad to present to you exactly what we can do and how we can act as a conduit between regulatory authorities and the aviation community in British Columbia.
Mr. Lloyd: Mr. Chairman, there are other resource people here, coastal operators who can help us respond to any questions you may have on safety issues or security issues in British Columbia.
The Chairman: On five different occasions this morning, the question of the cost of live, visual observance of weather has been touched upon one way or another. It is a question which has been hanging out there for several years now. Has the council or any individual council member done any number-crunching? Have you looked at this? We heard evidence earlier in another forum from the lighthouse keepers. I see Mr. Abram is present. Perhaps we will ask him a similar question later.
It would be very interesting if someone could provide us with some numbers as to cost effectiveness or a cost comparison of AWOS from engineering development to establishment of the stations, including maintenance and repair and what it costs to send a helicopter out if there is bad weather. Has any work been done in this area?
Mr. Lloyd: We have not looked at it closely as a council. We have asked a question about the budgetary impact. That data was not provided. The Department of Transport was willing to provide it at the time but did not have it all assembled to give us a solid figure. In his research, Stan Kaardal may have looked at the cost impact to the operators.
Mr. Kaardal: As far as the aviation group, we have had to take the numbers given to us by the Coast Guard, NAV CANADA and the Department of Fisheries and, to some degree, Transport Canada and their contribution to those other agencies in cost sharing.
I believe Jim Abram has an extensive accounting of the cost differences. The figure we have always heard is that the difference between having manned observations, leaving the lightkeepers on the lightstations, and putting in AWOS stations is a savings of $3.5 million annually. That is an eventual savings because those systems have to be installed.
I have heard claims about a cost of $165,000 per year to have an AWOS system pumping out weather information to the aviation community. I would question that. When those operations go down and have to be serviced, generating plants will be taken away from there and the units will be operated on solar power. They will have to dismantle all those locales and return them to nature.
I do not see that $3.5 million is sufficient to undertake the plan for putting in automatic stations. I do not have any hard figures in front of me, but I do not see it. I know the cost of operating helicopters and technicians. An issue apart from the safety issue is the cost issue. I do not see where it will save the numbers of dollars that the government feels will be saved.
Senator St. Germain: Thank you, gentlemen, for an excellent presentation. I have met some of you in the past and I had the privilege of addressing you in Penticton a few years ago. I still have the nice gift you gave me of a beaver and art work. I have to state that is worth less than $200, so I will not get in trouble.
There has been a tremendous amount of controversy about lighthouses. Those of us who fly in this area know better than most how dangerous it is and the effects of the weather.
It appears that the original resolve of this government and the previous government was to rationalize these operations and move them to automated systems. If the commitment is there and they have made up their minds, has any thought been given to training people who reside in those areas? I realize it would not be as reliable as somebody hired to do that job.
The weather station was taken out of Pemberton and Squamish and now there is only a reporting station in Whistler. It does make a big difference. It is an area with which I am very familiar. It is only a 10-minute flight from Whistler into Pemberton, but the weather can be dramatically different. Those two weather stations were taken out and it has had a significant impact on safety. Those flying into that area now pretty well have to phone somebody they know to get an on-hand report of what is going on.
Has any thought been given to trying to convince the government that if it is going to take away the weather station on the lighthouses, is there any way people can be trained?
I do not honestly believe that the government really understands the implications. I am not talking about a Liberal government, an NDP government or a Conservative government. They are all the same when it comes to this issue. It concerns me that the government does not understand the magnitude of the problem.
If we have to lose something that is ideal, has any thought been given to attempting to implement something that is maybe a little better than automation which has not yet proved itself, at least in the interim until automation does prove itself?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: Senator, at least 20 years ago, before the automated stations were coming in, the council made a proposal that, with the lack of weather reporting around the province, we would work with the Department of Transport and develop a training program to train people and harness the energy of station masters who would be along the B.C. Rail system going up north into Prince George and places like that. We would train local people in communities because the Province of British Columbia was putting money into community airports. We were also hoping to train someone in the Department of Public Works to be on a phone network and teach them how to read weather so a pilot might phone ahead on a 800-number system. It never got off the ground because we could not get the funding to train the people.
Terry Shields talked about this type of training and what we could do where we could bring other people in. Terry Shields and Jerry Lloyd have been flying for years. The logging industry always had its own aircraft and would land them on logging roads. They would widen a section of road out. I have flown into hundreds of logging strips around the province. It was easy to phone the camp and find out what the weather was like at the campsite where the plane was to land.
Mr. Shields: Certainly, all the way along, especially in servicing logging camps, part of the flight planning process is to phone the camp and find out what the weather is at the camp. Unfortunately, there is lot of country in between where there is absolutely no habitation at all.
Taking off from Port Hardy to Bella Bella, other than lighthouses, there is no one in between those two areas and there is a whole lot of weather in between. Logging camps and communities are primarily in areas where the weather does not affect them quite as much, be it in bays or up in inlets. They are not necessarily on the outer coast which is the highway from where one takes turn-offs and goes up the inlets.
In the communities themselves there may be a possibility of training the people to do weather observations. Bella Bella is an example. However, there is a lot of country in between Port Hardy and Bella Bella and Prince Rupert where there are no communities or habitation at all.
Senator St. Germain: I agree. I am looking for a solution. We have to face the realities. When Pemberton and Squamish were shut down, I asked them if they realized how tough it was to fly in this area. If they took a string and put it on Vancouver and took it up to Bella Bella, that would mark one of the toughest areas in Canada to fly. Up north there are the same problems. There are attempts to replace people with AWOS equipment. The trips up there are often much longer and there are points of no return where once you are passed that certain point you are not coming back and you have to find an alternate site or set down somewhere.
I will be asking the committee to make a recommendation to the government. I may be wrong on this, but I honestly believe that the decision was made to cut back. The same rationale was used for Winnipeg as for here. I have flown in Manitoba. I started flying in that area and there is a vast difference in the type of flying and in the elements. The effects of the jet stream on the north end of Vancouver Island mean it can be calm everywhere and, when flying into Alert Bay, the pilot can face a horrible situation.
We should work together. Mr. Shields, we may not be able to solve the problem in an ideal way. However, we cannot just state that we will oppose it. I would like to think we could get a recommendation to the government that will deal with the realities. We may not end up with the ideal situation but we are better off with a half-cup than a no-cup situation. Do you agree or disagree?
Mr. Lloyd: Something needs to be done. Mr. Shields' proposal is to look at a combination of things. We are not opposed to some areas being automated, but we need a combination of both. My colleague beside me calls it the "Mark 1 eyeball." We still need that set of eyes to make observations in certain locations on our coast. Obviously, as the automated systems improve and the reliability factor goes up, pilots, aviators and mariners will have more trust in them.
We need a combination. We cannot throw the whole system out overnight because it is a VFR area and we need good weather information.
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: The physical or geographic location is not ideal to train people in local communities. A lighthouse is located on a point of land out over the water; the purpose of the lighthouse is to be seen from the sea. The lightkeeper at that lighthouse has a far greater field of vision and ability to observe the weather than someone in Bella Bella or Bella Coola.
Senator St. Germain: I agree that the ideal is most likely the status quo or something close to it rather than what is proposed. I have also been at the other end attempting to make the decisions and often one is dealing with a portion of information and with emotion and with many things. I know what you are recommending.
My question relates to NAV CANADA and the question of user-pay or cost recovery. Has the council had any input into this process? One concern I have is charging people every time they phone up and ask for a weather report before they fly or file a flight plan. Hopefully we will all continue to fly safely, file flight plans and get weather reports regardless of whether or not there is a cost. However, there is always the factor that if people cannot afford it, some people will be negligent as a result of an imposition that they did not have to face in the past.
Where does the council stand on this as far as sourcing this information and the costs that may be incurred either through a per-use, user-pay system or else through a blanket cost assessment to each person with an aircraft licence or aircraft registration?
Mr. Lloyd: Senator, I am the operative person for the council on the NAV CANADA Advisory Committee. In fact, NAV CANADA is meeting at the present moment and I am missing a briefing on the new system by Hughes and MacDonald Detwiler. However, I chose to come here.
I have already brought forward and registered with NAV CANADA two concerns. Companies such as Air Canada and Canadian Airlines build the price of using a navigational system into their annual budget, whether the system is used across the North Atlantic or the North Pacific. If a DC-9 from Air Canada comes into Vancouver, it talks to centre, it talks to tower and talks to ground. It makes three hits and the cash register rings. That goes into Montreal and the bill is paid at the end of the month.
When Lynn Morrison of Baxter Aviation flies in on his Beaver from Nanaimo to Vancouver Harbour bringing three businessmen, he talks to centre and talks to harbour tower. He does not have to talk to ground. He is using the system. Bill C-20 states that there shall be some dispensation for aircraft under 5,800 kilos. How do we price that out?
The other concern I have is those who are in the flight training business. At Pitt Meadows Airport -- which is over in your area, senator -- a young woman may be learning to fly using a 150 aircraft, for example. If she is practising touch and go`s and the cash register rings for every landing, there has to be some intervening mechanism there.
The other concern relates to general and recreational pilots. If that charge is set too high, we will stop the flow of well-trained young men and women into our industry. We will also create an unsafe system because they will not talk to anybody, they will not use the navigation system. I am talking of those people who are members of flying clubs and who love to fly and who fly on weekends. I am not talking about a professional pilot. I am talking about the weekend pilot who decides that he and his wife will fly to Nanaimo from Chilliwack. If they know that they can go on the north side of the local area control and do not have to talk to anyone, we may have an unsafe situation because unless air traffic control is painting them with radar, it will not know where they are.
I will be talking in a strong voice both for the small carriers in British Columbia and for general aviation, requesting some rationality to the pricing structure with NAV CANADA.
NAV CANADA is a good concept. Our council has been on record from the very first day supporting NAV CANADA. We are not opposed to that at all. We see some efficiencies in NAV CANADA. I want to assure the constituents in British Columbia that my voice will come through and that we need to look at pricing structure to make the system safe. We do not want to price the industry out.
It is difficult for Mr. Morrison to add any extra costs to that ticket. We have to understand that there are some price-sensitive areas in British Columbia. When coming from Nanaimo in the morning, a business person has the choice between taking a car on the ferry or flying with Lynn Morrison into the harbour. The same situation exists for Peter Evans of Harbour Air. Flying from Vancouver Harbour to Victoria Harbour is also price sensitive. If NAV CANADA charges go up and are added to the cost of the ticket, it becomes price sensitive and perhaps the choice will be made to go by car.
Senator St. Germain: Do you feel the price of aviation fuel, which I think is horrific, is impacting our industry?
Mr. Lloyd: It is impacting our industry dramatically, and again it involves price sensitivity. I would like to see aviation tax reduced not only on international carriers but for the industry across Canada. Domestic carriers and our small coastal operators also burn fuel. We are being taxed every time we turn around. We have letters on file from the corporate community about terminal taxes that have been introduced. All that taxation, senator, needs to be re-thought.
We must keep a viable industry. Everyone must understand that when Harbour Air or Pacific Coastal flies down from Port Hardy bringing passengers from another community on the coast, those passengers often are not only coming to Vancouver. They may be travelling on to businesses in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa, Toronto or an international destination. It is important to keep alive this very viable feeder system in British Columbia.
The Chairman: We heard from Minister Jim Antoine of the Territorial Council and I would refer you to his submission. I do not know whether or not there is any meat in his submission for you.
Minister Antoine has told us that the department administers Community Airport Radio Stations, the CARS component of air navigation services, in the Northwest Territories on behalf of NAV CANADA. The department had been asking Transport Canada not to convert CARS to automatic weather observations sites, or AWOS, as a cost-saving measure. The special operating conditions of the north require greater reliability associated with a human component of CARS. His department will continue, in the interest of public safety, to ask NAV CANADA to maintain CARS as a minimum level of service to the industry until such time as AWOS technology has advanced to provide the same information that a CARS observer would provide.
Regarding an alternative solution, here we already have the trained observers and we will be hearing from them shortly. I mentioned this because you indicated you were on the advisory board to NAV CANADA.
Mr. Lloyd: Don Douglas, who is an ex-member of Transport Canada, is the executive director NATA, the Northern Air Transportation Association. I was talking on the phone with Mr. Douglas in Edmonton the other day. NATA is supporting that position.
Again, it comes back to the unreliability in the automated systems and the distrust of aviators working the north on the weather information. The north presents a different set of flight conditions to those in the coastal area, just as hazardous and just as foreboding. The NATA group is stating that the system is not broken; do not change it on us right now. We would support NATA's view on that.
Senator Perrault: Mr. Chairman, the information that we have heard today from those who have testified is very interesting and very important.
I have a letter signed by Mr. Terry Shields dated November 26. It is an excellent letter which sets forth your general philosophy regarding safety in the industry. All members of this committee regardless of party affiliation would agree with you when you state that you have a mandate to meet and work with Coast Guard users groups, NAV CANADA and other government agencies, to establish a reliable, cost effective weather reporting system on the West Coast which will not only meet but exceed the present level of safety for all users.
In your letter you further state that we all agree that we do need a reliable weather reporting system, and we say "amen" to that.
You also state that we should pool our resources, knowledge and expertise and build a system that will save money and, most importantly, save lives. We are in total agreement with you on that.
In the hearings we have held in western Canada, it has been obvious that automation is, on balance, providing enormous new benefits for the aircraft industry. In Edmonton yesterday we were shown how weather reports from very remote communities are channelled into Edmonton using new transportation devices which provide a level of information about the weather unobtainable 10, 15 years ago. It seems to me that trend should be encouraged. Are there are comments on that from any of the witnesses present?
Almost all lighthouses throughout the world are now automated. The East Coast is totally automated. I am told that in Great Britain almost 100 per cent are now automated. Do we have differences in terrain, topography and weather conditions here that make it absolutely mandatory for British Columbia to have manned lightstations when every other area in the world seems to be moving in the opposite direction? Are those other jurisdictions being careless about safety standards by promoting automation in certain cases?
Perhaps you are suggesting there should be a mixture of automated stations and manned stations. British Columbia is notorious for the difficult weather conditions that it presents. Perhaps there are also comments on that.
Mr. Shields: When talking about other countries getting rid of lighthouses, I do not necessarily think you can assume that it is the right thing to do.
Senator Perrault: It seems to be widespread. Is there an explanation?
Mr. Shields: I certainly was not sitting on the committee that opposed lighthouse destaffing in Britain. I can only imagine that aviators all over the world have the same common interest and that is safety throughout their flight.
British Columbia supports the world's largest wood producer. Aircraft service all those camps and service that industry. Without us, that industry would either not function or function at a much slower pace. To be competitive in the world today, you cannot slow down.
We would like to sit down with users and discuss a mixture of automation and manned stations. There is definitely a possibility for both. There are areas where we feel the AWOS system would work fine. It is information that we need, but it is information upon which we will not rely nor base our sole flight plan decisions. We need those manned observations.
Senator Perrault: Do you think flying conditions in British Columbia present special challenges for those flying the planes?
Mr. Shields: Very much so. British Columbia is on the coast. We get the weather first, especially in the north coast. It is only a picture on a satellite until it hits the coast. Then we as aviators in communities on the coast find out if that satellite picture is correct. If it is less intense or more intense, we are the first to find out. Vancouver finds out about 24 hours later.
With automation there is room for that. To completely shut down a system that has already been proven to work does not make sense. If a street light on Granville Street does not work in the traffic flow, not all the street lights are taken out, only that one.
Senator Perrault: You are saying that the human element is very important here and that there is information that only human being can provide which is not accessible through an electronic device. Could you explain to me how that works? Is there radio contact between the person flying the plane and the lightkeeper?
Mr. Shields: No. This is certainly one of the improvements that can be made in the system whereby the lighthouses can communicate with the aircraft on VHF. I understand some communication goes on. Some of the keepers have their own marine radios which, by DOC standards, is illegal unless it is affixed to some sort of vessel. I am sure in that instance there could be an exception made just on a point of safety.
Senator Perrault: You prefer that to some other system devoid of any human presence? The human element is important then?
Mr. Shields: Yes.
Senator Perrault: You say that you favour having aviators, government and various other sectors in the community evolve plans and hold a conference. Have you received any submissions yet?
Mr. Shields: We have talked to a few of the user groups, the fishing industry, the recreational boaters and tug boat operators.
Senator Perrault: Are they responsive to the idea?
Mr. Shields: Very much so.
Mr. Villi Douglas, Coastal Aviator: Mr. Chairman, I have been a coastal aviator for some 34 years and an operations manager of small airlines.
With lighthouses in Britain, Washington and Oregon, there is absolutely no comparison to the traffic levels with small airplanes on floats. I do not know if they are even in existence on the East Coast of Britain.
Senator Perrault: The East Coast of North America as well?
Mr. Douglas: The same applies. Lighthouses in England were for marine activity and were not directed to aviation. Now marine navigation is so global and vessels carry so much electronic equipment that perhaps the lighthouse and fog horn are not required to the extent they were at one time.
Senator Perrault: With the new satellite devices they know precisely where they are at any given point?
Mr. Douglas: That is correct. In British Columbia, the need for lighthouses is swinging more to the aviation community than perhaps to other communities. I cannot imagine anywhere in the world where there is as much activity with small aircraft which must land on water and in this type of environment. No other country is similar and it cannot be compared to anywhere else.
Senator St. Germain: Mr. Chairman, I believe there are representatives of this organization present who could tell us how many float planes there are in this area. I believe we have the highest concentration of float planes anywhere in the world in this area and Alaska.
Senator Perrault: We should receive a count.
Mr. Lloyd: It is very important for us to really understand the impact that the changes have had because of the uniqueness of this area.
Senator Perrault: There are unique aspects to the aviation industry in British Columbia and we should certainly know them.
Mr. Kaardal: I flew for Weldwood of Canada and for Interfor and various other operations for more than 43 years. I had the privilege of flying a converted B-amphid Beaver from Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Vancouver when the company purchased a newly fabricated machine, a lovely thing. The difference is also Doppler radar.
When I left Minneapolis, Minnesota, I was picked up on air traffic control down there. You do not even have to look out the window, they just keep steering you and steering you, put you right down the middle of the runway. I came out of Spokane in horrendous fog. They steered me into clear weather. For 12 miles I followed a railroad track like we do up here. Spokane and Seattle were fogged in, so they steered me down to Troutdale and took me up to 10,000 feet right across the volcanoes and into Seattle, just beautifully, all by Doppler radar. They give you the weather, where it was scattered, where you could get down. They do all that for you.
I left Seattle with seven minutes to make it to Vancouver before grounding time. The weather was duff. I got to Active Pass. I picked up Vancouver control and they were not even going to let me in. I finally said that I am on flight plan; I am amphib; I can land in the river and taxi up the ramp and do not have to subject your runways to any interference. Finally, after about a five-minute dissertation, they allowed me to land in the river and put my gear down and taxi up home. I knew I was home too, because there was very little assistance. We really do not have it.
The difference is that the weather information available in the United States is unique, even on the coast. Weather, radar, Doppler radar, we do not have that type of back-up system here. We are very dependent on the lighthouse weathers.
Senator Perrault: We heard some very interesting information yesterday in Edmonton from traffic controllers who think the situation has been dramatically improved and they have to be given credit for that. I was impressed with the manner in which they are guiding planes from all over the world.
The Chairman: We have present a representative of one of the world's largest operators of float planes. Perhaps we might as Mr. Evans about the numbers because they are quite staggering.
Mr. Peter Evans, Harbour Air Ltd.: Mr. Chairman, I do not know whether our claim to fame is as the largest. We certainly are here on the coast in terms of the number of aircraft we operate under one umbrella.
There is no other place in the world like here. We know that from other carriers who operate around the world who phone and ask us about what we do and how we do it. We receive quite a few requests. We recognize that we are rather unique.
Part of the package of what we do is based on the AWOS systems in the lighthouses that are not up to snuff, which is exactly what we have been talking about. From the point of view of a commercial operator I would estimate there are in the neighbourhood of 100 to 120 float aircraft that operate in a commercial venue.
Senator Perrault: Those are in the commercial sector?
Mr. Evans: Those are people who operate those aircraft commercially for hire. There are many other recreational people, but that is an unknown number and not one I have ever looked at. We could certainly source that out from the BCAC in terms of how many there actually are.
The last time I looked in the British Register was when I received a call from someone over there who wanted to know about float planes and wanted to buy one. He told me there were only two float planes in Britain. I am told there are four in Sweden. Therefore, we are not talking about the same issues here. That must be borne in mind when we are discussing what we should do.
What Mr. Shields says is true. The aviation community is not against automation. It is against it the way it stands right now because it is not giving us what we need. When it is able to provide that, I am sure we would be interested in having it but not yet.
Senator Perrault: Where are the main deficiencies? You say "when it is improved." How would you like to see it improved?
Mr. Evans: It needs to be reliable. Unreliability is what causes cynicism among the pilots. One of the best recognitions of this would be in Sandspit in the Queen Charlotte Islands. The government in its wisdom decided to put in AWOS. Within two weeks of it operating on its own, after the weather observation station was terminated, the staff were back for another six months because the weather observation was totally inaccurate.
One of the most common situations is when it is blowing snow or blowing rain in Sandspit at 40 knots, the rain turns sideways. It does not go downhill. That would be called an obscured ceiling; it would give a ceiling reading that was not there.
Senator Perrault: So there are technical deficiencies?
