Question Period Note: Impacts of North Atlantic Right Whales Measures on Coast Guard Operations

• The safety of mariners remains the Canadian Coast Guard’s top priority.
• The Coast Guard provides maritime Search and Rescue services 24-hours a day, seven days a week to mariners in distress in Canadian waters.
• The Coast Guard has SAR stations located in zones where measures limit the speed of vessel traffic to protect North Atlantic Right Whales.
• All primary SAR vessels maintain a state of operational readiness in order to respond day or night to a Maritime distress call. To ensure that state of readiness is maintained, the vessel regularly performs drills and exercises, but also needs to test the vessels engines and equipment at higher speed to ensure that both the crew and equipment are ready.
• In protected zones, Coast Guard takes special measures to ensure the safety of the North Atlantic Right Whales while also enabling full operational readiness, such as testing vessel engines in shallow waters where Whales are not found. Coast Guard is working with Transport Canada to ensure we continue to maintain our preparedness posture in NARW measures zones.

• The Canadian Coast Guard leads the maritime component of the federal Search and Rescue system, as well as monitors distress communications through the Marine Communications and Traffic Services centres and relays these to rescue centres for action.
• Working together with the Canadian Armed Forces, the Coast Guard operates three Joint Rescue Coordination Centres, located in Halifax, Trenton, and Victoria. These jointly staffed centres are manned 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Furthermore, the Canadian Coast Guard operates two Maritime Rescue Sub-Centres in Quebec City, and St. John’s NL to further assist with coordination efforts.
• The Canadian Coast Guard operates 44 Search and Rescue lifeboat stations, including a dedicated hovercraft station (Sea Island/Vancouver, British Columbia) with CCG’s only dive team (available 24/7), and 26 seasonal inshore rescue boats that maintain a 30-minute or less reaction time, and several large multi-tasked vessels that provide additional Search and Rescue capacity as required.
• Certain Coast Guard SAR stations are located in zones that have North Atlantic Right Whale measures requiring reduced vessel speeds. These reduced speed measures are important but do have an impact on Coast Guard’s ability to ensure the readiness of its assets in these areas.
• Coast Guard is working with Transport Canada to ensure our ability to maintain SAR preparedness and readiness in NARW zones, while also minimizing impacts to NARWs.

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