Coast guard cuts decried

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This article was published 02/06/2017 (3047 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The federal government has confirmed Canadian Coast Guard stations on Lake Winnipeg and Lake of the Woods are under review as it moves ahead with plans to consolidate services on Canada’s marine coasts and major shipping lanes.

A statement issued Friday from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans indicates provinces and municipalities will be expected to step up and fill the gap after the federal government withdraws, a suggestion likely to cause concern for local officials in Manitoba or northwestern Ontario.

The statement says stations in Gimli, Selkirk and Kenora aren’t the priority they once were.

“No jobs will be lost as a result of these changes. The coast guard will support staff members associated with these reductions to find new assignments elsewhere within the coast guard,” the statement says.

The four-person coast guard station for Lake Winnipeg is based in Gimli and includes activities in Selkirk. The two-person station in Kenora covers Lake of the Woods, Rainy Lake and the Winnipeg River.

The statement notes all levels of government are responsible for inland waters.

“The management of inland waters is a shared responsibility amongst communities, the provinces and partners,” the department says.

“As the coast guard invests in strengthening the commercial shipping system, it will reduce the patchwork of its services that currently exists on inland lakes but continue to provide these services on the coasts, the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway.”

A national strategy unveiled last November after two years of extensive review would see Ottawa inject $1.5 billion over the next five years into overhauling shipping, fishery and coast-guard services on Canada’s marine coasts and major waterways. The statement mentions only the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway by name.

Earlier this week, Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc was joined by Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and Transport Minister Marc Garneau in a series of announcements related to the national strategy, including seven new coast guard lifeboat stations — four on the Pacific and three on the Atlantic coast.

Reaction to the closures was swift in Winnipeg and Kenora.

Kenora Mayor David Canfield said he’s trying to get straight answers from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on reports both the Lake Winnipeg and the Lake of the Woods operations are about to be pulled.

It’s inconceivable Ottawa would pull the station in Kenora, he said.

“We’ve heard that, and it makes no sense to me at all, especially on international waters,” Canfield said.

Ontario’s Lake of the Woods crosses the U.S. border. With 15,000 uncharted islands in the lake, the Canadian Coast Guard’s function to set up navigational markers is critical to boaters’ safety.

“The government would open themselves up to massive lawsuits if this were true,” Canfield said.

Canfield spoke by phone from Ottawa, where he is attending meetings of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities.

The Lifesaving Society of Manitoba weighed in with its concerns Friday, saying it will send letters to protest the closures to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Manitoba Liberal MPs. The six Liberal MPs elected in 2015 are led by Manitoba’s senior cabinet minister, Natural Resources Minister Jim Carr.

Pulling the coast guard jeopardizes water safety, the society’s operations manager, Kevin Tordiffe, said.

“We certainly don’t want to see any reduction in safety services for the boating public in Manitoba or Lake of the Woods,” Tordiffe said.

“You know, in Manitoba, the leading cause of drowning over the last five years of data are boating-related incidents.”

The society also panned reports the RCMP may be preparing to take over the coast guard services of managing passages with navigational markers and mounting search and rescue operations when boaters go missing.

RCMP officers are excellent at policing, but not so much the other functions carried out by the coast guard, the lifesaving spokesman said.

“The services of search-and-rescue require a degree of expertise that the coast guard has had a century to build up,” Tordiffe said. “It would be a great loss to see that expertise moved to any other agency.”

RCMP headquarters in Ottawa was checking into reports it’s being primed to take over coast guard functions and didn’t comment Friday.

Word of the closures started filtering out this week after employees at both stations got notices they were to be reassigned.

The union that represents the half-dozen workers stationed on the two lakes said Ottawa floated three different versions of its position to explain the notices sent out to union members, all of which suggested the federal government was walking back its decision in the wake of protests.

Ottawa at first told the Canadian Union of Transportation Employees the stations would close immediately. Later, the government revised the timeline and said the stations would operate this summer and close at the end of the season. Finally, Ottawa told the union the stations would remain open until the coast guard could find another agency to take its place.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca