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Canadian Coast Guard Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan: 2021-2022 to 2023-2024, 2023-2024 Update

DFO/21-2045 Cat. No. Fs151-21E-PDF ISSN 2816-7120

Canadian Coast Guard Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan: 2021-2022 to 2023-2024, 2023-2024 Update
(PDF, 5.9 MB)

Table of contents

Commissioner’s message

On behalf of the Canadian Coast Guard (Coast Guard), I am pleased to present the 2023‑24 update to the 2021-22 to 2023-24 Canadian Coast Guard Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan. In this final update to the original three-year plan, the four strategic pillars and their associated objectives remain unchanged, but new commitments are introduced to guide our work during the year. In addition, this document provides a risk profile with updated scores for each of the risk statements that were initially introduced in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, new investments in the Oceans Protection Plan will ensure that Canada continues to grow its economy while protecting the environment. The Government of Canada will strengthen the protection of Canada’s coasts and wildlife, improve marine safety and incident management, and reinforce partnerships with coastal Indigenous communities, governments and organizations that have been safeguarding coastal waters for generations.

This year, the Coast Guard will continue on the journey to Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, engaging and collaborating with Indigenous partners, integrating Indigenous knowledge in decision-making, and attracting, developing and retaining Indigenous talent.

New ships are being built to renew the Coast Guard’s fleet, and the Fleet Sustainability Initiative will ensure the Coast Guard’s fleet will remain agile and resilient far into the future by focusing on a wide range of essential considerations such as attracting and retaining people with the skills needed to crew and operate more modern and versatile ships. The All Hands on Deck national recruitment campaign that launched in November 2022 will not only improve assessment consistency, optimize administrative processes and expand candidate mobility, it will also support crew diversity by facilitating the hiring of candidates from the designated employment equity groups.

Canada needs to adapt to new challenges emerging in the Arctic. This document explains how the Coast Guard will collaborate with Inuit, First Nations, Métis, Northerners, and Arctic nations to improve maritime domain awareness and ensure a greater presence in the North.

The Coast Guard celebrated its 60th anniversary in 2022, and launched the development of its first-ever Long-Term Strategy to tell a comprehensive story about the organization and articulate priorities to 2050 and beyond. This year, we will be engaging broadly on the four strategic pillars that will make up the Long-Term Strategy: Services, People, Assets, and Governance. Once complete, the Long-Term Strategy will tell a whole-of-Coast Guard story and outline the long-term goals and key actions needed to keep delivering on-water safety, environmental protection, science, economic trade, security, and sovereignty for Canada for years to come. This will drive the development of the short- and medium-term commitments in future iterations of the Canadian Coast Guard Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan.

In accordance with the Treasury Board Directive, the Coast Guard officially adopted a hybrid work model in 2023-24 for its employees who had been working remotely since the beginning of the pandemic. Rediscovering the value of shared in‑person experiences is essential to a cohesive and high-performing organization. Working together in person supports collaboration, team spirit, innovation and a culture of belonging.

In this ever-changing environment, the Coast Guard will continue to support government priorities and economic prosperity, and to contribute to the safety, accessibility and security of Canadian waters. The 2023‑24 update to the 2021-22 to 2023-24 Canadian Coast Guard Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan will guide our organization during the upcoming year and help ensure we reach our goals and remain focused on innovation and excellence as we chart a way forward.

Safety First. Service Always.

Mario Pelletier
Commissioner
Canadian Coast Guard

Our organization: Who we are and what we do

Mission

Our mission is to ensure the safety of all mariners on our waters, protect the marine environment, and support economic growth through the safe and efficient movement of maritime trade in and out of Canada’s waters.

The Coast Guard operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year in some of the world’s harshest maritime conditions. Its area of operations covers 243,000 km of coastline and 5.3 million km2 of ocean and inland waterways. The Coast Guard supports Canada’s ocean economy by enabling the safe and efficient flow of nearly 250 billion dollars in international marine trade1, more than 346 million tonnes of cargo2, and supporting tens of thousands of jobs across Canada.3

People, services and mandate

We are over 6,500 employees strong. We are deckhands, engineers, marine communications and traffic services officers, cooks, community engagement coordinators, captains, pollution response officers, search and rescue specialists, technicians, administrators, program analysts, policy advisors, lighthouse keepers, officer cadets, and more. We fulfill the Coast Guard’s role as the owner and operator of Canada’s civilian fleet. Our employees support key maritime services that include:

The services we provide are mandated under legislation, including:

Through innovation and excellence, we are a recognized leader in maritime services and safety. As federal public servants, Coast Guard members have a fundamental role to play in serving Canadians, their communities and the public interest. By committing to our organizational and public service values, Coast Guard members strengthen the ethical culture of the public sector and contribute to public confidence in the integrity of all public institutions.

Public service and organizational values

Diversity, equity and inclusion

The Coast Guard is an asset-rich organization, and that includes our people. We are collectively committed to creating and sustaining an equitable and inclusive workplace that strives to mirror the diversity of the Canadian public we serve. We must take care of and support each other, and create a nurturing environment where everyone can thrive. The Coast Guard will support its employees in carrying out these commitments, and those in the Clerk’s January 2021 Call to Action on anti-racism, equity, and inclusion in the federal public service.

In response to the Clerk’s Call to Action, and to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #57, which calls for all levels of government to provide education to public servants on the history of Indigenous Peoples, the Coast Guard will continue to improve its understanding of cultural contexts and systemic barriers within Canada by actively promoting intercultural awareness and competency training sessions and fostering learning to support a healthy, inclusive and diverse workplace.

Commitment:

Canadian Coast Guard strategic pillars

Canadians expect the federal government to ensure public safety on the water, protect the marine environment, support economic growth, and support the country’s sovereignty and security by maintaining a strong federal presence in Canada’s waters.

The Coast Guard has a key role as the marine operating arm of the Government of Canada, ready and able to assist in the realization of Canada’s maritime priorities. As Canada’s civilian marine organization and the owner operator of the civilian fleet of Canada, the Coast Guard has a critical function as an on-water responder and as a visible symbol of Canadian identity from coast to coast to coast.

The Coast Guard is uniquely placed to serve this function by providing maritime expertise, Canada’s civilian maritime fleet, and a broadly distributed shore infrastructure.

The Coast Guard is one of the few federal agencies that provides direct, front-line services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our programs and services have an impact on the daily lives of every Canadian by protecting and preserving our interests and priorities as a maritime nation.

In recent years, the Government of Canada has invested in the Coast Guard through initiatives such as the Fleet Renewal and the Oceans Protection Plan. These investments demonstrate the value the Government of Canada and Canadians place in Coast Guard programs and services and the increasing demand for these. The focus in the coming years will be to continue building on these investments and enhancing the Coast Guard’s program and asset readiness, and excellence in service delivery.

The introduction of the new fleet will bring significant changes to the Coast Guard. Ensuring the optimal fleet of the future is a priority closely linked to our other enduring priorities of service excellence, recruitment, and retention. Ship operations and maintenance are integral elements of fleet renewal in order to ensure optimal operational performance throughout the vessel life cycle, and that includes addressing new requirements to effectively operate and maintain new vessels. Over the planning period, we will continue to focus on developing strategies to address existing and future operating and maintenance gaps for the new fleet, as well as the evolving skill sets associated with the operation of the new vessels.

In order to meet its obligations, the Coast Guard makes every effort to ensure that its organizational structure, processes, and procedures are optimized to support the effective and efficient delivery of services to Canadians, including its mandated programs and services, emerging government priorities, and the Minister’s mandate letter commitments.

To this end, we have identified the following four strategic pillars to guide the delivery of our core responsibilities during the period covered by this plan and beyond, and to ensure that we achieve our mandate while maintaining service excellence:

  1. Our People
  2. Our Assets
  3. Our Services
  4. Our Governance

Each strategic pillar in this plan identifies objectives that need to be achieved, and each objective has at least one specific action-oriented commitment. Taken together, these strategic pillars, objectives, and commitments hold the organization on a steady three-year course. Objectives and related commitments are described in each pillar. Further information on the commitments can be found in Annex A.

The Coast Guard takes guidance from Government of Canada priorities and the Minister’s mandate letter priorities in identifying the strategic pillars.

Government of Canada priorities

  • Protecting public health;
  • Ensuring a strong economic recovery;
  • Promoting a cleaner environment;
  • Standing up for fairness and equality;
  • A stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient Canada; and
  • Advancing reconciliation.

Minister’s mandate letter priorities

  • Support sustainable, stable and prosperous fisheries;
  • Grow Canada’s ocean and freshwater economy and support the long-term sustainable growth of Canada’s fish and seafood sector;
  • Implement the Pacific Salmon Strategy and a conservation strategy to restore and rebuild wild Atlantic salmon populations and their habitats;
  • Conserve Canada’s Lands and Oceans;
  • Protect and restore Canada’s oceans and coasts by renewing and expanding the Coastal Restoration Fund, expanding the Ghost Gear program, supporting community shoreline and oceans plastic cleanup efforts, and launching the next phase of the Oceans Protection Plan;
  • Implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and work in partnership with Indigenous Peoples to advance their rights;
  • Integrate Indigenous traditional knowledge into planning and policy decisions; Advance consistent, sustainable and collaborative fisheries arrangements;
  • Invest in coastal and ocean areas that have a high potential to absorb and store carbon;
  • Modernize the Oceans Act;
  • Expand climate vulnerability work to better inform marine conservation planning and management; Continue work on a plan to transition from open pen-net salmon farming in B.C. waters and work to introduce Canada’s first-ever Aquaculture Act;
  • Renew the Coast Guard Fleet;
  • Support improvement in Small Craft Harbours;
  • Respond to emerging incidents and hazards.

Departmental core responsibilities

  • Fisheries – Managing Canada’s fisheries, Indigenous fisheries programs and aquaculture activities, and providing support for commercial fishing harbours while applying relevant legislation;
  • Aquatic Ecosystems – managing, conserving, and protecting Canada’s oceans and other aquatic ecosystems and species from human impacts and invasive species;
  • Marine Navigation – providing information and services to facilitate navigation in Canadian waters; and
  • Marine Operations and Response – providing marine response services and operating Canada’s civilian maritime fleet.

