If you are treading water in the Pacific Ocean beside the rapidly sinking hull of your boat, you want to know that aircraft engines are revving and help is on the way. You don鈥檛 want to know that because it鈥檚 Sunday, it will be a couple of hours before the planes take off.
sa国际传媒鈥檚 auditor general says parts of the country鈥檚 search-and-rescue system are close to the breaking point. The air force is still years away from getting new planes to replace the 50-year-old Buffalo, it needs more pilots and flight engineers, and the computer system that organizes emergency response is failing.
Coast guard vessels get under way within 30 minutes of a call, 96 per cent of the time. The Royal Canadian Air Force aims to get in the air within 30 minutes during weekday business hours and within two hours on evenings and weekends; it succeeds about 85 per cent of the time.
Auditor general Michael Ferguson says the air force needs to find a way to widen that window of 30-minute response times. More than 80 per cent of incidents occurred outside banker鈥檚 hours. And it needs reliable planes: In 2011, CFB Comox had 119 incidents where it didn鈥檛 have planes to respond.
sa国际传媒鈥檚 search-and-rescue system covers 18 million square kilometres of land and water. sa国际传媒 alone has a coastline of 27,200 km, including all the islands, and a land area of 947,800 square kilometres.
The coast guard, air force, Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue volunteers, air-search volunteers and ground-search volunteers have a huge responsibility, but they鈥檙e not getting needed support from government.
The association that represents 10,000 ground-search volunteers has been begging for funds to keep going. If you get lost in the woods, those volunteers are the ones who will save your life.
In the wake of the report, Defence Minister Peter MacKay made some window-dressing moves, such as 鈥渆ncouraging鈥� air-force commanders to be flexible in their hours to cover a wider time period, which they were doing already.
It might not look like a big deal from a desk in Ottawa, but search-and-rescue teams, both professional and volunteer, save lives. They deserve to be a priority.
