Should the Canadian Coast Guard be armed?

[chrisf]

I'm not a fan of unions, never have been. If it were a para military force modeled after the US Coast Guard, there would be definitely less personnel just quitting or phoning in sick, that sort of stuff that comes with a civilian based organization.

There's more to it than just calling it a union issue.

Many of the crew are on casual contracts, meaning they're contracted for the length of the trip only, with no guarantee  of employment after that, many are also on term contracts, for between a month and a year...  When private industry is offering you double or triple the money, would you stick around for "we might have something for you next month"? The hiring freeze on permanent employees over the last couple of years only compounded the issue.

Add to that the average age of crew in the fleet is 50+, they're being hit hard with the retirement of the baby boomers.

They've literally dragged people out of retirement homes on occasion.

IMO the whole organization, not just the fleet, needs a complete top down rethink and turnover of staff, but that's a much larger issue than a couple of guns, and it's not going to happen.

It's unfortunate really, back to the subject of the boomers retiring, really if you could come up with a plan, and the political will to follow through, now would be a great time for it, but good luck with that.

 

[The_Falcon]

Old thread merged with the new one.

Hatchet Man
Milnet.ca Staff

 

[Colin Parkinson]

It's a lot more than unionized employees causing crewing issues, if that was all it was they wouldn't have an issue finding casual staff for sick calls and vacation relief. It's not a closed shop, they can hire anyone off the street... There's not a lot of people standing on that street.

Two major issues are the same facing the entire marine industry, a lack of interest in working at sea, and a high demand for qualified crew to work at sea, resulting in extremely competitive wages and working conditions... An so-Mao-3 engineer on  coast guard boat makes maybe $50k, maybe $60k after over time, with little hope of moving up in the near future, whereas in the oil industry, doing an identical job is going to start at $100k, and if you're keen, there's all sorts of opportunities for for training and advancement.

Many coast guard college graduate leave the fleet quickly after completing their minimum contract (though if anyone is looking for a good route for a free education plus a guaranteed job on graduation the coast guard is an college is excellent opportunity).

Side note, If there's any navy types coming up on retirement, the coast guard is an excellent post retirement job (private cabins for almost all the crew, at worst you might have to share a cabin, grub is typically good, and the boats are typically "wet" and as I put it to a former navy engineer "welcome to the wonderful world of overtime", it took him a full trip to figure that one out). I even know one former infanteer now baking cookies in the galley, and laughing because between pension and salary he's probably doing as well as the skipper.

Back to the question of arming the boats, absolutely they can be armed (at least lightly, they're not fighting ships and the crews don't have combat training or damage control training to deal with ship to ship combat) but there's no role for them to be armed... Rather than discussing "should they be armed?", you'd first have to discuss "should the mandate of the coast guard be changed?"

If you want to make them a paramilitary force, I say go for it, but you never be able to do it, you'd have to do a complete tear down of the fleet and restaff every crew from scratch. Not only woulda you be commuting politician suicide, you'd be hard pressed to find your new crews.

Very true, finding people to go to sea on what the CCG pays is hard, even my department is facing a crisis trying to find ticketed Mariners, much less ones for the smaller communities. The attack on pensions and perceived job stability is only making matters worse. Managers going to industry trying to recruit get laughed at when they mention the wages.

 

[Donavann]

Well Coast Guard associates, are very closer  to merchant mariners than to naval or cops employees.  Supplying their delivers, and providing them a law-enforcement part would be a very huge challenge and would almost, certainly have serious financial and social effects for the associates.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Actually training them to use a .50cal would be quite easy and can be done onboard within the normal crewing cycle, bringing the trainers to the ships. I suspect the training and practice firing would be enjoyed by about 85% of the crew, let face it shooting full auto on someone else's dime is fun. Training the Commanding Officers in the ROE's is the harder part. Basically what you are doing is adding a little bit of teeth to the taxi, because it's unlikely you be getting full out boarding teams out of the current CCG crews.

Frankly in my view the time has come to arm all the major vessels with at least a couple of .50cals. This will improve their ability to carry out and support the boarding teams that they occasionally carry now. From a CCG management point of view it's a really smart idea, the costs are minimal for the .50cals for mounting, training and upkeep of equipment and skills. What it will give them is another argument to keep the current fleet size intact. The CCG Regional operation centres are basically working the fleets out of a job, getting a tasking from them is very difficult and the core functions of the fleet, which is Nav aids can easily be contracted out, even most of the icebreaking could as well. That leaves SAR, which the senior management of CCG seems to hate with a passion, especially inshore SAR.

 

[quadrapiper]

Perhaps time to break the CCG into its constituent functions again? Maintain shared basing and support functions but divvy up the fleet and its roles?

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I looked at my post and I should have said core functions for the large vessels are nav aids, ice breaking. For some ships their core functions are science and/or fisheries research. Smaller cutters may be dedicated SAR with a secondary tasking of nav aids along with fishery patrol. The east coast may use the larger vessels for fisheries patrol but I am not up on their practices, having only served on the west coast.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Arm the boats and arm the sailors.

 

[Donavann]

Well Coast Guard associates, are very closer  to merchant mariners than to naval or cops employees.  Supplying their delivers, and providing them a law-enforcement part would be a very huge challenge and would almost, certainly have serious financial and social effects for the associates.

 

[chrisf]

Good lord, are we doing this again?

How about before commenting on this thread, posters be required to read and recite the 7 roles of the Canadian Coast Guard so it's not just a out-of-rectum conversation by people who think the coast guard is to the navy as meter maids are to cops.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

CCG from 89-2003

41' cutter, R class, Pearkes, hovercraft, Rescue Specialist, Rescue diver and then NWPA. Does that count?

throw in driving a 40" Crashboat for 10 years as a hobby

I have seen a report done around 1922 of DFO machinegunning a Sea Lion Rookery, they used to have orders to ram Killer whales and Basking sharks, in the 80's they wanted to put a HMG on the Gulf Islands to shoot killer whales, sea lions and seals to protect the fish stocks. I was there when the fleets were amalgamated. The role of the CCG can change with a stroke of a pen. They are slowly abandoning inshore SAR, eventually buoy tending will be mostly contracted out. Arming the fleet is one of the best insurances to keep the ships and management is all about keeping the big ships at the expense of everything else.