Showcase item: The Honorary Captain Initiative

The Honorary Captain Initiative is a new pilot initiative launched by the Central Region as part of the Coast Guard’s 60th anniversary. The initiative consists of appointing well‑known and distinguished Canadians who are leaders in their field as Honorary Captains of the Canadian Coast Guard.

This initiative aims to strengthen the Coast Guard’s organizational image and relationships with communities by appointing one or two volunteer Honorary Captains per region, as well as at the Coast Guard College. The Honorary Captains participate in recruitment and outreach efforts while lifting staff morale through internal events and visits to bases and ships.

In February 2022, the Coast Guard’s Central Region appointed NFL Canadian football player and graduate in medicine Laurent Duvernay‑Tardif as the very first Honorary Captain. He has already visited the Montreal Regional Operations Centre, the Trois-Rivières hovercraft base, and boarded the CCGS Amundsen to see our employees at work.

Strategic pillar 1: Our people

The Coast Guard recognizes and is proud of the strength of its people. The organization attracts people who want to pursue a long-term, fulfilling career. Their commitment is at the core of our organization, and we feel a tremendous source of pride knowing that many of our employees put their lives on the line to deliver essential services to Canadians 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year across the country.

We are fortunate to have knowledgeable, experienced, and well-motivated people across our ranks, and we will continue to make our organization an employer of choice, and support all of our current and future members to be the best that they can be. The inherent challenge we face is to preserve this enviable standing by ensuring that the Coast Guard is viewed as a desirable, rewarding and inclusive place to work for those contemplating pursuing a career with us.

Effective professional development and assessment program activities are essential for helping us foster this environment and ensuring that all employees feel valued and equipped to perform their jobs. We will achieve this through a developmental and collaborative process that actively supports a culture that encourages us to monitor and discuss progress on a regular basis to coach, mentor and train others in a meaningful way, and to recognize the achievement of both personal development goals and organizational objectives.

The Covid-19 pandemic has been an accelerator for one of the greatest workplace transformations of our lifetime, making working from home a viable option for some workers while adding new complexities and challenges to service providers on the front line. It is a testament to the professionalism and dedication of Coast Guard members that program and service delivery has continued unabated, and we will take best practices and lessons learned from the pandemic and apply them to continue to ensure a safe work environment for all employees.

We are also taking steps to improve support to all fleet personnel through the use of technology: first, by rolling out new software, eTimesheets, which enables fleet personnel to submit time and labour information electronically; and second, by launching a process to find a new crewing tool to replace the Coast Guard’s aging MariTime system to better fit the needs of the fleet. In addition to integrating crewing decisions with time and labour-tracking and management functionality, better reporting will help address the current chronic pay issues and enable the development of comprehensive training strategies to ensure we have seagoing employees with the certification and knowledge needed to fill new positions upcoming through the renewal of our fleet. An in-depth requirements analysis for crewing and certification will be completed, in conjunction with a review of functionality currently available in the market, which will provide us with a broad range of solution options to consider.

Due to the specialized nature of our work, it is essential that the Coast Guard has the right mix of people, capabilities and resources to deliver our programs and services nationwide. As a Special Operating Agency with a vast span of responsibilities vital for the safety and security of Canadian waterways, we need highly trained employees with specialized qualifications. This includes, for example, fleet officers and crew, Marine Communications and Traffic Services officers (the eyes and ears of the Coast Guard), and Rescue Coordination Centres personnel.

We have completed a review of key positions and at-risk groups across the Coast Guard, and advanced our capacity to use data for projection analysis. The identification of at-risk groups and key positions, combined with better data analysis capacity, will support the development of focused recruitment strategies, targeted learning strategies to support retention and succession planning, improved processes associated with planning for training, and better informed annual intake at the Canadian Coast Guard College (the College) for its officer training program.

In 2021-22, the proposed at-risk groups and key positions, along with supporting demographic data and recommendations to address areas for improvement, were presented to the Coast Guard Management Board for approval and subsequent inclusion in recruitment, retention, and training strategies. These strategies will also incorporate updated crewing factors as well as future fleet crewing requirements.

The operational nature of the Coast Guard means that the organization relies on a number of highly specialized trade skills – from ships’ officers to certified support roles. Further complicating the need for specific roles, there are several fields of study related to these positions that have a limited qualified labour pool or a small number of graduating students each year. This creates potential supply issues, should the Coast Guard be required to fill a significant number of vacancies in critical areas. Accordingly, an at-risk staffing report is being created to identify the areas of highest risk, and support the development of potential mitigation strategies and longer-term human resources planning solutions.

Given the vast number of functions and positions within the Coast Guard, a methodology was developed to compile positions based on skill sets, competencies, and certifications. To evaluate impact risk, the groups were linked to their impact on operations, i.e. whether this affects a vessel’s ability to operate. To evaluate the likelihood risk of vacancy issues, two key factors were examined: potential vacancy levels (from regular attrition, retirement timing, and existing vacancies) and difficulty in recruiting.

Recent attrition rates have necessitated the rapid career advancement of some junior officers within the fleet to more senior positions. This creates potential competency issues associated with the administrative and so‑called ‘soft skills’ required of management and leadership roles. To address this need, the College is modernizing the delivery of Coast Guard command courses to provide the required and appropriate training to these individuals and others seeking to enhance their skills.

Objective 1: Attraction and recruitment

Given a combination of attrition and organizational expansion, as well as the need for surge capacity for major incidents, attraction and recruitment are critical priorities, and require the implementation of national strategies and tools.

Our specialized workforce requires focused recruitment and promotional activities to attract new people with the right skills into the organization, as well as concentrated efforts on attracting employees from diverse communities. Recognizing the need for many specialized skill sets, the Coast Guard is leveraging outreach activities for younger students to create awareness of the educational requirements needed to pursue various careers in the Coast Guard. We are also developing internal apprenticeship programs that complement the recruitment strategies and are working with various colleges and universities to attract both co-op students and graduates to the Coast Guard. To facilitate these two approaches, efforts are also being made to finalize an external communications plan.

The College is the centre of excellence for Coast Guard operational training, and the foundation for our long‑standing success in operations. To attract candidates with the necessary entry requirements to its programs, the College will continue to partner with various community colleges, universities, and organizations across the country to promote the Coast Guard as a meaningful career option.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The All Hands on Deck national advertising and recruitment campaign

In order for the current and future fleet to be agile and resilient, the Coast Guard needs to significantly expand its personnel capacity over the next years. This expansion requires a coordinated approach to outreach, attraction and recruitment.

With this requirement in mind, the Personnel Branch and the Department of Fisheries and Oceans ran the Coast Guard’s All Hands on Deck campaign in November and December 2022. The campaign was a first of this magnitude for the Coast Guard and served as a pilot for future initiatives. It featured a national advertising strategy and introduced a fleet‑centred recruitment campaign focusing on 16 at-risk positions, with concentrated efforts on recruiting members of the four employment equity groups.

The campaign featured a robust, cohesive and strategic outreach plan, as well as innovative staffing strategies using modern technology to collect feedback and guide future plans. The recruitment efforts initially focused on assessing candidates who self-identified in the designated employment equity groups to create the first pool of qualified candidates. In 2023-24, various positions will be targeted, ranging from steward and cook to engineering officer and commanding officer.

In addition to increasing the agility and resilience of the Coast Guard’s fleet far into the future, the All Hands on Deck national recruitment campaign will increase crew diversity, improve assessment consistency, optimize administrative processes, and expand candidate mobility in all regions.

Objective 2: Training

As an operational organization, the Coast Guard is by necessity a training and learning organization. Training builds confidence and success, both personally and organizationally. It is key for some entry-level and many mid-stream positions, as is obtaining, maintaining, and retaining certain certifications. The Coast Guard’s many levels of personnel, unique positions, and operational necessities require that the organization provide technical, skills-based, managerial, safety, and team training. This training is continuous and is delivered in many ways, including formal learning, experiential learning, computer-based training, and more. As a fundamental part of the ‘life cycle management of our workforce’, a continual focus on training products, quality assurance, and methodologies is crucial.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The Canadian Coast Guard College Modernization Project

The Canadian Coast Guard College Modernization Project was launched by the Personnel Branch in 2022 and is now well underway. The project outlines a five‑year strategic plan to ensure that the College remains a world-leading bilingual maritime training institution.

The modernization project improves the training required by the Coast Guard personnel to save lives, protect the environment, ensure safe shipping, and maintain the best marine communications systems possible. It aims to upgrade numerous components of the teaching resources and facilities at the College to support modern and effective learning platforms, both physical and virtual.

The College recently installed a new state-of-the-art Wärtsilä training engine on-site, the first of its kind in Canada and one of only six in the world. The training engine allows students and fleet personnel to gain valuable hands-on experience on how to operate, repair, and rebuild the Wärtsilä W8L26 diesel engine.

The marine navigation simulator was also upgraded to include dynamic positioning consoles on every bridge, as well as models for medium icebreakers and offshore oceanographic science vessels. In addition, the ice breaking simulator was upgraded to provide a 360-degree field of view using 14 monitors surrounding the current bridge, port and starboard wing stations to display advanced graphics.

Over the next fiscal year, the College will continue to review training requests and develop courses, and it will expand access to learning opportunities for the Coast Guard personnel to support the fleet of the future. Activities planned for 2023-24 include the roll-out of the Command Course, the implementation of learning centres in the Atlantic, national headquarters and Western regions, as well as the full integration of the John Adams Library with OnCourse and regional learning centres.

Objective 3: Career management

The Coast Guard values its employees and seeks to retain them by providing a rewarding and challenging career, and the People Strategy includes innovative ways to enable all employees at all levels to find their best fit and reach peak performance and satisfaction in their jobs. To support the continuous process of career management and development, the Career Competency Tool was launched in February 2022, containing competency dictionaries covering every job in the organization, which enable any employee at any level to determine the competencies required of them in their current job and to view the competencies of all other jobs to which they may aspire.

The Coast Guard supports, in collaboration with People and Culture, the development of all employees as they seek to build their careers with specific approaches adapted to merging an operational organisation into a program environment. With a focus on proactive leadership development, through the talent development and mobility program, we are seeking to support the middle management community and their transition from technical subject matter experts to expert people managers. Following the launch of the Career Competency Tool, employees may now update their learning plans with specific details in support of their short- and long-term aspirations within the Coast Guard. These competencies will also be used to support staffing tools, succession planning, and recruitment activities.

