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http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Rescu ... story.html
Rescue choppers grounded another three years
Cormorants haven't operated since 2005 in central Canada
By David Pugliese, Ottawa Citizen January 21, 2011
Crew members are lifted by a Cormorant during a rescue demonstration near McCauley Point in Ladysmith, B.C., Sept. 20, 2007.
Photograph by: Darren Stone/Canwest News Service, National Post
Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopters won't be available to cover central and parts of western Canada and the north until at least 2014 because of ongoing problems that have plagued the aircraft fleet, according to newly released Defence Department documents.
The use of the helicopters for such missions was temporarily suspended in 2005. But last year the Defence Department quietly extended that until 2014, according to the documents.
The area in question, equal to a million square kilometres, extends from the Prairies to Quebec and includes the Northwest Territories and much of Nunavut.
Instead, search-and-rescue crews flying out of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Ont., will continue to use Griffon helicopters for those operations, despite critics' warning that the smaller helicopter doesn't have the capabilities for a large rescue operation.
"We warned DND that this wasn't a smart move," said John MacLennan, national president of the Union of National Defence Employees.
His members used to service the helicopters at Trenton and the union obtained the DND documents through the Access to Information law.
"If anything every happens on the Great Lakes, a Cormorant could rescue more than a dozen people, but a Griffon is very limited to what it can do."
Defence analyst Martin Shadwick noted that the helicopter situation for search-and-rescue crews is less than ideal.
The Griffon is a smaller helicopter and the Cormorants are not always available because of ongoing mechanical difficulties, he added.
Older Sea King helicopters were used in the fall to fill in for Cormorants on the East Coast because of mechanical problems.
"We have top-notch search-and-rescue crews, but the helicopters they have available leave a lot to be desired," Shadwick said.
He said that a Griffon was recently used to help stranded motorists in southern Ontario, but added such aircraft are of limited use in a search-and-rescue situation.
The Canadian Forces has moved its Cormorants to the east and west coasts for rescue duties.
According to the military, Canada is divided into three regions for the purposes of co-ordinating maritime and aeronautical search-and-rescue.
CFB Trenton is responsible for incidents in the Prairie provinces, Ontario, Quebec, the Great Lakes, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, excluding the lower half of Baffin Island.
Military officers, however, have said if a Cormorant was needed to conduct a rescue in that region it could fly from either the west or east coast.
But they acknowledge that takes extra time.
The availability of spare parts for the CH-149 Cormorant fleet, delivered to units starting in 2001 and 2002, remains a problem, military officers acknowledge.
Canada originally bought 15 Cormorants, but one has since crashed.
The Cormorant helicopter fleet has faced a series of problems, including cracked windscreens and cracks in the tail rotor area.
The aircraft have been hindered in their operations by the lack of spare parts.
"Cormorant availability has not improved enough to allow us to recommence CH-149 operations at Trenton," noted one of the January 2010 documents sent from the air force to Dan Ross, assistant deputy minister of materiel.
"The (chief of the air force) staff has also advised that it will take approximately two to three years to generate the necessary CH-149 aircrew for Trenton;
therefore, it is unlikely that Cormorant operations are possible at Trenton prior to 2014," it added.
Last year, union maintenance staff who had been working at Trenton were told their jobs with IMP, the company handling Cormorant maintenance, would be transferred to locations on the east and west coasts.
The employees were given the option of moving, but MacLennan said most decided to quit and find other work.
The Defence Department didn't publicize its decision.
The documents note that public affairs officials advising Ross planned to deal with the issue on a "reactive" basis, meaning that no announcement about the Cormorants would be made and information would be provided to journalists only if they found out what was happening.
As well, Lt.-Col. K.J. MacKenzie wrote in the documents that the military didn't anticipate much media interest or a "strong negative reaction"
because the decision to move maintenance jobs from Trenton would be offset with increases in employment associated with the planned growth at the base to handle other aircraft programs.
Last year the Defence Department confirmed it was looking at purchasing used helicopters from the U.S. to strip for parts for the Cormorants.
The helicopters had been ordered for U.S. President Barack Obama, but he decided to pull the plug on that program after the projected cost of the aircraft doubled.
There could be as many as eight of the helicopters available for sale.
The Cormorant and its variant, the EH-101, have had a long history on Canada's defence scene.
In 1993, newly elected prime minister Jean Chretien cancelled a $5-billion contract to purchase the EH-101.
Five years later, the air force selected the Cormorant, largely the same helicopter as the EH-101, as their choice for a new search-andrescue helicopter.