An icy SOS, our tepid response
Search and rescue capability must be a manifestation of Canada's Arctic sovereignty
Michael Byers
Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2010
The rescue of an Inuit hunter near Resolute, Nunavut, has once again exposed limitations in Canada's search and rescue capabilities.
David Idlout easily survived three days at -30 Celsius after the ice floe he was travelling on broke away from shore. Equipped with a rifle, warm clothes and thousands of years of traditional knowledge, he was as comfortable as a city dweller on a broken-down bus.
But with the ice drifting south into the Northwest Passage, nobody could blame Mr. Idlout for using his satellite phone.
The next day, the Canadian Forces sent two Hercules planes from Winnipeg, 2,700 kilometres away. They dropped food and a tent onto the ice. A Cormorant search and rescue helicopter was deployed from Greenwood, N.S., 3,500 kilometres away, but a blizzard grounded the aircraft in transit.
As Mr. Idlout's common-law wife, Tracy Kalluk, observed, “That helicopter is coming all the way from Nova Scotia. I'm not sure why they don't keep one closer by.”
But the Canadian government considers it inefficient to locate search and rescue assets in the North, given the sparse population there. So search and rescue missions are conducted across great distances, with potentially fatal delays.
Last November, two C-130 Hercules aircraft were sent from Winnipeg to rescue a Inuit teenager stranded on the ice near Coral Harbour, Nunavut.
In 2007, a Cormorant was sent from Vancouver Island to rescue an Inuvialuit hunter trapped on an ice floe off Cape Parry, NWT. In 2006, five aircraft from Manitoba, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland were sent to rescue three Inuit hunters whose boat ran out of fuel near Hall Beach, Nunavut.
One can question whether all these missions are needed. Most stranded Inuit can find their own way home, or be rescued by fellow hunters. But the shortcomings they expose in Canada's search and rescue capabilities are important, since more and more non-Inuit are venturing north.
Dozens of cruise ships enter Canada's Arctic waters each summer with large numbers of elderly passengers on board. When the German-owned Hanseatic went aground near Cambridge Bay in 1996, all of the passengers had to be transferred to another ship.
In 2007, the Canadian-owned MS Explorer sank during an Antarctic voyage after hitting an iceberg; fortunately, the sea was calm and all the passengers were saved. But the Explorer, a frequent visitor to Arctic waters, could just as easily have sunk in the Northwest Passage in rough seas, with no help for hours or days.
Search and rescue is also needed for airplane accidents. In 1991, a Hercules crashed 30 kilometres from Alert on Ellesmere Island, killing five of the 18 passengers and crew. The survivors endured two days in a raging blizzard before rescuers from the South could reach them.
Commercial flights pose even more of a risk, since more than 90,000 of them take “transpolar” or “high latitude” routes over Canadian territory each year. The prospect of a large jet crash-landing in the Arctic is terrifying, even if the risk is low.
At some point, politicians might decide that the increasing number of incidents justifies the stationing of a Cormorant in the Arctic. More likely, they will be embarrassed into acting after hundreds of people freeze to death after an incident.
If so, more than lives will be lost. Canadian control over Arctic waterways is disputed, and search and rescue is a manifestation of sovereignty. International lawyers call it “effective use and occupation,” while Prime Minister Stephen Harper calls it “use it or lose it.”
If Canada cannot respond quickly to accidents, our credibility as an Arctic power will suffer – and with it our Northwest Passage claim.
Michael Byers is author of Who Owns the Arctic? and is a project leader with ArcticNet, a federally funded consortium of scientists from 27 Canadian universities and eight federal departments.