Mr. Evans: There are technical deficiencies. It is not capable of producing the information in an accurate form.
Senator Perrault: I suppose it could be said that the lightkeeper could also have a coronary heart attack.
Mr. Evans: This is true.
Senator Perrault: Everything is fallible.
Mr. Evans: Everything is fallible.
One of the things about the technology is we know that it is fallible at this time. We are not saying it cannot be improved. However, before they take those other steps, there is a risk that we are stepping too far over the line before we improve the system.
Senator Perrault: That is the generally held view?
Mr. Evans: That is the generally held view.
Senator Perrault:That is interesting.
Senator Bacon: What is the council's position on substance abuse? Would you prefer a testing strategy or prevention through education?
Mr. Lloyd: The council's view is that it prefers education. We have looked at this situation. When we began to talk about random testing, we noted that the FAA in the United States had done some testing on pilots. There is only one known incident in the U.S., and that was an aircraft that crashed on a sightseeing tour in the Grand Canyon. There was a suspicion of cannabis being used by the pilot in command but it was not proven. According to the FAA, there is .004 per cent of any detection by pilots who may be in command.
Alcohol probably is more prevalent. We have some very good programs in British Columbia, and I am sure across Canada, to work with pilots who "medical out" because of alcoholism. There are several programs in British Columbia and pilots have gone back to work and have recovered from that illness.
As Mr. Wolfe-Milner reported to you earlier, we held a workshop in conjunction with Transport Canada. There was a pilot study done on random drug testing. It was done in the trucking industry in British Columbia. It was the only test that was done in cooperation with Transport Canada. We brought in the team of people who did the random testing to talk to the aviation industry about it. We felt that it was trying to kill a mosquito with a Howitzer. Therefore, we felt education is probably the best way to go rather than spend a lot of money in having companies randomly test their flight crews at this time.
I might say that there is a societal change. I have read some material coming out of the Canadian Forces which stated that, 20 years ago, young men and women would consume more drinks in the bar. I understand alcohol consumption has gone down in the military, but there is some concern about substance use in the military. It mirrors a societal trend in North America.
Senator Bacon: How does the safety record in the helicopter industry compare with the rest of the aviation sector? Are the major causes of helicopter accidents weather related or pilot error?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: The accident rate with helicopters in British Columbia is possibly a bit higher than it is with fixed-wing aircraft in that same category size-wise because of the environment in which they fly. It is a demanding environment and a demanding terrain.
The causal factors for helicopter accidents, not only helicopters but accidents with aircraft, are primarily related to human factors. Weather can be a factor, but if an aircraft goes into the side of a mountain and it is blamed on weather, it is not the fault of the weather; it is the fault of the pilot for going into that cloud in the first place. So it is primarily the human factor side and the decision-making and judgment ability of a pilot. That has been addressed over the last few years with very intensive training courses for both new pilots and active pilots in decision-making and judgment training.
Senator Bacon: Has the council made some recommendations on that? Will it work closely with the various companies?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: Yes, we fully support the training aspects to train pilots and also maintenance personnel because they are very much part of the team.
The Chairman: Do you impose a zero tolerance regime with respect to either alcohol or drugs? You only fail once?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: Yes.
The Chairman: Then you are out of a job. That is quite acceptable in your industry?
Senator St. Germain: Generally one is out of a life.
The Chairman: I am not being facetious. Do you employ a zero tolerance policy with respect to your own pilots?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: I am not quite sure of the definition of "zero tolerance."
The Chairman: Is a pilot who comes to work drunk automatically fired, or will he be given a second chance?
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: Under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms I do not believe you can fire someone for that these days, but that is a whole other ball game.
The Chairman: You should be able to fire some in that circumstance.
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: This came up the in proposed substance abuse legislation.
The Chairman: I meant generally. There is always the difficult area of people who may take particular types of substances. I do not know the generic chemical description of the drugs but there are many drugs out there. There are drugs to keep you awake, drugs to get rids of headaches, and drugs to get rid of head colds. The question of zero tolerance is a widely practised method of operating. In other words, if you do it and you get caught, then you are out of a job. You do not get a second chance because it is too dangerous.
Mr. Wolfe-Milner: That depends on the individual operators, the carriers. I would think generally, yes, if somebody comes to work drunk, he is out of a job but sometimes there are mitigating factors. Some operators would give that person a second chance by helping him if he has an alcohol or a drug abuse problem, but they will certainly not let him fly.
Mr. Douglas: Mr. Chairman, I would like to state one thing categorically: In a fixed-wing operation, if any pilot in any of the companies that with which I have been associated over the years were to show up for work in the morning drunk, he would categorically be fired on the spot no matter what the legal consequences might be afterwards.
Mr. Lynn Morrison, Chief Pilot and Co-Owner, Baxter Aviation: I have been flying on the coast here for 30 years. It is extremely rare to find alcohol as a problem with a pilot who is coming to work in the morning. I have heard of it happening maybe twice in my career. On one occasion, the fellow was sent to an alcohol rehabilitation program and then he was back on flying duty again after he had gone through the program.
That has happened twice in 30 years and that is all I have ever heard. It is extremely rare and I do not think it is an issue that needs to be brought up.
The Chairman: We have to bring up those issues. If we do not deal with them, then we do not know.
Senator Bacon: It is brought up everywhere we go.
Senator Perrault: Every aircraft accident, be it large or small, receives a great deal of publicity in the newspaper. How are we doing in comparison with other provinces in Canada and other countries with respect to accidents per 1,000 miles flown or on whatever index is used in your industry? Is the trend improving in favour of safety or declining based on incidents over the past five years?
Mr. Evans: I know that Transport Canada has been working on those comparative statistics which unfortunately I do not have with me. I will ask if they are available here. In general terms, one of the statistics is missing. You asked about accidents per thousand miles flown. For our sector of the industry, that does not apply in the sense that we do not travel at 500 miles an hour but at 100 or 110. With the rule that has been used, it is a very difficult to apply that statistic to what we do.
One of the more common indications that we would use locally in our industry is the recognition that the departure and arrival sequences of a flight are those most exposed to danger statistically speaking. Our particular company operates somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30 to 35 aircraft; our average flight length is 0.3 to 0.4 hours, depending on the operation. In other words, we do two to three take-offs and landings per hour of flying. That does not occur with a major carrier, so that is a statistical anomaly.
Coupled with that is the very issues we are discussing -- weather reporting and pilot decision-making, as Mr. Wolfe-Milner mentioned. Part of that decision-making process is based on what we feel is the best information available at the time. If that information is faulty or unreliable, the pilot will make a decision only with the information he has currently. For instance, if a pilot departs Vancouver on a 300-mile flight, he is expecting from the report that the weather will be such and such. If that is not so when he gets there, he is under a lot of pressure both emotionally and from the perspective of wanting to do his job and wanting to continue his flight while not having correct information. There is a lot of pressure put on him to perform. Even though the information he had at the time was incorrect, he has launched and acted on his decision to depart.
Senator Perrault: Is the trend improving in British Columbia? Are there fewer accidents?
Mr. Evans: At the moment, I cannot answer. I know those statistics are available from the Department of Transport.
Senator Perrault: We can get that information.
Are there enough emergency landing strips? Is there anything that can be done in that area to make flying safer?
Mr. Evans: I can only speak to the commercial sector. Float planes operate where there is a runway all around. The other type of aircraft operating in B.C. tend to be twin-engine aircraft which are not as exposed to having difficulty in finding a place to land immediately.
Senator Lawson: My question deals with the conversion factor as it applies to safety. However, before I address that and to follow on Senator St. Germain's comment about high fuel costs, if your industry wants a speedy solution to that problem, just announce later today that you are all going to file bankruptcy in the next 10 days and then wait for Transport Minister Anderson to call you; but first agree to put it to a vote of your membership.
With respect to the conversion factor, I am sure everyone here can recall the bizarre incident which happened to Air Canada during the time of conversion about 15 or 20 years ago. A flight originating out of Montreal was fuelled during based on the conversion from imperial to metric; the fuel was apparently tested again in Ottawa and the aircraft wound up running out of fuel over Gimli, Manitoba. Only the intelligence and experience of the pilots averted a major tragedy.
As an aside, when a bush pilot was asked to comment on the conversion factor, he asked whether no one had a dipstick with which to check the amount of the fuel.
I thought after that happened that we would never again have a conversion problem in aviation; yet we all recall that, in the last year or two, here in British Columbia, the case of the air ambulance which originated out of Vancouver and crashed near Vancouver Island. It is my understanding as a layperson that there was some problem with the conversion factor at the landing area causing the aircraft to touch down, in bad weather, before it got to the landing strip. It landed in the water killing four or five people. That happened somewhere in the Queen Charlottes. I do not recall any more specifics.
Was that a problem with a conversion factor? Was it avoidable? It appears to me as a layman that it was avoidable. Have we corrected the problem? What could you share with this committee as a recommendation to prevent another accident like that?
Mr. Shields: That incident involved a Lear jet which crashed in Masset. It was not a conversion error. I do not know what the findings were on the actual cause of the accident. I may be corrected on this, but from what I have read the surmise is that they did not set the altimeter to the current altimeter at the airport. That is not a conversion incident.
An actual number of barometric pressure is set on your altimeter and it allows for changes in the outside air pressure. If it is set incorrectly, the altimeter can read low or high. Unfortunately, in this case, it read the other way and the pilot thought they were at a certain altitude; they were somewhat lower and we know the result.
With IFR, altimeters are critical in the landing phase. With VFR, you are looking out the window to tell how high you are.
In cockpit resource management, especially when there are two crew, setting an altimeter is something which is constantly shoved down your throat. Every company I know has setting the altimeter as number one on the checklist in the pre-land check. Whatever happened in that cockpit on that particular evening, the re-set did not get done. Certainly, that is something which has been impressed upon me during all the years I have been flying IFR. In the last 10 years since the Air Florida crash, cockpit resource management has really come into play and has been enforced even more.
Mr. Kaardal:In the last few years, the operating costs for small airlines, including the cost of fuel, have astronomically outpaced the ability of the operator to pass on the same percentage increases to the public. As a case in point, many operators operate DeHavilland equipment, Beavers, Otters. Boeing has taken over DeHavilland and there is a shuffle there. My employer buys its parts from New Jersey with American funds. We recently had a 34 per cent increase because we pay U.S. dollars. There is also difficulty in getting certain parts.
For example, if there is an incident resulting in a new air-worthiness directive for modified seat rails, they must be bought with U.S. dollars. One may pay thousands of dollars for four or five pieces of aluminium which screw in the bottom of an airplane.
Senator Lawson: Did I understand Transport Minister Anderson correctly when he stated that whatever concession was made for Canadian Airlines would apply to all the other commercial carriers? Why would that not include your group?
Mr. Kaardal: We certainly have not heard anything to that effect. It would be most welcome news, I can assure you.
Senator Lawson: Have you asked him? I understood him to say that it would apply equally to Air Canada and other commercial carriers. That would apply to Greyhound and the other companies out there. You are commercial operators; why would you not demand equal treatment? I would ask first. Failing that, I would demand to be given equal treatment.
Mr. Kaardal: We will certainly do that.
Mr. Evans: What they are talking about in their world is jet fuel and most of our aircraft do not run on jet fuel; they run on gasoline. They will certainly take the position that they are only talking about jet fuel and not gasoline.
Senator Lawson: We are talking about the fuel and the aviation industry. That is the case you should be making.
Mr. Evans: We can do that. However, the probable position to be taken will be that it only applies to jet fuel.
Senator Adams: Perhaps my question will be a little different from those of other senators. I live in a remote area in the Northwest Territories. The Minister of Transportation and other officials of the government of the Northwest Territories appeared before the committee earlier.
In the Northwest Territories, 52 airports and runways have been built in small communities. Northern British Columbia has some remote areas. The coast of British Columbia does not freeze up in the winter, unlike our area which is mostly frozen. Are there any communities in B.C. which are not connected by highways or ferries to other communities? Some communities in the Northwest Territories rely solely on air transportation, and float planes only operate during the summer time.
Are there any communities in British Columbia, such as those involved in logging or residential areas, where people rely solely on air transportation for access to the community?
Mr. Lloyd: Senator, there are systems on the coast which are serviced by scheduled carriers to some of our coastal communities. Air carriers provide that service on a regular basis. Many of the flights are charters into various communities and are not regularly scheduled.
I do not know of any carriers which have tied in with people coming by coastal ferry to a certain destination who then board an aircraft. That may happen in some of the communities; they may come down to Prince Rupert and then get picked up there. Some may come from some other island to Bella Bella, Port Hardy or to one of the coastal communities and then catch a flight into Vancouver or to another coastal community.
I know in the north, planes convert to skis. Any time I am in Yellowknife, I see hundreds of aircraft sitting there on skis and working in the winter if there is work to be done. I know that there are air ambulances on skis working the north. There are communities in northeast British Columbia where aircraft are converted to skis. This applies mostly to charter work. I do not know of any scheduled service in British Columbia operating on skis in the winter.
Senator Adams: There are occasions in the north when air ambulance pilots fly into a community where there is no weather station and they will phone the nursing station for a weather report. Is there a concern in British Columbia about communities where there is no highway and where medical emergencies must all be flown out?
Mr. Lloyd: I understand what you are saying, senator. Don Douglas is the executive director of the Northern Air Transport Association. They are expressing a need for good information as a northern operator because there are no roads for some of those remote communities north of 60 and the only access to a trauma centre is by helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft on skis. Weather information is important.
It goes back to the question we talked about earlier. Perhaps there are ways to train people in the local community to be weather observers, but again we need some funding. We need a voice at the end of a telephone or a radio in northern locations to give information to the helicopter pilot or to the fixed-wing pilot who is coming in on that type of emergency. I am very supportive of the efforts of the Northern Air Transportation Association.
Senator St. Germain: To emphasize the uniqueness of our area, I asked you a question earlier and Mr. Kardaal spoke of the Doppler system utilized in the U.S. Most float planes which fly VFR are flown in this area and in Alaska. Has Alaska any advantages over us as far as the information systems in place at the present time? Or is it basically in the same situation as us as for flight information and weather information? I have never flown up there but I understand that the areas are very similar.
Mr. Kaardal: I have not flown in Alaska for a number of years. I flew extensively into Alaska out of Prince Rupert in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, the facilities were similar and the same sources for weather were available.
Washington users like Kenmore Air Services and other airlines servicing our summer salmon-fishing and tourist industries are very concerned about our lighthouse weathers because they use them extensively, particularly when flying on the outer coast which is subject to fog in the summer. They have to leave Seattle knowing that they can get into their destinations.
In answer to your question about Alaska, I would have to look into that. I do not know what is happening up there right now, but I know in the past they were in a parallel situation.
Mr. Evans: It is interesting that you raised that issue. Earlier on we were talking about training lay people in what to do at out-stations. I was given the statistic that we in B.C. spent about $17,000 last year on contract work. In Alaska, more than $500,000 was spent. People who live in remote communities have been trained and are paid by a government agency. If you are looking for a level playing field, I guess that pretty well explains it. Mind you, here we have lightstations which I do not think were thrown into the equation. Nevertheless, trade one for the other and it might turn to a level playing field. They have manned stations there where the people are trained.
The Chairman: That was a very important question. Thank you for appearing before the committee.
Mr. Lloyd: Mr. Chairman, on behalf of the aviation industry we appreciate the opportunity to address the Senate subcommittee this morning. Should you need further information, the expertise is within this room. Those of us present who have been flying the coast have, combined, probably 400 or 500 years of experience. We are getting old but we are still alive.
The Chairman: Thank you. I now call upon Mr. Paul Reitsma.
Mr. Paul Reitsma, Member of Legislative Assembly of British Columbia: Mr. Chairman, permit me to say a few things about myself, not because I am important and not because I wear a suit and tie -- I doubt very much if anyone who wished to be rescued on the seas would care what the rescuer was wearing. I am a past council member and past mayor of Port Alberni from the early 1980s. Port Alberni is a coastal community. Fishing, recreational boating and aviation are very important to us.
This past Monday, I finished nine years of being mayor of Parksville. Port Alberni is the salmon capital of the world. Parksville is near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. On the lighter side, it is the home of the cleanest air, the longest beaches, the lowest taxes and a quality of life that still counts. We are very proud of Ballenas lighthouse. Until this past Monday, Parksville was also the home of the tallest mayor in B.C. I am 5' 18".
I was elected an MLA for the provincial Liberal Party in May. Like some of the lightkeepers, I feel very lonely because there is only one MLA north of Victoria. Hopefully that will change very soon.
Mr. Chairman, I would like to read a presentation I made in the provincial legislature on July 26 of this year.
I am here in support of the lightkeepers. I immigrated to Canada in 1970 from Holland. My background also includes being a steward and assistant purser on the Holland America Line for three and a half years. I have travelled all over the world and have seen many lighthouses throughout the world.
Lighthouse -- the very word conjures up an image of solitary, sweeping power, setting the mariner's infinite domain apart from the landlocked. As eternal symbols of hope, romance and civilized good, lighthouses fascinate almost everyone.
Some myths die hard. The childhood fantasies we all have about cowboys, firemen, nurses or train engineers seldom survive kindergarten, but when it comes to lightkeepers, people never seem to grow up. We share a kinship of sorts with the man who took the helm during the golden age of navigation some two centuries ago. Cook, Vancouver, Quadra and the nameless seamen who trimmed and set their sails would have been as stirred anticipating daily ferry service traffic from Tsawwassen to Prince Rupert as we are by the prospect of transplanted towns on the plains of Mars.
Imagine, if you can, their task of charting a contorted coastline thousands of miles in overall length, scarred and convoluted by countless fjords, channels and inlets, ringed by buffers of breakers and foul ground. They manoeuvred with only a compass, a sextant and anxious eyes on the stars. Each time the cartographers unrolled their charts in their lurching cabins, they watched them grow in detail.
If we take the same voyage for granted today, with only an occasional glance up from cafeteria trays, video games and newspapers, it is only because the treacherous has become so well defined. The north-south sea lane today is a constellation of lighthouses, beacons, buoys and assorted markers stretching from Race Rocks in the south to Green Island on Alaska's doorstep.
The first Canadian light was a private venture. In late November, 1859, Captain Nagle, Victoria's harbour master, paid $100 for a lantern and placed it on McLoughlin Point at the entrance to Victoria's harbour. Half a year later, the tubes in Nagle's lantern overheated and melted down. He had no funds to replace them, and that precipitated the birth of the first lighthouse.
With the backing of Governor James Douglas, construction began in 1860. Renowned architect H.O. Tiedeman -- who, incidentally, built Victoria's first legislative building -- oversaw the construction of Fisgard light. George Davies enjoyed the distinction of becoming the first full-time lightkeeper.
In the early decades of this century, lightkeepers were required to polish reflectors, trim wicks on kerosene lanterns, change bulbs, wind clockwork mechanisms and turn on the important foghorns. In those days, ships were highly dependent on shore-based lights and aural signals for safe landfalls.
Canada took over three colonial lighthouses: Fisgard, Race Rocks and Sandheads, when B.C. joined Confederation in 1871. For 120 years on Canada's West Coast, ever since that first light at Fisgard lanced through the night, no vessel went to wreck, nor was a single life lost due to negligence on the part of a lightkeeper.
We might all stand a little taller with a tradition like that behind us. Their gallantry, their experience and their commitment is legendary. Our keepers of the light could always be counted on. They were reliable; they were trusted. That was a great comfort. You see, Mr. Chairman, they do one thing and one thing only, and they are experts at it -- they save lives. Our lightkeepers were there for us, preventing accidents and responding to SOS calls.
At this moment in history it is they who need to be rescued and saved. It is now our time to respond to their SOS cry, "Save our stations." If those men leave the lights, other men will die. Lightkeepers are situated in very strategic spots and are often the only eyes and ears for long stretches along B.C.'s long coastline. An automated system as proposed will never, never replace or be a substitute for a manned system. Automated involvement is mechanical, devoid of feelings and human understanding.
Automation is an uncharted course that is being navigated. An automatic light station would not detect boats experiencing mechanical difficulties or being swept out to sea. It would not detect people overcome by carbon monoxide or other fumes. What automated devices are there to detect the last act of desperation, flares?
Time and time again, we hear testimony from those who were rescued because of the human touch. Those rescues speak of the immense value of the manned lighthouse stations. Time and time again, we hear from the keepers of the light how they made a difference and were the reason so many people are alive today instead of having succumbed to the cold elements.
A well-documented story is the one where 40 to 50 boats in a herring fleet were heading to the top end of Queen Charlotte Sound. The weather was ever so bad. It was a screaming, howling gale storm. Boats were dancing in the water. The rolling and the pitching were frightening. They kept in touch with the lightkeeper on Egg Island. She said, "I'll stay up all night if necessary, because I'm pretty sure there's going to be a break in the weather somewhere during the night. When it breaks, I'll be sure to let you know because tomorrow there's an even heavier storm coming."So at 4:00 a.m. she came on the air and told them the weather was coming down. She thought they could make it, and they did, safely. They were sure the lady saved some lives that night.
There are many, many more harrowing stories of people in distress saved and rescued by keepers of the light. They are reliable, they are always dependable. That is the comfort.
Rich Bryant, the bureaucrat directing West Coast automation plans, wrote that equipment such as automatic stations and buoys are prone to failure during severe weather and are not quickly restored, and individual readings are often missed.
