Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
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Coast Guard C ture. We do not know what the government of Canada would have ordered an analogous organization to do in time of war, although several ships of the federal civil fleets were taken into military service as auxiliary naval vessels of the RCN. The organizational culture of the coast guard, although hierarchical in a military sense and uniformed, has not been shaped by the same major events that have forged the navy into the organization that it is today. Law enforcement is the function most commonly associated with paramilitary coast guards. While there are many examples of military coast guards and navies having law enforcement roles, for civil coast guards there is only the Canadian example of limited law enforcement responsibility for fisheries protection. This came via amalgamation with the Fisheries and Oceans fleet and was not part of the original plan for the CCG. The government of Canada has a paramilitary police force at its disposal in the RCMP, which already has a marine division. For clarity of purpose and simple lines of operation, the Canadian organizational system is best suited to having marine law enforcement focused on the one national agency that has a long history and clear cultural identity shaped by its activities in law enforcement: the RCMP. The civilian CCG is not the best-suited federal organization for marine law enforcement. Search and rescue overlap Canada and Great Britain are civilian. The remainder either fell into a paramilitary (58) or military (12) category. Nine countries rely solely on their coast guard for maritime security, while 28 trust this duty only to their navy. This leaves 63 countries that have both services. Several among that number have additional marine police forces, customs agencies, environmental protection and fisheries services. No country relies only on a civilian coast guard for its maritime security. So, there are many options when it comes to organizing for maritime security. A key question when contemplating change is whether it is easier to start up a new organization or to change one or more existing ones. A central factor in this assessment is the culture of the organizations that may be asked to change. Because the CCG was established after the Second World War, there has been no major conflict to shape its organizational cul- The original design of the CCG is described in Charles Maginley's book The Canadian Coast Guard, 1962-2002. The current version originated during the Second World War when Canadian and foreign mariners were routinely rescued off our shores by the United States Coast Guard. Maginley notes that the terms "coast guard" and "search and rescue" (SAR) were regarded as "practically synonymous" terms at that time. Provincial governments, communities and interest groups all called for the creation of a new organization that would be solely responsible for safety of life at sea and the conduct of SAR operations. It never happened. Federal departments and agencies argued endlessly about why their resources should be withheld from the new coast guard organization. Determined in-fighting persisted from the end of the war until the very day that the CCG was created in 1962. The result was a pale imitation of the original plan to create a national life-saving service. Although the CCG is the principal marine operational arm of the government and is responsible for a large number of SAR tasks, the Minister of National Defence (MND) is the lead minister. There is an Interdepartmental Committee on SAR as well as a National Secretariat on SAR that both provide advice primarily to the MND, rather than the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. While the CCG is the provider of the primary marine SAR response element, all SAR operations are coordinated from Joint Rescue Coordination Centres on military bases: one in Halifax, another in Victoria, and the third in Trenton. The CCG Search and Research Program Mission Statement says their objective is to "save 100 percent of the lives at risk." But Canada is an enormous country with a vast offshore territory. It is quite impossible for the CCG to fulfil its mandate, as it is currently www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2013 21