The Coast Guard continues to develop professional development and apprenticeship programs for a range of operational programs, including those required to meet Transport Canada seafarer’s requirements, as internal recruitment and training tools aimed at developing highly skilled and trained candidates who are operationally ready to deliver the Coast Guard’s services to Canadians.

Commitments:

Objective 4: Health

The health and safety of our employees are the Coast Guard’s top priority. Part of ensuring overall health is providing the necessary learning and support to enhance employees’ personal resilience, including services adapted to front-line operational positions. Safety, health, morale, well-being, employee assistance, work-life arrangements, return-to-work processes, and awards and recognition programs are all essential elements of meeting the needs of our employees, our teams, and ultimately our organization. Put another way, readiness and retention of personnel for duty depend on how well employees are supported, and the Personnel Branch, in collaboration with People and Culture, is working across the organization to ensure that these measures are strengthened and expanded.

Commitments:

Strategic pillar 2: Our assets

The Coast Guard owns and operates the federal government’s civilian fleet. Located across the country, these assets provide a platform supporting a wide range of marine programs and services, and serve as a nationally recognized federal presence and symbol of service and safety. From coast to coast to coast, the fleet of red and white ships and helicopters covers 243,000 km of coastline, the longest in the world, and 5.3 million km2 of ocean and inland water.

Nowhere is the Coast Guard’s approach to effective and efficient service delivery more evident than in the fleet. Most of our vessels are multitasked, and all are crewed with professionally trained mariners capable of delivering on-water programs. On any given day, for example, a vessel and its specialized crew can be optimized to support a science mission while at the same time deploying navigational buoys and serving as both a secondary search and rescue vessel and a visible symbol of Canadian sovereignty.

This multi-mission operating philosophy offers significant economies of scope and provides the Coast Guard with a diverse fleet capable of operating in all marine areas of the country during the navigation season. The multi-tasked nature of Coast Guard operations also ensures that the organization has a coordination capability in place, on a 24-hour basis, to task the resources to the required area, program or priority.

While the fleet is undoubtedly the Coast Guard’s most recognizable asset, the Coast Guard also makes use of varied and complex physical shore-based assets to deliver services to Canadians. The Coast Guard ensures their operation, maintenance, repair, and their eventual recapitalization to replace aging systems at the end of their useful service life. Doing so requires asset-management expertise that covers a wide range of functions from acquisition and maintenance to life extensions and replacement, and ultimately disposal.

The Coast Guard must safeguard its assets in order to sustain its operational capabilities, fulfill its mandated programs and services, and meet Government of Canada priorities now, and in the future.

As we work to build new ships to replace our aging ones, we will be taking measures to extend the life of the current fleet through interim solutions, while also ensuring that the current fleet and the fleet of the future have the required shore-based infrastructure to support service delivery across Canada.

Renewing our assets means assessing many factors to ensure we get the requirements right. New equipment and technology create the need or opportunity to develop new competencies and bring in new talent. We approach asset renewal accepting and embracing our need to lower emissions and green our operations, and remain focused on the operational delivery of our mandate. We also recognize that the impacts of climate change are already being felt, and make it a priority to build resilience to this threat through analysis and determination.

We need to broadly engage with stakeholders, assess outcomes of levels of service reviews and program readiness profiles, and set flexible future-looking requirements so that new assets are capable of meeting both current and emerging program and operational requirements. We must also take the opportunity to consider how our assets will be managed, operated and maintained throughout their lifecycle.

Showcase item: The new offshore oceanographic science vessel

As part of the Fleet Renewal Plan under the National Shipbuilding Strategy, the Coast Guard is in the process of procuring a new offshore oceanographic science vessel (OOSV) from Vancouver Shipyards to replace the recently decommissioned CCGS Hudson. The construction contract was awarded in January 2021 and construction began in March 2021.

The new OOSV will be a modern ship designed to offer improved capabilities and higher reliability compared to those of the CCGS Hudson, and it will become the primary east-coast offshore oceanographic science vessel for Fisheries and Oceans and the Government of Canada. The ship is expected to operate year round in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as well as in the Arctic during the summer season.

The new OOSV will support oceanographic, geological and hydrographic survey missions, contributing directly to understanding the impacts of climate change on the oceans. Like all large vessels in the Coast Guard’s fleet, the new ship will also be responsible for secondary missions including search and rescue, and marine environmental and hazards response.

The OOSV marked its keel laying in October 2021, and its main engines were moved to the engine room in April 2022. Ship consolidation began in 2022, which included the assembly of the grand blocks in November 2022.

The ship is expected to launch in 2024 and then commence sea trials in preparation for delivery anticipated for 2025. Until then, the Coast Guard will continue to determine and implement interim measures to ensure essential missions previously undertaken by the CCGS Hudson continue to be carried out until the new OOSV enters service.

Objective 1: Delivering the new fleet

Renewing the aging Coast Guard fleet has been a Government of Canada priority for more than a decade, and this priority will ensure the Coast Guard has the assets to deliver mandated programs and services to Canadians. With an average age of about 40 years for the large fleet, Coast Guard’s vessels are in need of replacement in order to meet increasing operational pressures and perform required statutory missions. With increasing shipping trade and the impacts of climate change already upon us, the demands on the Coast Guard will continue to grow. A renewed Coast Guard fleet will maintain the confidence of Canadians, and the confidence of industries that rely on Coast Guard services to remain competitive. To make sure we have a flexible fleet capable of meeting future demands, we are setting flexible requirements for future capabilities with a key principle that, where feasible, ships can accomplish a wide range of different missions.

Following the significant investments made by the Government of Canada, the Coast Guard now has fully funded plans in place for the entire large vessel fleet. Work is already well underway to support a full fleet renewal; funding announced in 2019 is being used to support procurement of up to 16 multi-purpose vessels, up to six program icebreakers, and two modified Arctic and offshore patrol vessels. This is in addition to advancing existing large and small shipbuilding projects that were already part of the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS), as well as work by Public Services and Procurement Canada to add Chantier Davie as a third Canadian shipyard and strategic partner under the NSS, which was announced on April 4, 2023. With this announcement, concept work on the program icebreakers began.

In addition, on May 6, 2021, Canada announced that it would move forward with the construction of two polar icebreakers under the NSS. Both will have capacity and ability beyond that of our current largest icebreaker, the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent. With their enhanced capabilities, these larger, more powerful ships will enable the Coast Guard to conduct year-round operations in Canada’s Arctic. These enhanced capabilities will be supported by polar icebreaker helicopters optimized for operations in the harsh arctic environment. The greater endurance of the polar icebreakers will ensure they can operate at higher latitudes for longer periods, and will allow the fleet to better support Indigenous Peoples and Northerners, strengthen Arctic sovereignty, advance high Arctic science, provide maritime domain awareness, and better respond to maritime emergencies. Canada’s investment in the polar icebreakers will have a lasting impact on the Canadian marine industry, its workers, and their suppliers.

As the fleet renewal program advances, the Coast Guard will need to be well prepared to manage this program year-over-year. The multi-decade timeline associated with fleet renewal increases the complexity while also providing the Coast Guard with the opportunity to adjust goals and processes to ensure that we have the ships we need to carry out our work in the years to come. The objective is to continue to deliver new vessels currently under construction on schedule, while continuing to advance plans, design, and construction engineering on other vessels in the renewal pipeline.

Commitments:

Objective 2: Operating and maintaining the new fleet

While building a ship can take several years, a ship will remain in service for several decades. Ship operations and maintenance are therefore integral elements of the fleet renewal in order to ensure operational performance throughout the vessel life cycle. Over the planning period, we will continue to focus on developing strategies to address existing and future operating and maintenance gaps for the new fleet, including developing lessons learned on the transition into service of recently accepted vessels.

The Coast Guard is also developing a Fleet Infrastructure Availability Verification program in order to establish infrastructure requirements, verify and track the condition of shore infrastructure assets, and assess the availability of current assets against future requirements. Some of this work is not related to operating and maintaining the new fleet, as many of the current wharves and shore infrastructure sites are classified as critical and requiring attention before they can be safely used by Coast Guard ships operating today. However, this program will clarify necessary changes needed to meet future requirements.

In addition, a joint Department of Fisheries and Oceans Real Property/Canadian Coast Guard working group has been created to address requirements for future projects in support of shore-based infrastructure. Considering the shared responsibilities between Real Property as the custodian and the Coast Guard as the tenant, this working group will play a key role in guiding this program. Phase one of the assessment of wharf infrastructure to support a range of Coast Guard missions is currently underway.

Commitments:

Objective 3: Vessel life extension

Older Coast Guard vessels are becoming more costly to maintain and are prone to be more frequently taken out of operation for unscheduled repairs, placing further strain on the existing fleet. To combat this growing operational risk, the Coast Guard is implementing interim measures, such as vessel life extension (VLE) work and acquiring used ships to sustain operational capabilities while VLEs are being performed to ensure the existing fleet remains operational until the new fleet is procured.

In 2019, the Government of Canada approved over 2 billion dollars in funding for VLEs to extend the operational life of more than 70 vessels over a 20-year period. The VLE program is working closely with fleet personnel to forecast VLE project timelines and ensure that the required scheduled work does not result in interruptions to operational programs and services. Other required non-VLE related vessel work packages are being incorporated into the VLE scheduled work periods in an effort to further reduce the time that vessels are out of service.

During this business plan cycle, the VLE program will continue to initiate new scheduled VLE projects using existing resources in order to meet the forecasted VLE timelines.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The rededication to service ceremony for the CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752

The CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752 is a light icebreaker serving in the Atlantic region. The vessel was recently renamed as part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.

The idea to rename the ship as “Kopit Hopson 1752” was brought forward by Nova Scotian Mi’kmaq Elder Daniel Paul, and approved by the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. The vessel’s new name is a reference to a peace treaty signed in 1752, a time of conflict, by British governor Peregrine Hopson and Mi’kmaq leader Kopit. It honours both leaders and it represents the evolving relations between the Crown and Indigenous Peoples.