The result is a total lack of confidence in the system. Flawed and erratic technology is intended to replace staffed lighthouses with a long track record of safety, reliability and dependability. Lightkeepers are trusted; automation is not.
When we had that storm about six or eight weeks ago, it was well documented that three of the automatic light stations did not work. Sometimes automatic stations do not work until found out, which could be days later. In the meantime, how can one defend a terrible accident? How many accidents need to happen, spilling vast quantities of dirty bunker oil on to beaches with all the consequences? It is almost ironic that the current Minister of Transportation, the Honourable David Anderson, will have to make the decision.
By the way, I talked to him about three months ago and, with no disrespect to the committee, it seemed to have already taken place. No changes will come about but, hopefully, with lots of presentations, the famous second look could be useful.
I remember the Honourable David Anderson crusading, and rightfully so, against the possibility of tankers involved in accidents causing damage to the coast of B.C. Now that he will have to make the decision, I hope he will be crusading as strongly regarding the potential of oil on the beaches. The information we have is that a differential of $2 million to $3 million is negligible in terms of the lost lives and cleanup which may need to be done. If governments can give money to Canadian Airlines and other companies to bail them out, then this can be done. I will return to that in a moment.
How many lives need to be snuffed out? How many watery graves will it take before we realize there is no replacement for the men and women looking out the window? It could be you that they save. The range and quality of human observation, delivery of safety services and up-to-the-minute weather reporting cannot be matched by mechanical devices which are unreliable. Savings on automation are minimum at best. The potential cost in lives and disasters knows no maximum.
The information that we have is that, in 1994 and 1995, the cost of running all 35 lighthouses in B.C. was approximately $9.64 million. In 1994 and 1995, the cost of running the eight stations scheduled for closure was $1.7 million of the $9.64 million. The cost savings for destaffing all 35 lifestations is estimated to be $3.7 million. The cost savings for destaffing the first eight stations is estimated at $1.1 million.
I also speak on behalf of the Liberal caucus. We are not the government but the opposition. We make it perfectly clear that we cannot do things until we form the government, but part of our platform was to work with the provincial government to take over the lightstations and maintain the staffing as part of our promise -- not the broken promises that we have heard about keeping the staff.
There are solutions. There are proposals to save those stations. They could be declared provincial marine parks with a public-private partnership arrangement. This could also be done in conjunction with a partnership agreement with the federal government. Many provincial and federal departments and private industries directly or indirectly benefit from the services of lightkeepers: fisheries, environment, tourism, transportation, education, manpower, public works, employment, multi-billion-dollar departments and industry provincially and federally.
There has been talk charging a certain percentage of the cost to those organizations which benefit. There are proposals to levy an insignificant marine and aviation fuel assessment and a boat license fee. A combination of those proposals will save our stations and could be done simultaneously with the new fisheries and harbour and ports policies. If we all truly want it, we can make it happen.
This transcends all political parties. As a former mariner for three and a half years, I have seen many lighthouses. I cannot describe the comfort and trust they gave me. Only lightkeepers can deliver safety and operate the lights to provide those rays of hope.
Mr. Chairman, that is my presentation. I do not have anything to give to you other than what is being reported, and that is fine. That is basically what I mentioned to the legislature. Let me assure you I am not an expert. I support the lightkeepers, as does our provincial party. I am not an expert when it comes to technical questions. My good friend Jim Abram is much more versed and much more qualified than I.
Senator Bacon: Are you totally against the automated system, or would you give it a chance to use both the staff and the system and see how it works before any final decision is made? What about an improved automated system? Would you accept that being implemented?
Mr. Reitsma: Our position has been that certainly our caucus will not destaff lighthouses because we want the B.C. coastline to be safe. We suggested the operating cost for the first year be covered by transferring the federal budget allocations for lighthouses to the province and the operating costs after the first year would be met through planned downsizing and reorganization of the government. We are not in favour of destaffing.
Senator Bacon: Would you be in favour of using both staffing and the automated system?
Mr. Reitsma: I am not an expert on that, but I live in Parskville on the East Coast. Six or eight weeks ago when we had a gale storm, power was out and three of the automated light stations did not work. I do not think that is a great record.
Senator Bacon: Is there no staff left there?
Mr. Reitsma: No, but they did not work. The automated ones broke down. It is a paltry $2 million to $3 million. Consider some of the suggestions made in terms of boat of aviation license fees. We can bail out various companies and help with decreasing the fuel tax. I do not think I have met too many people who would object to an insignificant increase in gasoline or marine fuel and a boat license fee if it means safety on the shores.
Senator Adams: Do you have any idea how much traffic passing through here on the B.C. coast from Alaska down to Washington state uses lightkeepers? Some of the regulations have changed for the tankers that pass through here going down to the States.
I remember some testimony during a hearing held in B.C. by our energy committee over a year. Something happened in Alaska regarding a tanker being retrofitted. I was wondering whether there had been a change in regulation that ships, mostly tankers, must go farther out to sea instead of travelling close to shore. Has that happened? Is there really not much traffic through there now?
Mr. Abram: There is traffic that mostly comes down the outside of Vancouver Island, but it is now being allowed to a certain extent to come down the inside. Lightstations have provided monitoring of environmental situations and spills over the years. They were the first to spot the Nestuka oil spill off the West Coast of Vancouver Island. If the regulations are to allow further traffic down the inside passage, there is certain to be more incidents of spills or impending disaster. We just had one just north of Seymour Narrows north of Campbell River, where a cruise ship and a barge or a tug pulling a barge with propane and explosives had a very near miss and almost collided. That was monitored and reported by Chatham Point lightstation.
Senator Adams: It is mostly a concern about the shore. There are small boats and people canoeing. Since the AWOS have been put up, the concern is they do not have communication regarding destination and what the weather is. Do people involved in recreational boating use the lightstations?
There are some people who canoe on the coast and we also have some in the Territories. Some canoe up the rivers and some canoe along Hudson Bay. How is that dealt with in B.C.?
The Chairman: Perhaps, senator, we are skating here at cross-purposes. If you care to respond to that question, that is fine but perhaps now that Mr. Abram is at the table, we will introduce him.
Mr. Reitsma: I will, Mr. Chairman. When Jim Abram phoned a month ago, he made me aware that it was because of him that some kayakers in distress were spotted. Otherwise, quite likely, some severe injury or drowning could have taken place. An automated station would not have noticed flares, would not have noticed fumes, would not have noticed many of the recreational-tourism-related activities. There is no mechanism for that other than a human eye. There is plenty of recreational kayaking, boating, canoeing. It is a big business.
The Chairman: Thank you, Mr. Reitsma, for your presentation.
I would formally introduce Mr. Jim Abram. He is very widely known, internationally known, an author, a consummate historian with respect to lighthouse activity on this coast. I commend senators to his written work.
As one who has had quite an introduction to the difficulties from here to Langara through the mind and thoughtfulness of Mr. Abrams, we are fortunate and privileged to have him with us this morning.
Mr. Jim Abram, President, B.C. Lightkeepers: Mr. Chairman, thank you for that glowing introduction. May I ask to distribute the presentation that I have with some appended material and also a presentation that my wife, Wendy, wrote. She cannot be here because she is doing my job at the present time.
The Chairman: Mr. Abram is the president of the British Columbia Lightkeepers Association and I can attest to their diligence and their concern.
Mr. Abram: Honourable senators, thank you for coming to British Columbia and allowing us the opportunity to speak with you today. It is very much appreciated by all of us.
For those of you who do not know me, I am the president of the B.C. Lightkeepers Local of the Public Service Alliance of Canada. I am also the principal lightkeeper at Cape Mudge lightstation which is located on Quadra Island. I live there with my family and my assistant keeper and his family.
I consider it very timely for the Senate to have authorized this investigation into national transportation safety and particularly along the coast of British Columbia. The issue of marine and aviation safety is one to which my family and I have devoted our lives over the past 18 years as B.C. lightkeepers. We believe it is extremely important, worthwhile and fulfilling and very much appreciated by the travelling public.
Over the past 11 years, I have led the opposition to the destaffing of B.C. lightstations in order to preserve the most efficient and cost-effective delivery system of essential transportation safety services that has ever been established. I am here today to inform you of the services provided by lightkeepers, the extent of their use and the impact of their discontinuation.
The Canadian Coast Guard started its program to automate lightstations in the late 1960s. The purpose was to allow electronic equipment to do some of the more mundane, simple tasks to give the lightkeepers more time to perform the myriad of other tasks that were being added to their unofficial daily duties. These included expanded weather reporting for marine and aviation safety, an increased role in assistance to search and rescue, an increased role in radio communications due to the incomplete coastal coverage by Coast Guard radio, and extensive use by other government agencies for scientific observation and data collection.
The automation was intended as an enhancement to staffed lightstations, not a replacement for staff. In a 1981 Auditor General's report, it was stated that between $60 million and $70 million had been expended on the program, yet the program was far from being complete or effective.
In the 15 years that have elapsed since those figures were released, it would be fair to assume that at least that amount has been expended in addition to the original figures due to the total preoccupation that the Coast Guard bureaucracy has had with the destaffing issue since 1984. Careers have been built on this program and the agenda has become personal for those career technocrats. The original goal has been lost and the focus has been aimed at destaffing rather than automation due to general budget cuts within departments.
To ensure the continuation of the middle and upper levels of bureaucracy, the cuts have been passed down to the operational levels, the service delivery levels, the levels that give reason for the existence of the department in the first place.
In answer to one of the questions in your terms of reference, government cuts have affected safety over the years. However, it is not the cuts that affected the safety; it is the misplaced trust in the bureaucracy to make the cuts where they will have the least impact on the operations. Coast Guard management has proven year after year that they will always cut operational programs rather than their own redundant and overpaid positions.
Government still has not picked up on this ongoing practice. Government has not listened to the people who have elected them, whom they represent and who have paid for these services. They have allowed unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats to come up with ill-conceived plans that are totally contrary to the public needs and wishes. They have allowed those same bureaucrats to manipulate and misrepresent reality when reporting back to their political masters. I use that term, "political masters" loosely, as it is a matter of public record that the director general of the Canadian Coast Guard stated that he does not have to do as the minister says. Rather than being fired for his contempt for political direction, he was promoted to his present position, a position of power over all of the marine and aviation transportation safety services.
Honourable senators, I think you have your work cut out for you. Lightkeepers and lightstations have changed relatively little since their establishment on this coast 130 years ago, other than the expansion in the services and the increased demand I have mentioned. This has been due to the phenomenal increase in population, commerce and modes of travel.
We are slightly better paid than those who came before us. However, we are still one of the lowest paid groups of public servants in Canada with an average salary of $26,000 per annum. We do get a house to live in. However, we pay for all of our own supplies and provisions. We work 12-hour shifts, seven days per week, 365 days per year. We receive absolutely no overtime or credit for hours worked beyond the normal eight hours per day, five days per week.
