Canada PoliticsDND expenses $2.7 million to rescue wealthy tourists on arctic excursion: report
Every year, across the country, we hear a score of stories about not-so-bright skiers or hikers who go out of bounds into remote areas and elicit full-scale searches costing tax payers thousands of dollars.
But $2.7 million?
According to a story in the National Post, that's how much it cost Department of National Defence to rescue a group of wealthy tourists during a high-class excursion in the Arctic.
The military was called on June 25 after an ice floe on Admiralty Inlet, near Arctic Bay on Baffin Island, broke away during the night with a tour group and an Inuit hunting party camping atop.
The rescue mission started after the tour group — comprised of 10 tourists from Japan, Jordan, Australia, Britain, France, United States and Canada and 10 staff — noticed the floe, 50 kilometres long and 25 km wide, was drifting toward the Northwest Passage.
The rescue mission, according to the Post, included military personnel, three Hercules transport planes from as far away as Winnipeg, three helicopters, and radio transmitter drops.
As DnD were deploying their resources, the tourists were having dinner in a heated tent while the hunters told military personnel that they were okay and "too busy to talk."
The full Post story can be read here.
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In this case, the military really didn't have choice but to embark on a rescue mission -- even though the tourists took the risk of going in to an area that even the tour company calls "remote and largely inaccessible."
A similar incident happened earlier this month: According to another National Post story, a group of Americans filming a reality TV show requested evacuation services, in the Franklin Strait, after getting caught in difficult weather.
[ Related: DND pays $1M for submarine part to company that seems to have gone missing ]
Beyond the unfortunate taxpayer burden, the stories underline the challenges of search and rescue in the north. Diminishing summer ice seasons are going to mean a busier arctic.
As explained in a recent report by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, the Harper government has made some investments in this area but it's still not sufficient.
CDFAI's Ron Wallace argues that most of our search and rescue (SAR) assets are in the southern part of the country.
"The Canadian SAR capacity is extremely narrow right now," Wallace told iPolitics.
"It’s based as far south as you could possibility get in Canada, which is to me an incredible contradiction.
"I wish Canada would grow up a little bit and start to understand that it’s got real capacity issues that have to be addressed. You have to accept that when you’re working in the High Arctic, things that are a 20-minute ride to the hospital in the south are fatal up there."
(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)
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