Can't extend Arctic icebreaker season: Coast Guard
Last Updated: Thursday, August 27, 2009 | 11:29 AM CT
CBC News
A navy Sea King helicopter flies past the coast guard icebreaker Pierre Radisson in Frobisher Bay during Operation Nanook on Aug. 19, 2009. (Adrian Wyld/TCPI/Canadian Press) The Canadian Coast Guard says it can't keep its icebreakers running longer in the Arctic every year, even though shrinking sea ice has led to longer marine shipping seasons.
Generally, the coast guard's icebreakers are in Arctic waters from about late-June until the fall, with the last vessels leaving around mid-November.
However, some fishing vessels and other commercial ships remain north of 60 degrees latitude even after the coast guard ships are gone, especially in recent years.
Coast guard officials say their icebreaking fleet is on loan from southern Canada, so the vessels must return south every fall for maintenance and retrofitting in preparation for winter ice-breaking work elsewhere.
"When they're doing their ice-breaking duties here in the Arctic, they are on loan to us, essentially, from other regions," Garry Linsey, the coast guard's regional director of maritime services in the central and Arctic region, told CBC News.
"At the end of our season, they return back to their home ports and they undertake icebreaking activities for their own regions."
Ship shortage
Linsey said his group has conducted service reviews and identified a possible need for the icebreakers to stay longer in the North. However, he said the coast guard does not have enough icebreakers or other ships to make that happen.
"Until we're able to either provide more resources, in terms of icebreaking, then those are the levels of service we have to adhere to," he said.
Arctic sovereignty experts say the absence of icebreakers in the Arctic is unacceptable and it shows the coast guard needs more support.
"We've got to reinvest in the Coast Guard massively and quickly, because they are the centre of Arctic expertise at the moment," said Suzanne Lalonde, a law professor at the University of Montreal.
Investing in the coast guard means replacing its aging icebreaking fleet, as well as extending the season, said Rob Huebert of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary.
"It's not just some are aging, they're all aging," said Huebert.
If the coast guard doesn't get the resources it needs, Huebert said Canada may be forced to hire an icebreaker from another country, such as Russia, to do the work needed in Canada's Arctic waters.