The Chairman: When was the last time you had a pay raise?
Mr. Abram: I believe it was 1991.
I would like to state that this is not a complaint. It is merely a statement of fact for this record to substantiate my claim earlier of cost-effective delivery of services. Our totally outdated job descriptions do not in any way, shape or form reflect our actual duties. Most of these duties have evolved over time and out of necessity and we welcome the addition of duties to our day since we know that the services provided are necessary for the safe transportation of the working and travelling public on our coastline.
Many, many people ask what lightkeepers do. In addition to total maintenance of all the property, structures, machinery and equipment, we provide seven marine local weather observations daily which include sky conditions; visibility; obstructions to visibility, such as fog or snow; types of precipitation; wind speed, direction and tendency, such as gusting; seastate, including wave height and swell height; and any other relevant remarks that are significant to mariners or pilots. Select stations along the coast also give barometric pressure and tendency.
In addition to the marine weathers, 17 stations give a surface aviation weather report that, added to the above information, also gives layers of cloud, their height, amount and type; the temperature of the dewpoint, which is critical for aviators; and special remarks of concern to aviators such as thunder and lighting in the area; conditions in the area but not right at our observation point; and any other relevant information that could affect their safety.
We do climate information every 12 hours, which records the maximum and minimum temperatures for the day and night and types and amount of precipitation for each period. Select stations provide 24-hour tsunami warning system monitoring, seismic activity recording, water sampling for salinity and temperature, and various bird and marine mammal monitoring. Fisheries infractions and possible drug trafficking are closely monitored and reported by all stations. Our strategic location from border to border is a visible reminder of our Canadian sovereignty over the Inside Passage. This has been threatened in the past year during the fish wars, as they were called.
What we actually do as lightkeepers is watch the coast. Each and every one of us, unpaid family members included, watch what is going on all around us all of the time. We know when something is different, whether it be a ship in distress, an unusual sighting of an aircraft or vessel, or a subtle change in the weather that could be early warning of impending disaster. We are human observers of the entire 360-degree celestial dome and all of the water and land around us. We can see, hear, smell, feel and sense what is going on. Nothing, and I repeat nothing, that exists today can provide this degree of observation. Any replacement of human observations is a degraded level of service. It is a level of service that is not acceptable to the users of the service. People will die if this degradation of service levels is allowed to continue.
Who uses the services we provide? It used to be a common assumption that these were services for boaters. In late 1994 and early 1995, a team of four Coast Guard managers and four lightkeepers, myself being one of them, were instructed by Canadian Coast Guard to hold public meetings in 28 communities on the coast of B.C. We heard from every sector of the marine public: the billion-dollar commercial fishing industry, the billion-dollar recreational fishing industry, the multi-million-dollar recreational boating industry, the multi-billion-dollar tug and barge shipping industry, the multi-million-dollar fish farming industry, which is growing daily; the multi-million-dollar marine transport industry. We heard from the multi-billion-dollar forest industry and one of their representatives was here today, Terry Shields. We heard from the billion-dollar tourist industry and we heard from the multi-million-dollar air transportation industry.
The RCMP marine, air and land detachments appeared in uniform on behalf of the RCMP. That was an official position of the RCMP, not of individual members.
We heard from Fisheries officers, scientists, First Nations elders, chiefs and members whose lives depend on safe transport between their homes and their traditional food-gathering areas.
We heard from every local government, the provincial government, chambers of commerce and community organizations. They said they were opposed to any further reduction in transportation safety services. They were opposed to any further destaffing of lightstations and the corresponding reduction or elimination of services.
In short, we heard from an incredibly broad cross-section of the coastal population and no one supports the destaffing or the idea that human observations can be replaced by faulty automatic equipment that was never designed to replace people but only to augment it. Please keep that in mind. The bureaucrats on that mission did not listen. They have pushed on, manipulated data and assured the minister that transportation safety will not be compromised, and he himself has been compromised by those self-serving bureaucrats.
This evolution in direction has been an intentional, long-term attempt to mislead the public and the politicians. So far the only ones that have bought it are the politicians. They must rely on the people they hire to advise them, but they must also respond to the people who elected them when these people provide intelligent, first-hand, factual information concerning a plan that was devised by engineers that does not work and will affect their safety and their livelihoods.
I have already mentioned the overall impact of any further reduction in transportation safety services from lightstations. It warrants repeating: People will die. In addition, the economy of this province's coastal communities will suffer and the government of Canada will spend more than they propose to save through destaffing.
This is what a post-destaffing of lightstations scenario will look like: All of the maintenance of the site, structures, machinery and equipment, will be done by highly-paid workers, possibly on contract, flown in by helicopter on a regular basis from Victoria. Helicopter time ranges from $1,700 per hour to $2,700 per hour, depending on the type of aircraft.
There will no longer be any assistance to search and rescue provided on a coastline where severe cuts to the search and rescue fleet are currently taking place. The more than 6,000 incidents of assistance that lightkeepers provided last year alone will go unattended. The dozen people who were pulled from the water by lightkeepers and are conducting their lives today would be dead. No one else would be there to save them.
The marine weather services provided by lightkeepers in their present comprehensive form will disappear and will be replaced in some locations with a sensor that will only give wind speed and direction and possibly barometer, and it will only give that information occasionally. Records and public testimony report that the equipment only reports about 50 per cent of the time during the worst weather when it is needed the most.
Please do not forget the insignificant amount of information that it will report when it is working, compared to the human observation which I outlined earlier. Do not forget that the human reports 100 per cent of the time, no matter what the weather is.
The other important point is that no one will be there to attest to the accuracy of the information that might be provided by this inferior automatic instrument. Records show startling inaccuracies and false reports. Yet mariners and aviators are expected to risk their lives, their craft, their cargo and their passengers based on equipment that chronically reports false or missing information.
Remember, this equipment was not designed to report a local weather observation as a human would. It was only designed to provide data for forecasting purposes at an expected rate of return of 80 to 90 per cent of the time. That is all it was designed for.
The Canadian Coast Guard will install one or possibly two wave-rider buoys in an attempt to look like it is responding to public needs. The buoys are supposed to give the sea condition in the area. They report it as combined wave and swell height, which is an average of two distinctly different wave types that can be coming from totally different directions. The buoy also has no capability to measure tide-rip conditions in the vicinity. In our coastal waters these are quite common. At my station, 20-foot standing waves are not uncommon. They would not be registered even if a buoy could be left in the area.
There will also be the elimination of the aviation weather observations from 17 of the remaining 31 stations. This will effectively remove any chance that pilots might have had at making an informed decision in determining their flight plan. Pilots could cover the entire coast in a period of two hours. They need accurate, on-the-spot, visual weather observations to make accurate decisions. To fly in and have a look is a very dangerous and very expensive way of doing business and it will bankrupt many of the smaller companies.
There will also be an elimination of this aviation weather service to our Coast Guard helicopter pilots, who will be expected to fly in with crews to repair outages when the equipment breaks down. Those pilots have stated publicly that without on-site weather conditions, they will not fly. So much for timely repair of chronically ill equipment.
There was a very graphic example on October 17 this year of what is in store for us if the weather observations are replaced by automatic sensors that depend on communications links, satellites and computers. Four of the recently destaffed lightstations failed throughout the storm along with numerous other automatic weather stations along the coast. This happened just as the users said it would.
Once again the Coast Guard bureaucratic smoke-and-mirrors show kicked into gear. First they denied the failures. They out and out denied that the failures happened but the failures were documented.
Next they said it was communications failure. Then there were software glitches. The final insult came in the form of a press release that stated that even if a human being had been on the station, it would have made no difference.
This last statement demonstrates quite clearly to me that Coast Guard does not even know how the present system works. They do not understand it. If a lightkeeper had been on site, the weather observations would have been broadcast directly to the Coast Guard radio station where it would have been transcribed into the continuous marine broadcast and right to the users via VHF marine radio with no satellite, no computers, no communications links.
Coast Guard missed the whole point of this example. It does not matter at what point the system failed; the system failed. The user did not get the weather reports. Who cares where it got lost? For 36 hours the users did not get the weather reports.
This, honourable senators, is your post-destaffing scenario and its impact on transportation safety. The impact is serious and it is imminent. We British Columbians look forward to your assistance in advising the government that this program must be stopped.
I will gladly answer any questions you would like. I have given you submissions. I have also included one copy for the record of the following documents, one of them being the very last copy of the Lightstation Project Report, which is the report that was done in those 28 communities by the Coast Guard team. It was a very damaging report to their program and it has gone out of print and the Coast Guard will not reprint it. You have the last copy.
There is also the "Lifestation Assistance-to-Public Report." There is a long document in there that goes station by station and tells you exactly what lifestations did in the way of assistance. There are recent news clippings, some reports, briefing documents and, last but not least, the "Report on the Automatic System Failures, October 17-November 25, 1996", failures which have been recorded daily. Each one of you has received that. You can see very clearly that the problems have not been fixed. They have not been fixed over 20 years and they have not been fixed since October 17.
I would like to introduce one of those unpaid workers, my daughter Melissa. To illustrate the type of unpaid help we get, she noticed a fisherman fall overboard in front of our station a few years ago. He was the sole person on the running boat that took off without him. Had she not noticed it and passed it on to me, we would not have been able to effect the rescue of that person and he would have died in the frigid waters. He had no life jacket, no survival suit. That is the type of thing that goes on in every lifestation on this coast.
The Chairman: Perhaps your daughter can come forward and present your wife's presentation.
Mr. Abram: No, she is not prepared to. We thank you for the opportunity, though.
The Chairman: We will attach the brief as an appendix to the record as if it has been read. Would you thank Mrs. Abram for this?
Mr. Abram: I will do that. She feels very strongly about it and I think you will see from reading it that this has a very personal perspective.
The Chairman: As a personal aside, I recognize the role of the families. There are unbelievable stories of courage, determination and a simple desire to do a difficult job very well.
Senator St. Germain: Thank you very much for an excellent presentation, Mr. Abram. In Alaska are there lighthouses?
Mr. Abram: Alaska did have lighthouses. I assume they still have lighthouses. I am not sure.
Senator St. Germain: You assume?
Mr. Abram: I assume they still have lighthouse structures. I am not sure what form they take, whether they are staffed or destaffed.
Senator St. Germain: You do not know?
Mr. Abram: I am told that the U.S. has destaffed its lightstations. Alaska being part of that, I would assume they have destaffed lightstations.
Senator St. Germain: How have they coped with it? We heard this morning in another presentation that they spend significant amounts of money in training people at various locations. Do you agree with that statement or do you know about it? Is our situation different from theirs as far as the coastal communities and the weather and the various hazards that exist on their coastlines?
