If you could get him for what he knew…

Some politicians just don’t know when to stop.

On Tuesday, new Democratic Party member of parliament Jack Harris (St. John’s East) did an interview with CBC’s St. John’s morning radio show.  The subject of the interview was news yesterday that an offshore supply vessel working for Suncor had reduced its on-call fast rescue craft crewing from two crews to one. 

That met Transport Canada’s regulations, a point Harris acknowledged during the interview very early on by referring to…well… “Transport Canada regulations”.  Harris expressed some concern – others have too – have any reduction in available rescue crews in light of last year’s offshore helicopter crash.

Fair enough.  It’s a good point and, later on Tuesday, the company restored the two-crew standard.*

Had Jack stopped there he might have been okay.  As it is, the program host tossed Jack a question about the potential role in all this for the offshore regulatory board.  Jack offered the view that, as some people have been suggesting to the ongoing offshore helicopter inquiry, this might be a good occasion to review the possible need for a separate regulatory agency that just looks after offshore safety.

Minor problem.

The offshore regulatory board doesn’t do safety regulations.

Jack obviously knows this, as he demonstrated earlier in the interview. This is one of those decisions that remain the exclusive jurisdiction of the Government of Canada under the 1985 Atlantic Accord.

Therefore – try and follow the logic – if the offshore regulatory board doesn’t do offshore safety regulations, then some other entirely separate organization must do it.

Already.

So what is the frackin’ point of studying the need for a separate regulatory board  for safety when there is one already called Transport Canada?

There isn’t any. 

Obviously.

-srbp-

*  Clarification:  Suncor will only have two crews on standby when there are two rigs.  They will add the second standby crew when the Henry Goodrich is back in the fall to do additional drill work.

As the online CBC story puts it:

John Downton, communications manager for Suncor's east coast operations, said a second dedicated crew will return to the Burin Sea this fall, when the Henry Goodrich returns to work at Terra Nova.

Downton said Suncor, which merged last year with Petro-Canada and is the operating partner of the Terra Nova consortium, has been following regulations established under Canadian law, which require one fast-rescue craft per offshore installation.

"We meet regulatory requirements," Downton told CBC News. "We don't set the regulations — we follow them."

Offshore Helicopter Safety Inquiry - links

The offshore board’s inquiry into offshore helicopter safety started in St. John’s on October 19.

You can find the inquiry website via the offshore board website or here: www.oshsi.nl.ca.

For the record, you can also find:

• A schedule of witnesses;
• transcripts and exhibits; and,
• live video streaming.

Transcribing is fast.  You can find the testimony from this morning already posted.

-srbp-

When politicians become ghouls

My grandmother used to tell the story of going to a funeral in a small community where one her distant relatives had passed away. 

The story happened so long ago that neither the place nor the time was important.  What is worth recollecting is her account of the people who attended at the cemetery for the committal of the body to the ground.

They didn’t stand around, a lot of them.  The onlookers  arranged themselves sitting along the top-most rail of the little white fence with the heels of their shoes hooked in the bottom rail.  My grandmother described them as being very creepy and ghoulish.

That image has come to mind several times over the last few months.  Too many politicians in Newfoundland and Labrador have tried to make a political platform out of the tragic deaths of 17 people on Cougar 491.

They were quick to rush forward with a bunch of ideas that all turned out to be completely false and they have persisted, especially in attacking the federal government generally and the brave men and women of the Canadian Forces search and rescue service.

These politicians want to have search and rescue service in St. John’s.

But here’s the thing:  their entire argument is based on the case of Cougar 491.  In that incident – as the events themselves showed – the passengers and crew died pretty much on impact. 

There is virtually no way – even in the highly unlikely situation that a rescue helicopter had been flying alongside the ill-fated Cougar helicopter – that a single additional life could have been saved.

Sad. Tragic, even. 

But true.

Now that the consensus among politicians of all stripes has taken hold, it is apparently spreading to some of the lawyers at the Wells helicopter inquiry.  To wit, we have the bizarre case of the lawyer representing offshore workers at the inquiry.    The lawyer claims that “if DND does not have the resources or the federal government is not willing to alter the distribution of  search and rescue resources,” then the oil companies will have to do the job.

That’s an “if” that is based on the false premise that additional Canadian Forces equipment would have made a difference in this case or others like it and that the only solution worth talking is that the federal government  - correction – the taxpayers like you and me - must pay instead of perhaps requiring that the offshore operating companies bear a heftier burden for life safety, including a SAR service that doesn’t take an hour to get ready and that can fly when the weather is bad or it’s dark.

That’s actually one of the rather interesting things about the position taken by politicians, Liberal Conservative and New Democrat, who have taken up the position on the fence-top calling out advice from the sidelines:  they’ve all leaped to a conclusion that doesn’t involve the offshore operators and instead fingers the feds.
And now their argument has reached one of the lawyers involved.

Maybe people should hear the evidence before they come to conclusions.

And maybe, just maybe, politicians should stop trying to make political platforms out of corpses.

-srbp-