The light icebreaker will be officially rededicated as the CCGS Kopit Hopson 1752 once work is completed and the ship is ready to resume service in summer 2023.

Objective 4: Shore-based assets

The Coast Guard’s non-fleet shore-based asset base may be less publicly visible, but these assets are no less important to realizing the Coast Guard’s motto “Safety first, Service always”. Such assets include fixed and floating aids to navigation, visual and aural aids, radar, radio, and terrestrial Automatic Identification System networks, which are delivered through more than 300 remote installations. In addition, there are marine environmental and hazards response physical assets used for spill containment, collection, and storage, and several bases and search and rescue stations.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The operational implementation of New Oceans Protection Plan radars

As part of the Oceans Protection Plan, the Canadian Coast Guard received funding to implement 10 new land radar installations across Canada. The new state-of-the-art radars will be integrated with the Marine Communications and Traffic Services’ (MCTS) Information System on Marine Navigation and will greatly improve marine safety through enhanced marine traffic coverage.

As part of the MCTS program, radars are used in combination with other surveillance technologies to locate vessels of all sizes in and around Vessel Traffic Services zones. The new radars use solid-state technology, increasing their energy efficiency and reliability. Along with the new radars, a new system is also being implemented allowing for the equipment to be monitored, reconfigured and reset remotely, which will reduce maintenance costs and allow for faster intervention during outages.

Nine new radar installations have been completed on the East and West coasts in 2022-23. Seven of those radars have passed their proof of performance and three are fully operationalized. The final installation, located at Calvert Island, British Columbia, along with the full operationalization of all remaining radars is scheduled to take place in 2023-24. Once all new radars are operational, the MCTS program will have expanded its capacity to a total of 36 radars.

Strategic pillar 3: Our services

As the civilian marine operating arm of the Government of Canada, the Coast Guard delivers a broad range of mandated maritime services to Canadians and those using our waters. Those services are aimed at saving lives, enhancing maritime safety, supporting maritime commerce, and protecting the marine environment.

By virtue of being a horizontal, multi-mission, multi-tasking organization, the Coast Guard is able to leverage the people, fleet, and shore-based assets that enable the delivery of our programs to provide a valuable contribution to other government departments and to new and emerging Government of Canada initiatives. We remain committed to implementing the Oceans Protection Plan, supporting the Greening Government Strategy, assisting partners in the science, environment, enforcement and security communities, and sustaining our partnerships with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, as well as Indigenous partners, communities, and governments.

A blue economy is about harnessing the potential of our oceans, seas, lakes, and rivers — resources that Canada is privileged to have in abundance — to make life better for all. As the federal government works with valued partners and stakeholders to develop a comprehensive Blue Economy Strategy for Canada, the Coast Guard will develop a strategy to advance the modernization of marine navigation programs and safety services, including e-navigation/digital waterways initiatives, and guide investments in aids to navigation and marine communications and traffic services.

Under the updated Greening Government Strategy, the Government of Canada has committed to reducing its own operational greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. This means taking action to lower these emissions from its buildings, conventional fleet, remote sites, national safety and security operations, procurement activities, as well as ensuring its operations and assets are resilient to a changing climate. The new strategy includes Canada’s national safety and security fleet, which directly implicates the Coast Guard.

The implementation of the Coast Guard’s Arctic Region demonstrates our commitment to advancing Reconciliation and working in collaboration with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis organizations and governments in the North. We are working collaboratively to identify the future of Coast Guard services in the Arctic as we continue to see important changes to the marine environment due to climate change, an associated increase in vessel traffic and international interest, and a longer Arctic navigation season.

Demands for our services continue to grow, and we are ever mindful of the need to listen to the various partners and stakeholders we serve and assess how we respond to changing requirements and expectations within the context of our mandated programs and services, including the provision of ships and helicopters in support of other federal departments’ mandates. This requires exploring new ways of doing business with technological innovations such as e-navigation and digitalization, and enhancing partnerships for program and service delivery.

Objective 1: Fulfilling Coast Guard’s contribution to the Oceans Protection Plan

Under the Oceans Protection Plan (OPP), the Coast Guard received funding to advance a plan centering on four main priorities:

Over this business planning cycle we will continue to fulfill our contributions to the OPP, including strengthening Canada’s Marine Communications and Traffic Services centres by enhancing radar capacity and capability to monitor maritime traffic, which provides more complete and accurate maritime situational awareness and contributes to a stronger marine safety system.

The Hazardous and Noxious Substances (HNS) initiative has significant operational relevance and impact for the Coast Guard. In collaboration with federal partners, we will continue to strengthen Canada’s marine safety system by establishing a national framework with key programming elements to improve preparedness and response for ship-source/mystery HNS releases into the marine environment. In parallel, we will begin training responders on HNS releases from a health and safety perspective.

We are also seeking to increase participation of Indigenous partners in the marine response regime through development and implementation of a Communications Portal for Integrated Incident Response (CPIIR) to enhance collaboration during on-water emergencies, events and exercises, and provide a platform for standardized usage of the Incident Command System. As the Coast Guard continues implementing the regional response planning process developed through the OPP, CPIIR is intended to become the primary communication tool that will link the Coast Guard to Indigenous and community partners, as well as other responsible authorities, through all stages of a marine incident. The Coast Guard will be engaging with regional Response Organizations to identify opportunities to support interoperability with systems that may be in place and consult with Indigenous partners on requirements.

Many of the projects under the OPP were conceived as a means of supplementing, enhancing or expanding existing services and functions, while others were developed as pilots and prototypes. As the first phase of the OPP came to an end in March 2022, a major focus of this business planning cycle will be to assess the results of the projects to help inform next steps, including transitioning of some projects into ongoing, “in service” programs. In other words, some OPP projects will be integrated into the regular activities of the Coast Guard. This process will ensure that benefits accrued from this historic investment continue as ongoing service beyond the sunset of the OPP’s first lifecycle.

The mandate letter for the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard indicated the Government’s commitment to launch the next phase of the OPP to continue efforts to deliver world-leading marine safety systems and create stronger partnerships with Indigenous and other coastal communities. Budget 2022 confirmed a total of 1.1 billion dollars over the next nine years and 67.9 million dollars in ongoing funding allocated to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Coast Guard to renew and expand the OPP. The next phase of the OPP will build on the results and lessons learned over the past five years and add additional areas of focus, including expanding emergency prevention and response for all types of goods, ensuring healthy and resilient supply chains, safe navigation of large and small vessels, and increasing protections on remote routes.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The Marine Pollution Preparedness, Response and Recovery initiative

In July 2022, the Government of Canada announced the next phase of the Oceans Protection Plan (OPP Renewal). Through this new investment of 2 billion dollars over nine years, the Government of Canada will expand existing initiatives, while also establishing new initiatives that will strengthen protections for Canada’s coasts and wildlife, improve marine safety and incident management, enhance the use of data and tools in decision-making, and advance partnerships with Indigenous communities, governments and organizations.

New investments from the OPP will give confidence to Canadians and Indigenous Peoples that Canada will continue to grow its economy while protecting the environment. One of the Coast Guard’s key contributions to the OPP Renewal is through its support to the Transport Canada‑led Marine Pollution Preparedness, Response and Recovery initiative. The initiative aims to create a coordinated, government‑led marine pollution response system for pollution spills of any source or type.

The coordinated system will provide a framework to ensure effective and consistent management and response to marine pollution incidents across the country, as well as for post-incident environmental recovery. Accountability for polluters will be strengthened, and a formal role for Indigenous communities within the system will be co-developed, including sustainable funding and appropriate legal protections to support this role.

The pollution response system will clearly define the roles and responsibilities for all partners to ensure that Canada’s response to marine pollution incidents is timely, efficient, and minimizes the pollution’s impact on the environment and human health.

Through this initiative, the Coast Guard is pursuing an extended mandate with respect to pollution response and seeking to establish itself as the federal lead for response to all marine pollution incidents, excluding zones such as offshore areas that are governed by federal-provincial agreements. The Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board will continue to lead responses in those areas.

In partnership with Transport Canada, the Coast Guard is committed to continue actively engaging all sectors, stakeholders, and partners, including Indigenous groups, to collect feedback and views on the creation of a new coordinated marine pollution system for Canada.

Objective 2: Major resource projects

The Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act have established better rules for major resource projects aimed at protecting the environment and communities, advancing Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples, and ensuring that sustainable projects can proceed. As a result of this strengthened federal governance, the Coast Guard now has an important role to play in the process of assessing major resource project proposals when there is a marine shipping component.

We are currently monitoring or supporting the impact assessments and related processes for a number of proposed or recently approved major resource and related infrastructure projects spread across each of the organization’s four regions, such as Tilbury Marine Jetty, Roberts Bank Terminal 2, Cedar LNG, Sorel-Tracy Port Terminal, Baffinland Mary River Mine, and Ksi Lisims LNG. The Ksi Lisims LNG project is the first to undergo the enhanced Navigation Safety Assessment Process (NSAP), led by Transport Canada to replace the former TERMPOL process. The NSAP aims to further improve Canada’s collective approach to reviewing projects, including marine terminal and transshipment sites implicated in a review process under the Impact Assessment Act. This new process will be more timely, effective, and avoid duplicative marine reviews.

We continue to implement and support federal coordination and governance of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) project, which remains a federal priority. A signature initiative under the TMX is the Co-Developing Community Response accommodation measure that seeks to address Indigenous groups’ concerns about the risks of increased project-related tanker traffic to marine activities, the environment, and culturally important and sacred sites in their traditional territories. As part of this initiative, the Coast Guard identifies information, tools, and services to improve information sharing with coastal Indigenous governments, communities and organizations, as well as with response partners, and to help facilitate preparedness, response capabilities and safety for eligible coastal Indigenous groups.

The Coast Guard will continue to actively participate in a number of impact and environmental assessment processes involving marine shipping associated with proposed projects and their potential environmental effects. This involves a range of work, such as assessing information requested from proponents about project impacts and proposed mitigation measures, providing expertise and examining the impacts to Coast Guard programs and levels of service, contributing to whole-of-government responses, supporting Indigenous consultation processes, and identifying timely programmatic responses to mitigate project impacts and address impacts on treaty and non-treaty rights.