Mr. Abram: You heard testimony this morning on the amount of money spent in Alaska. Although I cannot verify that figure, if it is true, I would suggest to you the situation in British Columbia as it exists today is that aviation weather observers at lightstations are paid $1,400 per year to provide a 24-hour-a-day weather observation schedule. Contracts exist at the present time in many locations up and down this coast. Contracts in the past have been put out by Air Navigation Services. I am not sure if that will be transferred to Navigation Canada or not.
The contracts run in the range from $50,000 to $60,000 per observer per site. If we were to take that and extrapolate 17 sites, two observers at each site, I think you would come up with a fairly substantial number. That is what it would take to replace the aviation weathers at the present sites.
The situation today is that Coast Guard, under the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, denies that it has any responsibility whatsoever to provide any aviation weather. They are correct officially, but they are bound to provide the marine local weather observations which pilots also use. Some pilots use them more than the aviation weathers. So they do have the duty to provide marine local weathers that include such things as visibility, types of precipitation, wind speed and direction and seastate for float planes and helicopters.
Senator St. Germain: Unless there is something in the cards, the battle that you are fighting is under considerable threat, and I suppose you must work logically in these circumstances to make the best out of a bad situation. Have you any suggestions as to how we could rationalize this and still allow the government to do what it has to do, or what it feels it has to do, and satisfy the safety requirements?
Mr. Abram: I certainly do. What the government has to do -- according to your words, "has to do" -- is reduce its budgets.
Senator St. Germain: That is correct.
Mr. Abram: That is not a problem. We have put forward a proposal to government that shows that, without changing the operations or the staffing of lightstations one iota, it can reduce costs by almost 50 per cent strictly by realizing efficiencies within the system. This is within the bureaucracy, the cost allocations from the regional offices and from the national office. Fifty per cent is more than the government wishes to realize through destaffing. However, the government is unwilling to listen. It is unwilling to sit down and even talk about it.
This program has a life of its own. It has been created in Vancouver and pushed up the line to Ottawa. In addition to saving costs and doing things differently in that manner, we can certainly do other things to enhance the system. The committee heard this morning from the aviators what they would like to see. Since 1986 we have been proposing that aviation weathers be given in daylight hours every hour on the hour with updates as needed. Coast Guard would not allow that to happen. They said it would interfere with our duties. One of our duties is providing transportation safety services, so it does not quite fit.
I listened to your comment earlier about trying to make the best of a bad situation. We can make the best of a bad situation. The situation is we are in dire straits financially in this country. The place to save that money is not at the operational level of safety service delivery.
Those people who appeared before you today and all of the people whom they represent contribute an incredible amount of revenue to this government, provincially, federally and locally. Are we to tie their hands and therefore reduce the revenue to the government by this paltry saving of $3.5 million which will not even be realized? Remember that this $3.5 million is on paper. It has not been, in any way, shape or form, shown to be a valid commitment by government to save that money.
Senator Perrault: Mr. Chairman, this has been a very interesting presentation supported by stories from the newspaper. The world appears to be moving inexorably toward a much more automated method of guarding the safety of our shipping lanes and that includes the automation of lighthouses. There are absolutely no manned lighthouses on the East Coast. There are practically none, if any, in Great Britain. All over the world the trend is toward using these new devices.
Are all those jurisdictions wilfully and callously neglecting the human side of this thing? Are they willing to court disaster by going automatic, or is there some other factor here? Are we that much different on the West Coast of Canada that we should have nothing but manned stations here when the rest of the world has gone automatic? I am not being confrontational here. It is very interesting that the Americans, the Dutch and the British are all using automated stations. What is the profound difference between British Columbia and these other jurisdictions?
Mr. Abram: In answer to your last question first, there is a profound difference. We are a unique coastline. We provide unique services all from one strategic location at each station. That does not occur in other jurisdictions. You mentioned the East Coast of Canada. The East Coast of Canada is going through the same program of destaffing that we are. Their stations are not totally destaffed. There were 10 stations slated for the first fiscal year, which we are in right now.
Senator Perrault: They are in the process.
Mr. Abram: They are in the process. They still have approximately 20 stations to go. The difference between their coast and our coast is, first, they do not provide weather observations from the lightstations. Second, the keepers do not live on the stations. They live in town near the stations, so they are not there 24 hours a day. Third, they do not provide rescue services that we provide and the communications links that we provide.
They have a totally different job. They went to a seven-and-a-half-hour or eight-hour day many years ago and have maintained it. We did not do that. We chose to do what the public was asking, which was maintain a 24-hour presence.
As far as Great Britain was concerned, a couple of years ago, one year after destaffing the last lightstation, 43 stations were restaffed. Some were coast-watch stations, some were lightstations. During that one year approximately 15 lives were lost -- I am guessing, but I remember seeing the number.
Senator Perrault: Can you bring that evidence to us?
Mr. Abram: We have that.
Senator Perrault: I would like to have that. It is significant.
There is another coast in the world similar to the B.C. coast, and that is Norway. I have been to Norway and it is much like British Columbia with its fjords and rugged coastline. How does Norway handle this situation?
Mr. Abram: My understanding is Norway has many destaffed stations, but it does not have the traffic we do or the same type of things happening.
Senator Perrault: They have a number of destaffed stations in Norway?
Mr. Abram: As far as I know. I am not an expert on the country.
Senator Perrault: I have no knowledge of this at all, but it might be relevant to find out whether they are making progress in developing better automated equipment. Perhaps in British Columbia we need a hybrid, some of them manned and some of them automatic, as has been proposed by one or two other witnesses that have come before us today. Perhaps we need a melding of the two systems.
Mr. Abram: I addressed in my presentation that there could be a melding. The original intent was to put in automatic sensors that would give continuous data for forecasting purposes and there would always be a lightkeeper there to provide the local marine observation, which is a comprehensive observation of everything that is going on in the area, and also constantly keeping an eye on what the automated equipment is saying, whether it is correct or not.
What we have heard from the users is that false information is worse than no information and they have no way of verifying at the present time through an automated station whether it is false or not.
Senator Perrault: So you think a great deal more consideration should be given to the whole question before we make any final decision?
Mr. Abram: The final decision of destaffing?
Senator Perrault: Yes.
Mr. Abram: Yes. There has been a great deal of consideration given to it and there has still been this pig-headed direction to continue with it no matter what.
You also mentioned jurisdictions in other parts of the country and whether they were moving ahead blatantly without concern for human welfare. B.C. coastal pilots, the people who pilot ships into our waters, meet ships in Juan de Fuca Strait and up in Prince Rupert and Dixon Entrance. Many of those pilots came before these hearings and stated that roughly 20 per cent of the vessels that they board will not be allowed into our waters, they do not have any navigational equipment operational. Those ships are coming from the jurisdictions that you are talking about. I do not know what the rationale is in those jurisdictions or how they value human life or human safety, but we do see evidence of it coming into our waters. It is unacceptable and Canada should be a world leader in transportation safety by not following the pack.
Senator Perrault: I do not want to be facetious, but you are suggesting the country is in dire straits. You are suggesting we need a lighthouse of dire straits.
Mr. Abram: We have a number of dire straits up and down the coast. I staff the station at one of them.
The Chairman: Those were pretty strong words against the Coast Guard.
Mr. Abram: Yes.
The Chairman: In your judgment, what is the motivation? I share your frustration. I think you clearly know where I stand on this question, a thousand per cent behind you. What would be the motivation to misrepresent or to ignore the almost universal pleadings of the people who are in the system and who use it and rely on it? Why are they so convinced that they can safely destaff the stations?
Incidentally, there was an undertaking given to place a moratorium. Did the Coast Guard stick to that undertaking and, where necessary, restaff some that had already closed?We wish to have a couple on the East Coast reopened because of the difficulties in them being unmanned.
Mr. Abram: That is correct; there was an undertaking to not destaff any further stations beyond the first eight on this coast.
The Chairman: Has the Coast Guard stuck to that?
Mr. Abram: It has not stuck to that. They are not yet destaffed but are slated for destaffing in fiscal year 1997-1998. The foundations for the automated equipment are starting to be poured and they are preparing to remove staff in that next fiscal year. Brian Tobin made that commitment and Fred Mifflin backed it up on May 21 of this year in writing that he concurs with the direction of the previous minister. So the present minister agreed with that and the users of this coast are expecting Coast Guard to hold to that promise and it has not.
The Chairman: This is fairly serious. You are saying that a succession of ministers for the departments of fisheries and transport have agreed that there should be a moratorium. I think the general period looked at was until such time as AWOS was demonstrated to be efficient, capable, and reliable and until people believed in it.
Mr. Abram: The gist of that is correct.
The Chairman: That is an indefinite period. You are suggesting that, notwithstanding that, the Coast Guard is going ahead?
Mr. Abram: There is a very definite contradiction here. You have just stated exactly what the government stated in a press release and in letters.
The Chairman: Now the bureaucracy is going ahead on its own?
Mr. Abram: The bureaucracy has a timeline of three-years with eight going in the first year, nine to twelve in the second year and the remainder in the third year. It does not say anywhere in that timeline, "as per the minister's instructions." It is outside of that scope. We are proceeding and, at the end of three years, all 35 lightstations will be destaffed. That is straight from the commissioner's mouth.
The Chairman: In your judgment, what does the Coast Guard have to gain from this kind of action?
Mr. Abram: That question has been asked by thousands of people up and down this coast. What do they have to gain? Why are they proceeding with this? Why are they not listening to us? Why are they not listening to the public, those people who pay for the services and use the services and require the services? It is very difficult to answer and it is total speculation on my part as to their motive.
As a career bureaucrat, I would say that it would be very difficult to spend $60 million to $70 million, proceed to spend more, and then come forward to the ministry and say, sorry, it did not work. That would be a very difficult position for anyone to be in in terms of career progression.
Senator Perrault: You are accusing the government of reneging on a commitment. We should attempt to find out the facts.
The Chairman: I do not think it is as simple as that.
Mr. Abram: No, I do not think it is.
The Chairman: I do not think the government has reneged but the bureaucracy seems to have moved somewhat independently.
Senator Perrault: The governmental structure, the department has moved.
Mr. Abram: I would like to make that very clear, Mr. Chairman. There is a very clear indication that the bureaucracy has moved independently.
Senator Perrault: There is an end run in there?
Mr. Abram: Yes. It is despicable that that end run should be taken around the people who are the political masters of the bureaucracy.
Senator Perrault: We should check this out.
The Chairman: We will check it out. We will have an opportunity to get the other side of the story. I wish to come back to something, but Senator Adams first and then Senator Lawson.
Senator Adams: Right now there are 17 existing lightkeepers, down from 31. Do you know how many kilometres there are on the B.C. coast up to Alaska? You talk about reporting weather to airlines and shippers. I would like to know how far apart the lightkeepers are.
