13 août 2018 | Local, Naval

Quebec's Davie shipyard wins $610M contract to convert icebreakers for coast guard

Jean-Yves Duclos, who represents the Quebec City region made announcement Friday

The federal government has signed a $610-million contract to acquire and convert three icebreakers to renew the Canadian Coast Guard's aging fleet.

Federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos, who represents the Quebec City region made the announcement at the Davie shipyard in Lévis, which will be doing the work.

The coast guard fleet lacks the capacity to perform its icebreaking duties. The Canadian Coast Guard ship Terry Fox, launched in 1993, is the newest icebreaker in the fleet.

The contract is expected to result in the creation of 200 new jobs over the next two years, according to Davie spokesperson Frédérik Boisvert.

Last year, when Davie was working on conversion of the Asterix and finishing two ferries, Davie employed 1,500 workers, Boisvert said.

Many of them were laid off once the projects were completed.

In June, the Liberal government concluded a deal with Davie to purchase three icebreakers, but there was no price tag attached to the project at the time.

Negotiations to acquire the vessels were launched in January after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau abruptly announced the plan in a Radio-Canada interview in Quebec City.

That marked the beginning of a seven-month negotiating process between the government and Davie.

Fraser noted that the usual time it takes to negotiate a shipbuilding contract with the government is eight years, praising the work of negotiators for the government and Davie.

MacKinnon confirmed that Ottawa sped up the process for the icebreaker deal.

Full Article: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/ottawa-will-allow-quebec-s-davie-shipyard-to-bid-on-national-shipbuilding-plan-contracts-1.4780836