Commitments:

Objective 3: Reviewing levels of service

The Coast Guard is committed to providing its many clients with the best services possible within its available resources.

Established levels of service (LoS) are a cornerstone of Coast Guard service delivery and provide our clients with a clear understanding of the services to be expected. The published LoS contribute to ensuring that services are delivered in a nationally consistent, integrated, predictable, measurable, and equitable fashion over time and under normal operating circumstances.

The updated LoS for the Icebreaking, Aids to Navigation, Waterways Management, Marine Communications and Traffic Services, Search and Rescue, and Marine Environmental and Hazards Response programs enable us to better reflect changes in marine navigation technology and practices, and provide an opportunity to understand current user/client needs. The review process took place within the framework of internationally and nationally mandated commitments and included input from internal and external stakeholders, including the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and other federal departments and agencies who partner with the Coast Guard, United States Coast Guard service partners, industry, Indigenous partners, and the general public.

Objective 4: Program readiness

Key to successfully meeting established levels of service (LoS) is maximizing Coast Guard program readiness, which is the organizational ability to meet program and service demands. As part of its LoS review, the Coast Guard is undertaking a readiness assessment to evaluate the potential gaps between current and anticipated future mission requirements and current resources, authority, capacity, and capability, and establish a readiness profile. This assessment will include people, assets, and governance.

Commitments:

Objective 5: Modernizing marine navigation programs

In support of our program readiness objective, the Coast Guard has developed a modernization strategy for marine navigation programs. Following international trends to digitalize marine navigation tools and services, the Coast Guard will transform its service mechanisms to provide timely and standardized information to mariners such as safety, environmental data, ice and weather conditions, vessel traffic, channel depths, speed restrictions, and marine protected areas.

The modernization strategy will focus on the continued implementation of e-navigation and the digitalization of other services to ensure accessibility to marine navigation information including safety, ice, and weather information, environmental data, vessel traffic, channel depths, speed restrictions, and information on marine protected areas. This modernization of Coast Guard’s core marine navigation programs — Aids to Navigation, Waterways Management, Icebreaking, and Marine Communications and Traffic Services — includes leveraging new technologies, using more sensor data, and advancing our ability to collect, process, synthesize and analyze data, and readily exchange it with our partners in an integrated and streamlined way. This will require integration of existing programs, systems, and tools to deliver seamless, efficient, and real-time services to maritime clients and federal, provincial, territorial, and Indigenous partners.

Part of this initiative will look at enhancing maritime domain awareness to ensure we are equipped to continue monitoring, detecting, identifying, and responding to incidents and events in Canadian waters and internationally, as well as to support the security and enforcement community’s maritime domain awareness requirements.

Canada faces a complex and dynamic security environment in its maritime domain, which poses challenges to our security and economic prosperity. As such, we require a new mindset—one that takes a comprehensive view of all risks, vulnerabilities, threats, consequences and opportunities, and enables response through an active, multi-departmental, integrated approach. Coast Guard’s development of a maritime domain awareness framework will provide a high-level outline and better understanding of the data collection and distribution of information internal and external to Coast Guard. Maritime domain awareness empowers our partner nations to detect, monitor, and ultimately respond to activity in their waters, and effective information sharing allows for a multinational response, ultimately securing the maritime domain. Achieving actionable maritime domain awareness will continue to be reliant on collaborative efforts and a coordinated focus between federal and global security partners. The Maritime Domain Awareness Strategy is key to the effective understanding of maritime-related activities and identifying threats as early and as far from our shores as possible.

Digitalizing the Coast Guard’s and other federal partners’ services will make marine navigation information more readily accessible to those who need it for marine safety and navigation, environmental and marine mammal protection, increased maritime domain awareness, and in support of local, regional, national and Indigenous economies.

A roadmap has been created to lay out the path forward for all e-navigation related sub-projects, a number of which have already yielded deliverables, including the e-navigation portal now being fully operational. The Waterways Information System and Automatic Identification System Application Specific Messages are also in operation, with improvements planned and required to achieve full operational capability. The Collaboration Voyage Management System is funded and has begun its rollout in spring 2023.

The Coast Guard has begun the process to update its “Système d’information du Programme des aides à la navigation” (SIPA) system, which was originally implemented 30 years ago and which supports the tracking and management of information related to more than 17,000 aids to navigation, design requirements, design and review methodology, production of the List of Lights, Buoys and Fog Signals publication, and Notices to Mariners publication. The system software and interface have been modified over the years to maintain operability but are no longer compatible with current technologies and environments. The new system will have an architecture and design that will allow for exchange of information with other areas and systems specifications for aids to navigation, adhere to the International Hydrographic Organization’s (IHO) requirements, and meet international shipping requirements in Canadian waters.

Considerable progress has been made to date. Next steps include finalizing business requirements and working with other areas to establish a solution that aligns with IHO standards, Canadian Hydrographic Services, and e-navigation from a holistic marine navigation programs perspective.

Commitment:

Objective 6: Enabling innovation

It is critical for the Coast Guard to successfully adapt to a shifting operational landscape, meet new greening requirements, and ensure the continuity of service and the primacy of operations in all contexts. The Coast Guard is establishing a robust innovation and experimentation approach that will accelerate the adoption of effective technological advances within the organization. The goal is to support the Coast Guard’s long-term sustainable development and modernization aspirations and goals and ensure targeted investments in tested technologies, systems, and processes, resulting in value for money for Canadians.

Innovating our program and service delivery where it makes sense to do so will increase our flexibility and capacity and provide stronger services to Canadians over the near and long term. We are deepening our efforts to foster innovation that provides practical solutions for a variety of known or emerging operational requirements that improve service delivery, reliability, efficiency, climate resiliency and emission reduction.

The Coast Guard is committed to reducing emissions and environmental impacts in the areas of: fuel procurement (including low-carbon fuels); fleet procurement (including energy-efficient platforms); operational efficiency; exploration of alternative service delivery; and net-zero research and innovation. The overarching goal driving these environmental considerations is Canada’s target of net-zero emissions by 2050. The Coast Guard will work hard to contribute to the target.

Our contribution will come in various forms, including through a variety of innovative projects, research groups and task forces, and assessment of alternate power, which may contribute to the implementation of several key Government of Canada initiatives, particularly the United Nations Paris Agreement, the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy, and the Greening Government Strategy. Studies on the operational impacts of liquefied natural gas, a techno-economic feasibility assessment, and a zero-emission fuel roadmap have been completed. An in‑depth study on low-emission fuels for Coast Guard fleet is in the planning stages.

Implementation of autonomous vehicles (including air, surface, and sub-surface) technology is a logical operational progression for the Coast Guard due to the ability of these systems to perform long-endurance missions in challenging environmental conditions. Their use increases personnel safety, reduces our carbon footprint, and allows for mission performance in conditions that may not otherwise be possible. The Coast Guard has several autonomous vehicles projects underway, including near-shore and off-shore operations supporting search and rescue (SAR), conservation and protection, maritime security, and icebreaking. In each case, coordination with the regulatory bodies is underway to ensure mission completion, and to better inform regulators of Coast Guard requirements. Trials of a multi-sensor, rapidly deployable vertical take-off and landing drone surveillance system to test surveillance ranges for SAR and iceberg tracking missions have been completed.

Commitments:

Strategic pillar 4: Our governance

The Coast Guard believes that good governance is participatory, consensus-oriented, accountable, transparent, responsive, effective and efficient, equitable, and inclusive.

The organizational changes announced for national headquarters in 2019 made the Coast Guard a more unified and stronger national institution, as did the creation of the Arctic Region. During this business planning cycle, we will continue to strengthen national policies, processes, procedures, and systems to enhance decision-making, preparedness, delivery, and accountability, and enable our headquarters and four regions to function smoothly and seamlessly as one united Coast Guard within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Stakeholder and partner interests are at the forefront of our decision-making, and strengthening stakeholder engagement both internally and externally will continue to be a priority in all our governance undertakings.

Objective 1: Strengthening national policies, processes, procedures and systems

The Coast Guard is a response organization and as such our fleet and regional front-line personnel often need to take quick action in the field. Having nationally consistent policies, standards, methods, procedures, and systems provides clarity around decision-making, enhances the effectiveness of program and service delivery across the country, and provides a framework that fosters future-looking strategic thinking. This national consistency facilitates the development of internal planning capabilities that in turn ensures we remain well positioned for current and future implementation.

Consistent with the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat’s Policy on Results, the Coast Guard has established a governance structure to promote results-based decision-making and clear accountability. Internal executive board committees and sub-committees have been established across all Coast Guard directorates and regions, all of which report to the Canadian Coast Guard Management Board, which is the senior advisory body to the Commissioner.

The need for a solid governance framework extends to external partnerships as well. As an example, the Response Branch is engaged in the development of the Canadian Coast Guard Mass Rescue Operations – Maritime framework document, which is based on information collected over years of consultation with internal programs and external partners, including the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), and which defines the roles and responsibilities in the event of a mass rescue operation. The framework also seeks to further delineate the communication intervals and pathways required between the regions, national headquarters, and other partners and stakeholders to allow Coast Guard senior management and staff to carry out the swift and decisive actions needed in an incident of this scope. There is a need for common language and a mutual understanding of roles, responsibilities, intent, and reporting lines internally for the Coast Guard, and between the Coast Guard and other search and rescue (SAR) partners and stakeholders during a mass rescue operation, and to align the plan with existing large-scale incident plans within the CAF, other federal SAR partners, regional plans within the Coast Guard, and provincial consequence management plans. The first draft of the framework document has been completed and was revised by a team of disaster and emergency response subject matter experts. The document has been circulated to regional Coast Guard SAR personnel and the CAF for comment prior to being exercised and finalized. This will provide Coast Guard staff at the regional and headquarters levels with a better understanding of the reporting requirements and intervals for effective actions during a mass rescue operation in the maritime domain, and align the Coast Guard and CAF operations and expectations when responding to large-scale SAR incidents.

