With no stand alone risk assessment report to be found over the closing of Kits Base, the union representing Coast Guard members is saying, we told you so.
Pacific Region Union Vice President Dave Clark says they knew all along the Feds didn't do due diligence, "The SARS report takes about two years to complete, there was no way. We saw the last one and it said that Kits Base was needed. So we knew back then there was no possible way that they had it and it has been proven now."
However, National Coast Guard Deputy Commissioner Jody Thomas said on CKNW last year there was such a report.
Clark says she wasn't being honest, "The only report actually, has Kits as needed and that is the last SARS report that was done; I guess she was being untruthful."
NDP MP Fin Donnelly issued an FOI request for the stand alone report, and it turned up nothing.
The Coast Guard has also issued a bulletin to mariners to warn them a new radio communications system in the Arctic is "unreliable until further notice."
Regional Director of CAW Local 21-82 Allan Hughes says it means a ship in trouble in the Western Arctic is on its own, "Mariners rely on high frequency communications. There is no reliable satellite communications through that area so they are dependant on the Coast Guard to be able to monitor their communications if they require assistance or even to pass along the notices to mariners, such as the one they issued saying that the communications were unreliable."
Hughes says this is the same radio system the Feds are relying on to close three Marine Communications Centres in BC.
The Marine Traffic Control Centre in Vancouver is due to be shuttered by Ottawa in 2015.