Ship captains and pleasure boaters want to know that if they call for help, someone will hear them. With the closure of three out of five Coast Guard communications centres on the west coast, the federal government has to ensure that those calls will still be heard.
By the end of April, marine communication centres in Ucluelet and Vancouver will shut down; the one in Comox will close late this year or early next year. That will leave the stations in Prince Rupert and Victoria — already the busiest one in Canada. Altogether, 10 centres across the country will close, leaving 12.
Staff at the centres broadcast weather and navigational warnings, regulate marine traffic, and monitor distress and safety calls. For people afloat, those centres are the lifeline when things go wrong — which can happen suddenly and fatally.
The Victoria centre will become “one of the largest traffic-management centres in the world,” said Coast Guard assistant commissioner Roger Girouard.
The Coast Guard is banking on new technology, which it argues will enable staff to monitor larger areas from the two remaining centres. The communications system developed by Austrian company Frequentis will co-ordinate radio, telephone and sensor information. It promises more reliable communication and fewer service disruptions, while maintaining the same coverage because the number of radio towers will not change.
The Coast Guard has some strong evidence to back up its arguments because technology has already enabled it to reduce the number of communication centres. In the 1990s, it cut 44 centres to 22. However, the cut to even fewer centres is clearly more about saving money than improving service.
The union for marine communications officers, Unifor Local 2182, says the changes will leave Victoria as the only station to cover the “busiest boating area in Canada.” In addition to the hordes of pleasure craft buzzing around the Gulf Islands, massive tankers and freighters travel the waters of southwestern B.C.
“It’s about marine safety at a time when you’re trying to push the B.C. coast as the gateway to the Pacific and increase marine traffic,” said regional director Allan Hughes. If liquefied natural gas plants and oil pipelines go ahead, even more tankers will be navigating the traffic lanes, making it vital to keep those big ships away from each other.
B.C.’s coastline stretches 25,725 kilometres, including the shoreline of islands. Those islands total 40,000, from Vancouver Island to tiny patches of rock. All those islands, channels, rocks, straits and inlets are fine places to get in trouble in a boat.
The union’s concerns include the amount of radio noise that officers will have to filter, listening for possibly weak distress calls.
It also questions relying on radar to track movement in Vancouver’s harbour, instead of being able to look out a window.
Girouard said there are technological solutions to both issues. Equipment can boost weak signals. And radar is only one tool for watching harbour traffic. Most ships have automated satellite positioning systems and broadcast their location constantly, he said. However, not all vessels have automated information systems, including most pleasure craft, and a harbour like Vancouver’s is a busy place.
Monitoring marine traffic from a distance means getting the signals to those two communication centres in Victoria and Prince Rupert. The information from Ucluelet, for instance, travels inland by a Telus link to Mount Ozzard. If that link fails, the information won’t get through.
The ocean seems big, but when disaster strikes, the room for error becomes frighteningly small. The Coast Guard’s mission is not saving money; it’s saving lives.