As a maritime security partner within the broader Government of Canada community, the Maritime Security Directorate supports Canada’s national security efforts through proactive leadership to initiate, manage and maintain interdepartmental and interagency relationships. As the current chair of the broader Marine Security Operations Centres (MSOCs) governance structure, Coast Guard is leading the effort to renew the program elements with a view to integrating the work of the centres as part of the broader national security infrastructure. Canada’s MSOCs support maritime security in Canada and are an integral component for detecting and monitoring maritime activity in addition to collating, analyzing and coordinating information and intelligence from its monitoring systems. As security threats on land, in the air and at sea continue to evolve, there is a need to analyze the current MSOC functions and outputs with the aim of identifying existing and potential gaps that impact the MSOCs ability to provide maritime domain awareness. The results will thus orient the renewal of the MSOC program by suggesting improvements to policies and procedures that are forward-looking and aligned with whole-of-government best practices.

The Coast Guard is a data-heavy organization, and the successful two-year Business Intelligence/Business Analytics (BI/BA) pilot project showcased the value of optimizing the use of that data to guide decision-making. The emergence of low-cost self-service tools make business analytics possible without significant infrastructure investments, and while the pilot focused exclusively on using integrated business management services data, it clearly demonstrated that services to Canadians could benefit immensely from automation, predictive analysis, and artificial intelligence applications to Coast Guard programs.

A further BI/BA project was recently launched that focuses on seagoing personnel data. As a result, the Coast Guard is now equipped with internal, on-demand dashboards showcasing demographics that are automatically updated daily to help inform decision-making. These dashboards have provided insight into questions regarding crewing the fleet of the future, such as employee retention, costs of leave banks, training strategies, and retirement projections.

Given the advantages of enhanced BI/BA, during the cycle of this business plan, the Coast Guard will be furthering its BI/BA strategy with a view to:

Showcase item: The Arctic Maritime Security Strategy

The Arctic is an integral part of Canada, linked to the nation’s economic, national security and environmental interests. Climate change is transforming the Arctic and making it more accessible, and although an easier access to northern waters offers new opportunities, it also brings new challenges and increased competition in the region. This new reality in the Arctic highlights the need for a greater presence by security organizations, strengthened emergency management, effective military capability, and improved situational awareness. More importantly, the effective management of increased activities in northern waters requires strong collaboration and coordination between Canada and Inuit, First Nations and Métis governments and organizations as well as other Arctic nations.

The Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group is a forum coordinating actions in support of the Government of Canada’s obligations and objectives concerning domestic, continental and international security in the maritime realm. In 2022, the group drafted the updated Maritime Security Strategic Framework 2022-2037, focused on improving Canada’s maritime security and protecting Canadian interests. One of the four pillars of this strategic framework is Arctic security. Under this pillar, the Coast Guard is leading the development of the Arctic Maritime Security Strategy in collaboration with Canada’s security departments and agencies.

The Arctic Maritime Security Strategy aims to protect Canada’s maritime security interests against a range of risks and threats originating from the global maritime domain. The strategy recognizes Canada’s multi-agency approach to maritime security, and the need for consistency, unity of effort and complementary approaches among the federal and international community to address Arctic priorities.

As part of this work, the Coast Guard is reviewing Canadian capabilities, identifying gaps, and providing solutions correlating to objectives that federal departments will address, either on their own or through interdepartmental collaboration.

In addition, the Arctic Maritime Security Strategy aims to reinforce international cooperation by identifying opportunities for international collaboration on Arctic maritime security initiatives, such as the development of memorandums of understanding to advance shared interests and enable information exchange.

The Coast Guard’s Arctic Maritime Security Strategy is expected to be completed in summer 2023. Once completed, it will be featured prominently as an annex to the broader Maritime Security Strategic Framework.

Integrating risk monitoring and risk management

Integrated risk management is recognized as a core element of effective public administration. In a dynamic and complex environment, organizations require the capacity to recognize, understand, accommodate, and capitalize on new challenges and opportunities. The effective management of risk contributes to improved decision-making, better allocation of resources and, ultimately, better results for Canadians.

Risk management is a crucial component of all areas of the Coast Guard’s daily business. Identifying risks and responding to them allows an organization to make informed decisions related to planning, allocating resources, managing programs, reporting on performance, and setting priorities. While it is impossible to avoid all the problems of the future, it is possible to choose which risks can be tolerated and which risks should be mitigated. An organization can then decide how to best equip itself to face an uncertain future.

The Treasury Board Secretariat’s Framework for the Management of Risk comprises the following elements: identifying, assessing, responding, communicating and monitoring. When risks are identified and understood, organizations are able to make informed decisions and set the best course of action under uncertainty. According to this framework, risk represents the effect of uncertainty on an organization’s objectives. In a Canadian Coast Guard context, this is the likelihood of an event happening and determining the impact of this event on the Coast Guard’s operations and service delivery. Risk management does not necessarily mean risk avoidance in the case of potential threats; it means responding proactively in tolerating or mitigating the threats, and taking advantage of any opportunities to reduce risk threat measures.

One of the key activities of risk management is the development of an organizational risk profile which describes an organization’s key risks. Following the guidance of the Treasury Board Framework for the Management of Risk, the Coast Guard developed a risk profile in collaboration with subject matter experts and regions. There are risk statements for each of the 19 objectives identified in the Coast Guard’s 2021-22 to 2023-24 Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan (IBHRP). The organizational commitments under each of the IBHRP objectives are informed by the risk statements, and form part, but not all, of the mitigation strategies in place for each of the identified risks.

The Coast Guard risk profile is included as Annex B to this IBHRP. In the Annex, the organization’s risk statements have been assessed and ranked numerically across several risk criteria according to Treasury Board Secretariat Framework guidance. Each of these risk criteria has been measured both for their impact, and the likelihood of their occurrence.

Effective risk management is a continuous, proactive and systematic process to understand, manage, and communicate risk across an organization. The risk profile has been incorporated into the annual Coast Guard budget and business planning process as it will allow the Coast Guard to make informed decisions on response strategies and IBHRP commitments. The risk statements and risk assessments from the risk profile support a more accurate prediction of the likelihood and impact of issues with the potential to affect the achievement of the Coast Guard’s strategic objectives. Monitoring of risks requires ongoing attention and will be reviewed on an annual basis.

Departmental initiatives

As part of a departmental initiative, the Coast Guard has replaced its financial system with the Government of Canada standard SAP which went live in April 2021. This will enhance many of the processes the Coast Guard uses daily, including procurement, payments, managing assets and inventories, and developing budgets, and will provide valuable support to our strategic decision-making, as well as enable statutory reporting.

Commitments:

Objective 2: Engaging with partners and stakeholders

The Coast Guard serves many different groups, organizations and stakeholders, with varied, and sometimes competing, interests. Key partners and stakeholders include:

The Coast Guard collaborates internally as well as externally with partners and stakeholders through several engagement mechanisms in order to advance the Coast Guard’s mandate and Government of Canada priorities.

To strengthen the Coast Guard’s internal capacity to manage and benefit from engagement with industry, the Coast Guard will implement the Industry Engagement Strategy over the duration of the business plan. The strategy outlines a series of objectives to increase the Coast Guard’s collective knowledge of the marine industry, improve prioritization of partnerships and activities, enhance information flow within the Coast Guard, and more effectively engage partners and networks. The establishment of an industry engagement working group and an annual process to set and review priorities will facilitate a more coherent, coordinated approach to our relationships with industry.

One of the main mechanisms for industry engagement is the National Marine Advisory Board (NMAB), which serves as a permanent forum for discussion between the Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard and Canada’s shipping industry. Discussion is focused on the needs of marine transportation, the strategic plans and priorities of the Coast Guard, and the services the Coast Guard provides to its clients. NMAB meetings are held biannually in the spring and fall and are co-chaired by the Commissioner and an elected industry representative. The NMAB created a subcommittee on policy and planning to foster more relevant and mutually beneficial dialogue and explore areas of potential collaboration. Subcommittees on marine navigation and e-navigation focus on operational issues and service delivery.

The Regional Marine Advisory Boards bring together Coast Guard and industry to discuss issues of mutual concern related to operations, planning, and Coast Guard services in specific regions. The boards meet in the spring and fall and are co-chaired by the regional Assistant Commissioners and an industry representative.

The regional boards are the Western Marine Advisory Board, Arctic Marine Advisory Board, Great Lakes Marine Advisory Board, Maritime Seacoast Advisory Board, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Advisory Board. The Coast Guard also attends meetings of the Groupe conseil maritime as an observer.

The Coast Guard actively engages with industry through the national and regional Canadian Marine Advisory Council (CMAC), a consultative body coordinated by Transport Canada (TC) that represents parties with an interest in shipping, navigation, and marine pollution matters. Through its standing committees and working groups, CMAC advises TC on matters related to its mandate, including regulatory and legislative issues, operations, and services. National-level CMAC meetings are held biannually, with the Coast Guard hosting a session each spring. Five regional CMAC meetings are organized with varying levels of engagement with the Coast Guard.

The regulatory framework that supports Canada’s marine safety regime is built on domestic and international agreements and commitments — all focused first and foremost on preventing accidents from occurring. From this framework bore subsequent domestic interdepartmental working groups intended to support marine safety and security, such as the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group, and the Northern Interdepartmental Intelligence Working Group, for which Coast Guard is an active and contributing member. In addition to supporting Transport Canada in the work of CMAC and the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the Coast Guard takes a lead role at the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities by contributing to the development of international standards for marine aids to navigation and related services through active participation at its four technical committees and supporting sub-groups.

The Coast Guard participates internationally in three regional coast guard fora and one global forum, namely the Arctic Coast Guard Forum, the North Atlantic Coast Guard Forum, and the North Pacific Coast Guard Forum, as well as the Coast Guard Global Summit. These multilateral fora bring together coast guard and maritime organizations from relevant regions to share expertise and best practices in support of a safer and more secure marine environment.

The Coast Guard is currently advancing three bilateral cooperation plans—the Danish Joint Arctic Command, the Norwegian Coastal Administration, and the Norwegian Coast Guard. These cooperation plans, which are national in scope, are the result of previously agreed-upon initiatives and commitments made by the Commissioner to international partners and were developed based on extensive and comprehensive consultations throughout the organization.

Further, the Coast Guard currently has a memorandum of understanding with the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to collaborate and share best practices. The Coast Guard has developed and is implementing an action plan including polar operations in Arctic waters and training opportunities. In early June 2023, members of the Royal Navy received training on the Polar Code at the Coast Guard College.

