The head of a national volunteer search and rescue group is calling for more military search and rescue aircraft and equipment to be based in Canada's North.

Military aircraft should also come equipped with heat-seeking infrared sensors that could find people more effectively, said Harry Blackmore, president of the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada.

Blackmore said an infrared sensor would have helped searchers in Nunavut keep track of a 17-year-old hunter who was stranded on an ice floe near Coral Harbour, Nunavut, for almost 45 hours this past week.

A military crew aboard a Hercules aircraft had originally spotted the boy Sunday night, but then lost track of him in the darkness. They rediscovered the boy and finally rescued him on Monday morning.

Taking case to minister

Blackmore, whose organization represents volunteer search and rescue crews across Canada, said they and the RCMP are taking their case to federal Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan.

"The RCMP has taken it on as a national champion, which falls under public safety, so we would be going to see Minister Van Loan," Blackmore told CBC News.

"Once we meet with him and we can put our different issues on the table, we are hoping that they can help with it."

Blackmore said there is a need for more search and rescue aircraft to be based in the North, as there were between 30 and 40 rescue operations in Nunavut last year alone.

'Critical timelines' in North

The call for more search and rescue assets in Canada's North was echoed by Yukon MP Larry Bagnell, the Liberals' opposition critic for Indian and Northern Affairs

Bagnell said a growing population, as well as increased polar flights and more traffic in the Northwest Passage, translates to increasing demands on the military's rescue capacity.

Bagnell said more helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft should be stationed in the northern territories, geared toward responding to the specific demands of northern search and rescue operations.

"People have to understand that in the North, I mean, we have different situations," Bagnell said. "We've got critical timelines that people could die of hypothermia very quickly. We've got 24 hours of dark at some times of the year, 24 hours of light at other times of the year."

Bagnell said bipartisan foreign affairs and defence committees are studying the situation. He said he hopes they will return to Parliament with a message to increase the military's search capacity in the North.

"It's kind of embarrassing if we go to international meetings, saying we'll co-operate with the other circumpolar nations in search and rescue in the North, and we haven't even fixed up our own system to the best that it can be," Bagnell said.