Mr. Abram: That is very difficult to answer because it varies between stations. Some of the stations on the south end of Vancouver Island are very close together, within a matter of five to ten miles from each other. Up the West Coast they are a little further apart, maybe 20, 30 miles apart. In other areas, it may go as far as 100, 150 miles apart, in some of the more remote areas.
I wish I had a map with me. I apologize for not having brought one, having not thought about it, but you can see from the very top of British Columbia, right at the border of Alaska, there is a station. Right down to the border of Washington is a station and everything in between. If you listen to weather reports on a regular basis every three hours, you can tell pretty much exactly what is going to happen on the coast. They are very strategically placed. We have lost a few of them in between and that is why some of those gaps are up to 100 or 150 miles.
A couple of stations were destaffed in the past in the northern area by Prince Rupert. We have heard nothing but demands from the public to restaff those stations because they cannot get weather information from that area because there is nothing else there.
Senator Adams: I do not want to compare this to other countries. Senator Perrault has asked those questions. Canada is fast-growing. Even where I live in the Territories, there are more people moving up there to work and live. It is the same situation along the coast in B.C. Maybe people from Vancouver are moving farther north up the coast. In the meantime we have tourism and other industries such as logging that are growing bigger and bigger every year, and we wonder why the government is reducing or cutting down on information.
My concern is for the safety. Was any reducing done for the big commercial ships going to Alaska from the States that would involve you, or they only operate by Alaska?
Mr. Abram: I will speak to the cruise ships first. They all go through the inside passage from the lower 49 states to Alaska and they pass all the lightstations on the way up the coast. Last year, there were 700,000 passengers who stopped in Vancouver. Those people all pay an incredible tax to the Port of Vancouver, none of which comes back to the aviation navigation or the marine weather services.
The number of ships has increased dramatically over the years. I have been a lightkeeper for 18 years, but when I first started at Cape Mudge 11 years ago there were five or six ships a year. Now there are 12 that ply those waters regularly. Most of them come through the same night, just one after another. A cruise ship ran aground just north of my station a number of years ago. Luckily, there was no loss of life.
The other issue that you asked about earlier that I did not feel I answered completely was about the recreational boating. Kayaking, canoeing and recreational boating in this province is the fastest growing sector of the boating population in B.C. Over 400,000 recreational boats are counted and then there are many others that are not counted that do not have a license.
This is an incredible number of people. It is very difficult for people in Ottawa who are being asked to make decisions concerning budget cuts or directions or policy to listen to the people who make those recommendations from B.C. Why would a politician back there counter what is said from the policy people out here? If they say, we do not need those services, of course, they will listen to them. I would assume they would listen to them. They are paid good dollars to give good advice. As far as I am concerned, the advice that has gone from B.C. to Ottawa has been poor advice.
Everything has grown here over the years and the demand on services has grown incredibly. Already some services have been taken away. To take more away is insane.
Senator Adams: You mentioned that at some stations it has taken over 36 hours to repair the automated system, AWOS. According to the Department of Transport, it will put in a standby in case one fails. If the whole thing breaks down, could there not be a standby there until a technician comes along and repairs it?
Mr. Abram: If they cost out all of those redundant systems, as they are called, I guarantee they will not be able to say it is cost effective. I did not mean to interrupt you. However, that question comes up quite often.
Senator Adams: That is also my concern.
Mr. Abram: It was very definitely a situation that the weathers did not appear on the marine broadcast where the users get them. They were not there. I do not care if they have six auto-wind sensors on a station. I do not know if you know the route that information goes. It goes from a station to a satellite that is owned by the Department of Commerce in the U.S. It goes down to a station on the East Coast of the U.S. It goes back to a satellite and then down into Toronto and then across to here.
It is an incredible route for a piece of information to go. If anything in that communication link breaks down, it does not matter how many sensors there are on a station; they may be working perfectly, but the information does not come back to the user and that user might be 10 miles away from the station and cannot get the weather report.
Senator Adams: You mentioned Coast Guard. Is it only based in Vancouver? If any equipment fails, does the Coast Guard have to go up there from Vancouver to fix it? Is there no technician in a Coast Guard ship who could go in a helicopter and fix the equipment at the site?
Mr. Abram: No. This goes back to the question that Senator Perrault mentioned earlier about other countries. One of the situations in the U.S. that we do not have here is that there is a station every 30 miles along the coast. We do not have that. We have a half-dozen stations up and down our coast and right now they are totally under the gun as to what they can and cannot do. They are being cut down as to how many hours they can actually staff their stations.
We do not have the same resources as the U.S. The U.S. Coast Guard is paramilitary, which ours is not. It is quite a different situation.
With respect to the technician issue, they all come out of Victoria by Coast Guard helicopter. We have talked about this for years as being the most inefficient way possible of dealing with our situations. My station is near Campbell River. A technician for anything I have on my station could be obtained from that site. He could drive over on the ferry for the cost of $10. It is the same with many other stations up and down the coast. It is a very outdated way of doing things. We have made those recommendations and they have been ignored.
Senator Adams: You mentioned earlier that your daughter does not get paid. What has happened to those who are now without a job in the lifestations? Do those people have some sort of agreement until they retire?
Mr. Abram: The lightkeepers are a fairly unique group because in the work force adjustment policy, you can only go laterally or below in the way of a transfer. You cannot increase your position. There are very few positions that we can go to because ours is one of the lowest. Right now they are keeping it strictly within the lightkeepers group.
If my station were destaffed tomorrow, I could move to another lightstation but nothing else. Eventually they are hoping that everybody will take early retirement or early departure which will provide a large lump sum of money and then they are in retirement from then on. It is not cost-free to get rid of the lightkeepers by any means. Those people may move into other jobs if they have them. That is another thing that is not figured into the destaffing cost.
Senator Adams: In the meantime, you have lost your job or you have been retired and maybe you do not have a house in Vancouver?
Mr. Abram: Not too many lightkeepers can afford a house in Vancouver after earning a lightkeeper's salary.
The Chairman: I am not sure, Mr. Abram, that most lightkeepers' wives and families would want to live in Vancouver in any event.
Mr. Abram: No, probably not.
The Chairman: I am bound and determined to get Mrs. Abram on the record here. It is in part an answer. I have an enormous amount of time and respect for the teams that do this work. I would ask all of you to take 10 minutes and read what she has written and then later, pick it up and read it again. If you have no tears in your eyes when you are finished, there is something wrong with you. She mentioned that very vicious storm back in October and stated:
We live and breathe weather observing and will continue to do so for the rest of our lives.
She does not say, "the rest of my life," but "the rest of our lives," just an indication.
Don't get me wrong, it isn't always "fun" -- I've always said that getting up in the night seven days a week to give weather reports is like having a newborn baby that never grows up.
I could tell you stories, Mr. Abram, incredible stories of families going out on the water and taking sea temperatures for 60 years, 70 years. It is enormously valuable scientific data we are about to lose. They have been out in the water when the weather was too rough, wading out to take the temperature at the precise depth because of the waves, to get it at exactly the right moment. Doing this is a commonplace part of life.
As part of the answer on safety, Mrs. Abram states in the report that every time she makes a weather observation and every time she communicates that observation in the form of a report, she keeps thinking, "Will this help somebody to be safer at sea?"
Mr. Abram, I wish you well. You use very strong language.
Senator Lawson: Mr. Chairman, I share the views you expressed on the presentation. What dissemination have the weather reports and missing automated weather observations received? Has this just been presented to us today? Are you allowed or is it at your peril to make this public? Is the public well aware of this?
Mr. Abram: This is public information. This is received over the radio waves off the VHF radio that we have. This goes out to all mariners.
Senator Lawson: Do not let me mislead you. I know that it is for their benefit but this collection that you have here, has it been put in this form and given to the press to disseminate to the public to let the public be aware of what appears to be a matter of crisis consequences?
Mr. Abram: Yes, it has. My wife actually was the one that reported those stations originally being down on October 17 and has, with a passion, listened to those radio reports. You have to actually physically listen to the whole report. It is very lengthy, five minutes at least. Every hour on the hour that she has been awake, she has listened to those reports and methodically written down the missing observations, except when she was busy doing other things. At least half of that report was disseminated to the press. The rest of it has been compiled since then until yesterday, when it was typed up for presentation here.
Some of the media present today were given the report, so they will see quite clearly that this is not fictional information that we have been providing that the equipment does not work. This is total verification of what the users have been telling the Coast Guard for years, that the missing information is out there and they just cannot get it.
Senator Lawson: I agree with the Chairman and others who said this is an excellent presentation. At the start of your presentation you made almost a disclaimer that it was a personal presentation. Do not apologize for that. It has a far greater impact on me and on the members of the committee to have a personal presentation by someone who has strong views and is not afraid to express them, and who so passionately believes not only as an individual but as a family in what you are doing, in your role of serving and in some cases saving the public. It is an excellent presentation.
Mr. Abram: I appreciate those comments. What I was meaning by the personal part of it was, rather than just the technical aspect that I might give you here or some other users might give you, I wanted to actually tell you what it is like to live and breathe weather. I appreciate the fact that my wife put that down in words and presented it to you today.
Senator Lawson: We also appreciate that.
Mr. Abram: I will pass that on.
The Chairman: This is an incredible document.
Senator Perrault: You mentioned one life saved, this chap retrieved from the water. How many other examples involving the saving of lives have there been during your long career in this profession?
Mr. Abram: We have documented them. We keep a regular log at our station that we fill out meticulously any time anything happens.
Senator Perrault: How many lightkeepers are there in your organization?
Mr. Abram: Up until the destaffing started, there were 70. We are down to around 60.
Senator Perrault: Is it possible to obtain from that group the number of lives that have been saved over the years? That might be very relevant. We would like to see their diaries.
Mr. Abram: It is a difficult number.
The Chairman: That information is available.
Mr. Abram: It is a very valid observation. The numbers are very specific in some cases where people have been actually pulled out of the water and saved, and we do have numbers. Many keepers have saved a dozen or two dozen people on their own.
The Chairman: That includes, I might add, the present Minister of Transport.
Mr. Abram: He will admit to that, though. The other part is all of the lives that have been saved because of preventive actions taken by lightkeepers. Those are much harder to document accurately, that a life was saved as opposed to not being saved. From experience, from living there and being there, you know when people are in trouble and you know when they would not have made it.
Senator Perrault:You know the possible consequences if they had not had assistance.
Mr. Abram: Absolutely.
Senator Perrault: Any figures of that kind would help.
Mr. Abram: I did supply, as I said, one list that shows over 6,000 instances of assistance. That is in one year, just in the last fiscal year, and that was compiled by Coast Guard, not by us.
The Chairman: Any time you want to, senator, just take a ferry over and have a look; it is a gorgeous part of the world.
Mr. Abram: It is gorgeous and it is treacherous. It has killed over 160 people.
The Chairman: Please convey to all of your family members and members of your association our appreciation for the concern you have shown.
The committee recessed.