The Canada-United States Coast Guard Summit is an annual meeting between the Canadian Coast Guard and the United-States Coast Guard that brings together representatives from both organizations to discuss issues of mutual importance. A cornerstone engagement, the summit is a unique opportunity to strengthen communication and cooperation at the senior, operational, and regional levels. Nationally, the two coast guards work closely throughout our shared waterways, including shared icebreaking duties on the Great Lakes; collaboration on marine environmental emergencies (guided by the Canada-US Joint Marine Pollution Contingency Plan); search and rescue (SAR) operations; vessel traffic management; and aids to navigation management.

On behalf of Canada, the Coast Guard chaired the Arctic Council’s Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response (EPPR) Working Group from 2021 to 2023 and coordinates the participation of Canadian technical experts from eight federal departments and agencies. This is one of six working groups of the Arctic Council, which is the leading intergovernmental forum promoting cooperation, coordination, and interaction among the Arctic States, Arctic Inuit, First Nations, and Métis governments and organizations, and other Arctic inhabitants on common issues related to sustainable development and environmental protection. The EPPR Working Group’s work to address gaps, prepare strategies, share information, and enable exercises for large-scale oil spill and SAR operations will be advanced via three expert groups – Marine Environmental Response, Radiation, and SAR.

In support of the Government of Canada’s priority to keep Canadians and Canadian interests secure at home and abroad, the Coast Guard is strengthening its delivery of maritime security capacity-building assistance to developing countries. Coast Guard provides expertise in maritime domain awareness, empowering partner nations to detect, monitor, and respond to activities in their waters. Canada’s comprehensive whole-of-government approach to national security, such as information and resources sharing, is provided to international participants, creating improved regional capacity, and reducing the spread of illicit maritime activities. Complementary assistance in SAR and small boat operations further enables partner nations to improve safety of life at sea, and to mitigate heightened threats to human life stemming from illicit activity.

Multinational capacity building includes participation in strategic international fora. The value of our international presence and expertise through capacity building and working groups is recognized by Global Affairs Canada, who have added Coast Guard as Canadian Delegates to G7++ Friends of Gulf of Guinea, G7 Roma-Lyon Group, and IMO working groups. These fora provide an opportunity to influence regional maritime codes of conduct in East and West Africa and advance Coast Guard’s reputation as a credible, reliable security partner.

With almost all Coast Guard sectors engaging in international activities, the International Engagement Strategy (IES) is intended to identify coherent priorities and deliverables to guide and coordinate the organization’s engagement with international partners toward activities that provide the most value to the Coast Guard. The IES represents the first organization-wide international priority-setting exercise and will enable us to pursue a more strategic and integrated departmental approach to international engagement. The IES will also support situational awareness of international activities across sectors, articulate specific opportunities to pursue international engagements that support our mandate and priorities, and highlight tools available to support international engagement.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The Coast Guard’s changing role at the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities

The International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) was established in 1957. It gathers Marine Aids to Navigation authorities, manufacturers, consultants, as well as scientific and training institutes from all over the world to exchange and compare their experiences and achievements to harmonize Marine Aids to Navigation worldwide and ensure that vessel movements are safe, expeditious and cost-effective while protecting the environment.

On June 8, 2022, Canada officially became the eighth state to ratify the IALA Convention. As of July 2023, 22 nations have ratified the Convention. Upon the signature of the thirtieth instrument of ratification, the Convention will change IALA’s status from that of an international non-governmental organization to an intergovernmental organization.

Canada will take on a more defined leadership role in this important international forum, including increased engagement, coordination, and collaboration with other government partners and the marine industry to promote information sharing and integrated service delivery. This strengthened collaboration between the IALA’s member countries will help align with the changing international standards, requirements and guidelines for marine navigation services.

As head of delegation for Canada, the Canadian Coast Guard will lead the advancement of the digitalization of marine navigation services globally and influence the development of internationally accepted rules and standards for safe, ecological and efficient maritime navigation.

The completion of the IALA ratification process will ensure Canada can continue sharing its world-class technical expertise in fields such as aids to navigation, engineering, sustainability, communications and vessel traffic services.

Objective 3: Engaging with Indigenous partners

Meaningful relationships, dialogue and collaboration with Indigenous partners are part of the foundation of Coast Guard’s work, particularly national and regional governance structures that promote the ongoing exchange of information and discussion of shared objectives.

The Coast Guard has made progress in supporting self-determination of Indigenous Peoples, improving service delivery, and advancing Reconciliation commitments. To accelerate and build on the progress we have made, we will continue to engage and collaborate with Inuit, Métis, and First Nation partners and increase capacity to support safety and security in coastal waters. The Coast Guard is working within the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and with the Department of Justice to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which enshrines the rights for the survival, dignity and well-being of Indigenous Peoples around the world. The Coast Guard is also committed to implementing the Inuit Nunangat Policy, which recognizes the unique priorities and interests of Inuit in Inuit Nunangat. Implementing these is a significant next step in improving relationships between the Coast Guard and First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.

The DFO-Coast Guard Reconciliation Strategy is a public-facing document showing how the Department is advancing Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples. The Coast Guard’s Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP) details specific actions and deliverables under the Reconciliation Strategy that support its implementation. These actions and deliverables, developed by all directorates and regions in Coast Guard, focus on building our internal capacity to strengthen relationships with Indigenous partners as well as supporting the relationships themselves. For fiscal year 2023-24, the Coast Guard continues to prioritize actions which increase procurement of Indigenous products and services, recruitment and retention of Indigenous staff, and intercultural awareness and competency for all staff.

This past year, the Coast Guard implemented its Indigenous Relations National Strategic Framework, which defines tangible processes to capture and organize Reconciliation-focused activities undertaken by the Coast Guard, sets annual organizational priorities to aid in work planning, identifies gaps in processes, policies, programs and resources, and will set the framework for incorporating Indigenous feedback and perspectives. Collaboration is underway with the National Indigenous Fisheries Institute to develop an effective practices and guidance document to establish a process to meaningfully include Indigenous perspectives and voices into the Framework as well as the DFO-Coast Guard Reconciliation Strategy.

Collaboration with coastal Indigenous governments, communities and organizations is key to strengthening safety and protection of the marine environment, including addressing concerns raised in relation to proposed major resource and infrastructure projects. For example, the Indigenous Community Response Training program delivers training to coastal Indigenous communities in British Columbia on maritime search and rescue, environmental response, and the application of the Incident Command System. The initiative resulted in the Coast Guard training more than 500 participants from more than 50 First Nations between 2017 and 2021. The nationalization of this project was funded under the Oceans Protection Plan Renewal and it was reframed to focus primarily on search and rescue training and exercising activities. Funding for Indigenous search and rescue will allow all regions to deliver search and rescue and marine safety training and exercises to local First Nation, Métis and Inuit peoples interested in building marine emergency response knowledge and capacity to improve marine safety awareness in their communities. The Coast Guard also supported the founding of Canada’s first Indigenous-led Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary, which was also funded under the Oceans Protection Plan. The Coastal Nations Coast Guard Auxiliary, in the Western Region, contributes to demonstrating our commitment to increased participation of Indigenous partners across the country in marine incident response.

Commitments:

Objective 4: Supporting the implementation of the Arctic Region

In a move to put Inuit, First Nations, and Métis in the North at the heart of decision-making in the Canadian Arctic, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Coast Guard created a new region focused specifically on the Arctic in 2018. This region is inclusive of all Inuit Nunangat, as well as the remainder of the Northwest Territories, Hudson Bay, James Bay and the communities that reside along their shores.

One of the priorities of the Arctic Region is to advance Reconciliation with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis partners. To implement this mandate, the Coast Guard is working with partners to identify priorities, and is taking a distinctions-based approach to better align and enhance program and service delivery in the North.

The Canadian Arctic constitutes nearly half of Canada’s landmass and a large portion of Canada’s coastline, and is home to more than 120,000 inhabitants, the majority of whom are Inuit, with a smaller number of First Nations and Métis peoples. In support of Arctic community safety and protection of the Arctic marine environment, the Coast Guard works closely with partners to lead and support response in a variety of emergency situations. Demand for Coast Guard services in the Arctic and risk in the marine environment are increasing significantly due to melting ice, increased vessel traffic, increased population and local boating activity, and growing international interest in the Arctic.

As part of the priorities of the Inuit‑Crown Partnership Committee, the Coast Guard is establishing a governance framework in collaboration with Inuit organizations and governments to support program and service delivery priorities in Inuit Nunangat. The Coast Guard is also working in collaboration with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis organizations and governments to advance the priorities under the Arctic and Northern Policy Framework, including safety and security in the Arctic.

Commitments:

Showcase item: The creation and evolution of a stand-alone Arctic Marine Environmental Response and Hazards team

The Coast Guard’s Arctic Region now delivers essential programs and services in the North. The third and final transition phase for the Arctic Region was implemented on April 1, 2021, and included the transition of Environmental Response (ER) personnel and resources to the Arctic. The region now operates a stand-alone ER program with the capacity to meet established levels of service and standards and deliver the full suite of ER program preparedness and response activities across the Canadian Arctic. The team now has a permanent presence in Iqaluit, Nunavut, since this was identified as a priority area for enhancement by Inuit partners in the territory.

The Arctic Region invested significant efforts to enhance the capacity of their ER response team since taking over operational control of the program, and the team will continue to grow significantly into the future.

In alignment with the Oceans Protection Plan Renewal, the Arctic’s ER team will expand further by implementing a vessels of concern (VOC) program, by increasing its hazardous and noxious substance assessment capacity, and by creating a Coastal Marine Response Team to integrate marine response and marine pollution preparedness. As of April 1, 2023, the Arctic Region merged its ER and VOC programs to align with the national reorganization of the Response Branch to form the Marine Environmental and Hazards Response program, and created a new Compliance and Enforcement program. The Arctic Region now provides the full suite of Response programs like all the other Coast Guard regions.

The Arctic Region will continue engaging and strengthening its partnerships with Inuit, First Nations and Métis governments, communities and organizations, territorial and municipal governments, and the United States Coast Guard to enhance relationship building, interoperability and situational awareness in the Arctic Region. It will also continue recruitment efforts to increase its footprint in the region with a focus on the recruitment of Northerners and Inuit, First Nations, and Métis staff.