Sur le même sujet

  • The military SAR machine – complex and dedicated

    10 septembre 2020 | Local, Aérospatial

    The military SAR machine – complex and dedicated

    From air and ground crews involved in endless operations and maintenance of search and rescue (SAR) aircraft, to the SAR technicians who often imperil their own lives to save others, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) SAR is an astoundingly complex and dedicated machine, executing its daily mission with such quiet professionalism that these heroes walk amongst us largely unnoticed and uncelebrated. Yet the typical SAR mission that we have grown familiar with through the occasional news clip is a far cry from the reality facing those personnel in the SAR community. “SAR is an incredibly multifaceted activity involving numerous federal, provincial/territorial, municipal and volunteer agencies,” noted Maj Kevin Grieve. “The public thinks only of yellow helicopters and orange jump suits but there's so much more to it than this.” As a veteran of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) for more than 30 years, he should know. The former bush-pilot turned SAR expert flew dozens of SAR missions out of 8 Wing Trenton, Ont., flying his CC-130 Hercules into some of the most remote regions throughout Canada searching for those in distress. At one stage in his career, Grieve left the skies behind for a ground job as a Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre (JRCC) co-ordinator, monitoring and responding to distress signals as they came into the centre. The rate of those distress calls boggles the mind. Each year, the three JRCCs log almost 10,000 cases. But these statistics only begin to tell the exceedingly complicated narrative behind SAR in this country. Although no set of statistics can ever reveal SAR's full story, this small community is one of the busiest and most operational groups in the CAF today. Military SAR — Military lead with an interagency approach “The nature of the search determines who has the lead in a SAR mission,” said Grieve. “The Government of Canada has mandated the responsibility for the search for missing aircraft in Canada to be that of the CAF with maritime SAR the mandate of the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG).” To simplify the process, the CAF has partnered with the CCG to stand up three Joint Rescue Coordination Centres (JRCC) which are responsible for the coordination of aeronautical and maritime SAR. “Generally, other SAR within Canada that do not fall into either of these two categories will fall under the local police force of jurisdiction (i.e., RCMP or a municipal police force),” Grieve explained. “For example, if an airplane goes missing the CAF have responsibility for its SAR and it will be co-ordinated by the appropriate JRCC. If a fishing vessel puts out a mayday call, the CCG are responsible for its SAR and it will be co-ordinated by the appropriate JRCC which can involve military or civilian aircraft as well as CCG and/or civilian vessels in the area.” To illustrate a local police force jurisdiction in a SAR mission: if a camper goes missing in rural Ontario, and the missing person is reported to the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), the OPP will have the search lead and review their own assets first to conduct the search. If the OPP determine they do not have the capability to continue the search, they can request the assistance of the CAF through the JRCC. The process then becomes multilayered. “With all the players that can be involved in a search, one can begin to appreciate how each SAR mission is different and how numerous agencies and volunteers work together,” said Grieve. “Really, it's about picking the right tool as a search evolves, but there has to be great co-operation and communication between all partners in the military and civilian SAR worlds. We can't do this alone.” Volunteer engagement — Civil Air Search and Rescue Association (CASARA) CASARA is a national volunteer organization funded by the Department of National Defence to assist the RCAF in its SAR mandate. There are 2,800 volunteer CASARA members from coast to coast, and they cover all 10 provinces and three territories. There are 104 zones responsible for providing search and rescue assistance. “CASARA is vital to the overall SAR mission,” Grieve stated. “They extend our eyes and ears into the furthest reaches across the country, actively assisting us to help those people in danger. CASARA contributions are truly immeasurable and they are not to be underestimated in their skills and abilities.” CASARA's membership boasts pilots, navigators, spotters, search coordinators, electronic search specialists, radio operators and administration staff. They also have trained spotters who deploy on military aircraft, literally looking out of an aircraft window acting as a force multiplier. SAR — Community of communities Today, the military manages thousands of distress calls each year through the JRCC that co-ordinate RCAF and CCG responses. CAF personnel requested to physically assist local police forces of jurisdiction in searches for missing people are co-ordinated through the Canadian Joint Operations Command. As distress calls come in from across Canada's landmass, lakes, river systems and coastal regions, those duty personnel who receive the calls are peppered across the country in Halifax, Trenton, and Comox. And while it seems at first glance that the almost 10,000 distress calls the JRCCs receive every year is beyond the CAF's capabilities, nothing is further from the truth. But no SAR mission is conducted in isolation either. And although the CAF deals with a relentless stream of distress calls and missions each day, these activities are typically conducted in co-operation with other SAR community actors. Theirs is a unique calling — “so that others might live” — setting this group of professionals in a league of their own. CAF SAR classifications As SAR is practised across Canada today by the CAF, three broad categories are referred to which details the type of CAF SAR response to a distress: Aeronautical SAR (JRCC coordinates RCAF aircraft to search for missing aircraft). Maritime SAR (JRCC coordinates CCG and other maritime vessels, as well as RCAF aircraft, in the search for missing vessels. Humanitarian SAR (a SAR incident not aeronautical or maritime that requires a response by the CAF SAR system usually in response to a request from another agency. A common example of this is Ground SAR — a search for a missing person led by the local police force of jurisdiction). Although the categories are broadly defined encompassing thousands of scenarios, the lead agency is based on the nature of the distress. For example, even though the CCG leads the maritime SAR mandate, they may call for an RCAF Cormorant helicopter to assist in a search for a missing boat off the coast of Nova Scotia since the CCG may not have the appropriate assets in-tow at the time of the distress. Likewise, a missing boater off Toronto's waterfront would likely see the deployment of the Toronto Police Marine Unit since this municipal authority has the appropriate tools to quickly respond to the incident. Military SAR — Historic overview of an aeronautical responsibility Aeronautical search and rescue wasn't a responsibility the Canadian government had considered prior to 1944. The commercial airline industry was in its infancy and although Canada and her allies were embroiled in a death struggle against the Axis powers, the end was near and international post-war planning took shape. An international aviation conference met that year to consider international participation in an agreement binding nations together to search for downed aircraft, irrespective of the plane's country of origin. Canadian delegates attended and signed the International Civil Aviation Organization covenant on behalf of the people of Canada. The government deferred to the RCAF as lead search agency given its massive fleet of aircraft as it emerged from the Second World War. At the time, the RCAF SAR function only included the “search” mandate. The “rescue” function wasn't part of the RCAF mission although this gradually evolved over time to include the RCMP, provincial and municipal police forces as well as civilian volunteer agencies such as CASARA (Civil Air Search and Rescue Association). This explains the multifaceted agency approach to SAR today. https://www.skiesmag.com/press-releases/the-military-sar-machine-complex-and-dedicated

  • Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’

    12 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial

    Simulating the ‘SuperScooper’

    by Lisa Gordon The Viking CL-415 “SuperScooper” is more akin to a pick-up truck than a sports car. It's a hardworking, amphibious turboprop that was built to fight wildfires. It flies low, battling blistering heat and blinding smoke, before releasing 13,500 pounds of water in six seconds – and then returning to a nearby lake where it skims the surface to reload. Introduced in 1993 by Bombardier, the CL-415 was essentially a turboprop version of its predecessor, the piston-powered CL-215. Today, there are close to 170 CL-215/415 aircraft in operation, mostly in Europe and North America. They are now supported by Viking Air, which acquired the program from Bombardier in 2016. Pilot training in the CL-415 has historically been done in the aircraft, but TRU Simulation + Training says that due to the unique mission it performs, those training flights can be dangerous. The South Carolina-headquartered company is a division of industry giant Textron Inc., and was formed following the amalgamation of several specialty flight simulation and pilot training companies, including former Montreal-based Mechtronix. About two years ago, TRU's commercial aviation division in Montreal began designing the world's first CL-415 full flight simulator (FFS) with the capability to replicate operations not only in the air, but also on the water. The company was able to draw on its recent experience of successfully building a Series 400 Twin Otter FFS for Canada's Pacific Sky Aviation in Calgary, Alta. – the world's first seaplane simulator with water-handling capabilities. “Before the Twin Otter project, hydrodynamic modelling is something we hadn't done before,” acknowledged Thom Allen, TRU's vice-president of Technology and Innovation. “It's like a boat simulator because you're modelling the buoyancy of the floats or the fuselage in the water. Interestingly, our engineers working on the Twin Otter program actually went to the library and researched how boats work on the water. Mixing the boat sim with the aerodynamic sim is the whole package.” He said the CL-415 experience took things one step further by adding the mission component – scooping the water – to the Twin Otter build. “From a safety point of view, the types of missions you do in a waterbomber are quite a bit different from a commercial aircraft. When you're scooping water and dropping it over a fire, training in those conditions is very dangerous. The tradeoff has always been between the quality of the training and the danger of doing that sort of training.” TRU's CL-415 FFS was delivered to Ansett Aviation Training in Milan, Italy, in September 2018 and certified by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in December to Level D standards. Although training courses have yet to be completed in the simulator, the hope is that both initial and recurrent pilot training will be done exclusively in the device. Allen said the operational characteristics of a CL-415 are complex and unique. “When you're flying over a very hot fire, you drop your water and the mass of the aircraft is cut in half. The turbulence effect is quite significant when you hit the updraft. The fire is creating turbulence, smoke, reduced visibility – and pilots are dropping every five or 10 minutes repeatedly, usually in rugged terrain at low altitudes. This is the part that made this project something new.” To gather accurate performance data, TRU rented a CL-415 and equipped it with flight test instrumentation. “We weren't doing fire drops with our engineers on board, but we did all the manoeuvres around that, and we brought in a number of senior CL-415 pilots to evaluate our work.” The result is the world's first high fidelity CL-415 simulator with the capability of replicating not just air and water operations, but various types and intensities of forest fires and changes in related environmental conditions. The cockpit noise level is accurately reproduced by a secondary audio system that – like the real aircraft – requires crewmembers to wear a noise-cancelling headset. Full article: https://www.skiesmag.com/news/simulating-the-superscooper

  • Department	News type Teaser Canadian Armed Forces to hold a briefing for media on culture change progress

    29 août 2023 | Local, Sécurité

    Department News type Teaser Canadian Armed Forces to hold a briefing for media on culture change progress

    Media are invited to a virtual briefing on efforts by the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) to deliver meaningful culture change across the organization. Lieutenant-General Jennie Carignan, Chief, Professional Conduct and Culture, will provide an update on initiatives being implemented in response to the Independent External Comprehensive Review, led by former Supreme Court of Canada Justice Louise Arbour.

Toutes les nouvelles