30 mai 2023 | Local, Autre défense
Analysis: Time to make defence firms pay for their failures to deliver equipment
Defence firms are failing the Canadian Forces on military procurement. They should face consequences.
24 décembre 2018 | Local, C4ISR
DAVID PUGLIESE, OTTAWA CITIZEN
The National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) delivered its first annual report Friday to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
The report includes the two substantive reviews conducted by NSICOP in 2018, and its related findings and recommendations. NSICOP examined the Canadian government's process for establishing the national intelligence priorities. These priorities serve to direct intelligence organizations in the collection and analysis of intelligence.
NSICOP also conducted a review of the intelligence activities of the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Forces. The committee examined the scope of these activities, their legal authorities and the existing oversight mechanisms for their control and accountability.
“This annual report marks the first time that Canada has had a committee of Parliamentarians with access to classified material and cleared to examine issues of national security and intelligence,” NSICOP chair David McGuinty said in a statement.
Trudeau will now consider whether there is any information in the report, the disclosure of which would be injurious to national security, national defence or international relations, or which includes solicitor-client information. A declassified version of the report must be tabled in Parliament within 30 sitting days, according to the committee's news release.
30 mai 2023 | Local, Autre défense
Defence firms are failing the Canadian Forces on military procurement. They should face consequences.
16 juin 2024 | Local, Terrestre
Today, the Honourable Bill Blair, Minister of National Defence, concluded a productive visit to Brussels, Belgium, where he participated in the 23rd Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG) meeting and a meeting of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Defence Ministers, including a meeting of the NATO-Ukraine Council in Defence Ministers format
15 mars 2019 | Local, Aérospatial
Jane Adey · CBC News Imagine you're an offshore worker on a helicopter flying to an oil platform and you hear the words "prepare to ditch" from your pilot. Adrenalin surges through your body as you raise your arms across your chest and assume the brace position. But will you remember what to do? Will panic take over? A St. John's company is working with the Marine Institute to help offshore workers become more comfortable in the air and better prepared for emergencies. Brainstorming a solution Ten years ago, in the days after the crash of Cougar 491, Anthony Patterson began thinking about how to improve safety in the offshore. His company, Virtual Marine, was in the early days of developing simulators for lifeboat training in the water. But Patterson, whose team specialized in marine simulations, knew his company had some technologies that could apply to the air. "We brainstormed on how we could create a better training experience," said Patterson, and they developed a small helicopter simulator. "We're very good at modeling boats in the water and then even the helicopter floating in the water, but the part about the helicopter flying through the air, of course, we had no expertise with that whatsoever," said Patterson. That's when Cougar Helicopters got on board. Virtual Marine brought its helicopter simulator to the lead pilots at the company. With the simulator, they flew the different kinds of manoeuvres they'd use if they had to ditch at sea. The simulator collected the data. and Virtual Marine embedded it into their simulation system to create the flight paths in an emergency. The simulator consists of a large box made to look like exactly like the inside of a helicopter. A motion bed, attached to the underside and controlled by a computer, allows workers to feel the same kind of movement as they would during a flight. The seatbelts are the same, the windows are the same and the views out the windows are the same as they would be in real life. It's important that the simulator be as realistic as possible for Liz Sanli, a researcher in ocean safety at the Marine Institute with expertise in skill learning over time. She's focused on how workers learn and how much they retain when asked to perform a task again at a later date. "So we're looking at how we can train during practice to help them remember all those steps when they're in a stressful situation down the road," said Sanli. Right now, workers are trained in a swimming pool on how to escape a helicopter submerged in water but training for the actual flight occurs in a classroom. By sitting inside a helicopter flight simulator, Sanli says, the workers' experience is more accurate. "You're getting that experience of physically doing the task so you get to go through the steps you get to experience them you can sometimes experience mistakes in a safe environment and learn from those mistakes rather than just watching somebody else do it, for example," said Sanli. "You also can simulate some of the feelings, so you can hear the sounds, you know that you're in a different environment and that can better match some of the more advanced training or perhaps even a real emergency." Sanli measures anxiety levels of participants and follows how well the protocol sequence is followed under a variety of conditions. She monitors what happens when trainees are seated in different positions and when they train in light and in darkness, getting as much information as possible to make training efficient and effective. "It's a big responsibility to have this evidence to make decisions when it comes to regulations, when it comes to decisions about training to have it based in evidence. It's safety that's at stake," said Sanli. For now, research on the simulator continues with hopes it will soon augment the training done by offshore workers. Patterson,says ten years after 17 lives were lost in the offshore, he's glad to have contributed what he could to try and make the industry safer. "This really was something that was more than a job," he said. "It was something that we had to do, to do our part to bring safety to the community. Everybody in the company, we all worked extra hours. I'd say this is the one that all of our engineers have the most pride in, accomplishing this task." https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/helicopter-cougar-crash-safety-offshore-1.5048792