Budget: Daily operations and long-term investments

The Coast Guard’s budget is determined annually. The Agency’s budget of 1.937 billion dollars (for 2023-24) includes 765 million dollars for day-to-day operations. These funds are primarily allocated to regions to deliver front line services to mariners in lakes, rivers, and ocean areas, as well as to grants and contributions for eligible parties to build capacity and support service delivery.

The remaining amount includes a capital budget of 1.134 billion dollars, which supports the Coast Guard’s five-year integrated investment plan. This includes investments in:

Structure

The Coast Guard is a Special Operating Agency – the largest in the Government of Canada – within Fisheries and Oceans Canada.

The Coast Guard is led by the Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard who is supported by two Deputy Commissioners within headquarters (Shipbuilding and Materiel, and Operations), the Director General of Personnel, as well as Assistant Commissioners for each region (Atlantic, Arctic, Central and Western).

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Coast Guard sectors, branches, programs and regions

The Coast Guard organization includes its headquarters in Ottawa, Ontario, and four regions.

Headquarters is responsible for providing functional leadership to the regions in support of program delivery to ensure consistency in the design and delivery of programs nationally.

Regions are responsible for regional program delivery, in support of national program objectives, including the building and management of relationships with partners and other stakeholders, and the provision of regional expertise in the design and delivery of national programs. While all four regions deliver core Coast Guard programs, the focus in each region is different, depending on climate, geography, and client needs.

Operations Sector

Operations Sector structure

The Operations Sector, headquartered in Ottawa, includes three branches: Fleet and Maritime Services; Response; and Innovation, Planning and Engagement.

The Fleet and Maritime Services Branch has national functional authority for the fleet, operational planning and future capability development, maritime security — including maritime domain awareness, support to security partners, maritime cybersecurity, Marine Security Operations Centres, and international capacity building — and marine navigational programs, which includes waterways management, aids to navigation, Marine Communications and Traffic Services (MCTS), and icebreaking.

The Branch focuses on developing operational requirements for the new classes of ships identified in the Coast Guard’s fleet renewal plan; ensuring operational capability and readiness of the Coast Guard’s fleet of ships and helicopters; ab initio training, a national program that benefits all regions in recruitment for MCTS centres; e-navigation; progressing the levels of service review for Coast Guard’s Icebreaking program; the modernization of marine navigation and safety services; and implementing the Coast Guard’s involvement in national maritime security efforts.

Additionally, the Branch has moved assertively into the future capability space to ensure beneficial outcomes for Canadians. This includes focusing on the creation of an operational fleet decarbonization strategy to fully realize the primacy of operations; developing scenarios for future capability development leading to modularity, interoperability, agility and flexibility to deliver services and collaborate with international partners; leading the low‑carbon fuel and alternative fuels space; leading the integrated decarbonization team with Coast Guard partners; and aspiring to create a future where operations are powered by clean and renewable energy, where the Coast Guard improves its energy efficiency, and where sustainable practices and technologies are promoted across the maritime sector.

The Response Branch has national functional authority for the following response programs: Maritime Search and Rescue, Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, and Compliance and Enforcement. It is also the organizational lead on Incident Management. The Branch is responsible for the development of the operational policies, standards, approaches, and mechanisms required to optimize program delivery; it ensures outcomes and outputs are aligned with allocated resources in support of Coast Guard’s strategic direction and operational requirements; it oversees the development and integration of coastal communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, into Canada through effective and strategic management of a substantive grants and contributions program; and it advances emergency management within the Coast Guard.

While the Coast Guard regions deliver the Response and Fleet and Maritime Services programs, the headquarters Response, and Fleet and Maritime Services teams support them by providing national strategic planning and oversight to allow effective and efficient delivery.

The Innovation, Planning and Engagement Branch provides national leadership for the consistent integration, management, and coordination of the Coast Guard’s strategic and horizontal planning, which encompasses budget planning, corporate and performance reporting, risk management and Indigenous Relations. It also leads internal communications and public events, external engagement with domestic and international partners and service users, and innovation initiatives, both technological and process oriented. It’s also responsible for the implementation and oversight of horizontal initiatives such as the Oceans Protection Plan and of federal commitments related to the Trans Mountain Expansion project, and provides direction and alignment with respect to the Government of Canada’s approach to Reconciliation.

Operations Sector programs and services

The delivery of Coast Guard operational programs and services involves seamless collaboration between the individual program centres of expertise and the Fleet Operational Capability program. The result of this collaboration is the optimal delivery of programs and services on the water using Coast Guard vessels, air cushion vehicles and small crafts, and in the air and on land using Coast Guard helicopters and remotely piloted aircraft systems. It falls to the individual program areas to determine the service user needs, the required geographic coverage, and the appropriate prioritization of the service delivery. The front-line delivery of services on the water or in the air is the responsibility of the fleet.

To accomplish this, a key priority of the sector is to ensure that the Coast Guard has the right people, equipment and training to meet growing expectations and respond effectively.

To build on that commitment, the Coast Guard must continue to strengthen the strong relationships we have developed with our partners to ensure interoperability and a common, consistent approach, both domestically and internationally. Domestically, this is accomplished through a variety of partnerships, including DFO Science and Conservation and Protection, Transport Canada, the National Defence and Royal Canadian Navy, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Canada Border Services Agency, and Environment and Climate Change Canada. Our Marine Security Operations Centres are representative of our collaborations with other departments and agencies, where we work together to share information and intelligence in support of a whole-of-government response to potential marine threats and incidents. Internationally, the Coast Guard is enhancing its leadership at both the Arctic Council via the Emergency Prevention, Preparedness and Response Working Group and at the various Coast Guard fora.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated the importance of preparing our organization for a dynamic, unpredictable future. This includes developing scenarios for fleet needs in 10, 20, 30 years and beyond. To do that, Coast Guard Operations will continue to evolve as an agile, innovative sector aligned with operational requirements and practical applications.

These complex, uncertain times require an unprecedented level of leadership, cooperation, and forethought. Now and in the coming years, Coast Guard Operations will take proactive, decisive action to address whatever challenges lay ahead.

Incident Management

The Incident Management Directorate provides horizontal support to the two Response programs: Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, and Search and Rescue, enabling them to deliver effective responses to marine incidents within Canadian waters. This includes developing tools that will enable integrated response to incidents, enhancing mission readiness through the use of incident management processes during training exercises and response, as well as sustaining the application of the Incident Command System and broader incident management structure for the Coast Guard. The Incident Management Directorate also develops grants and contribution agreements, governance and guidance, and is responsible for administering and managing the contribution funding, providing national oversight and quality assurance functions for cost recovery activities for the Response programs, and supporting emergency management planning for the Coast Guard by identifying program requirements and developing contingency plans.

Fleet Operational Capability

The Fleet Operational Capability program includes fleet operations, fleet management, and the staffing of fleet personnel. The program ensures that certified professionals safely operate vessels, air cushion vehicles, helicopters, remotely piloted aircraft systems, and small crafts, and that they are ready to respond to on-water and marine-related needs.

The program is guided by a number of international conventions and domestic marine-related regulations such as the International Safety Management Code, the International Ship and Port Facility Security Code, and the International Labour Code (applicable to seafarers).

Search and Rescue

The Coast Guard’s Maritime Search and Rescue (SAR) program leads, delivers, and maintains preparedness for the maritime component of the federal SAR system. The Coast Guard’s international responsibilities include delivering and maintaining preparedness for a 5.3 million km2 area including all oceanic, coastal and major inland waters (Great Lakes, St. Lawrence Seaway and Lake Melville). This is accomplished with the support of stakeholders and partners, including the Canadian Coast Guard auxiliaries and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF). In addition to dedicated primary Coast Guard SAR vessels and a seasonal inshore rescue boat program, every Coast Guard vessel has a secondary responsibility to support maritime SAR. Through communication, coordination, and the delivery of maritime SAR response and operational awareness, the program increases the chances of rescue for mariners caught in potentially dangerous on-water situations.

The Coast Guard’s SAR program:

Marine Environmental and Hazards Response

On April 1, 2023, the Coast Guard integrated the Environmental Response and Vessels of Concern programs within the Response Branch to form the Marine Environmental and Hazards Response program, and established a new Compliance and Enforcement program.

The Coast Guard will continue to play a leadership role in the response to ship-source spills, mystery-source spills, pollution incidents occurring at oil handling facilities as a result of loading or unloading oil to or from ships, and spills from any source originating in foreign waters that impact Canadian waters. The objective remains to minimize the environmental, economic, and public safety impacts of marine pollution incidents.

In addition, the Coast Guard’s newly amalgamated response program will manage risks and hazards created by vessels and wrecks in Canadian waters. The program will contribute to the health and safety and socio-economic interests of the Canadian public, as well as to the protection of the marine environment and physical infrastructures.

Compliance and Enforcement

The newly established Compliance and Enforcement program will support efforts to increase accountability for those whose actions create maritime hazards as defined in the Canada Shipping Act and the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act. The program will formalize the policy and operational requirements that will allow the Coast Guard to verify compliance and take the necessary enforcement actions under its legislated mandate to hold vessel owners accountable in Canadian waters. The Coast Guard will work collaboratively with other federal and Indigenous partners to target the highest-risk cases. Like the Marine Environmental and Hazards Response program, the Compliance and Enforcement program will contribute to the health and safety and socio-economic interests of the Canadian public, as well as to the protection of the marine environment and physical infrastructures.

Key activities include:

Icebreaking Services

Canada is a maritime nation with two icebreaking seasons – the Canadian Arctic in the summer, and southern Canada (Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of St. Lawrence, St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes) in the winter. Given the challenges and extremes of Canadian geography and climate, icebreaking services are essential to facilitate safe and accessible navigation by Canadian and international commercial marine transportation sectors, to keep southern Canadian ports open during the winter, and to support community resupply in the summer and fishers through and around ice-covered Canadian waters.

The Icebreaking Services program:

Aids to Navigation

Canada’s aids to navigation system is the backbone of marine safety, accessibility of waters and efficiency of vessel movements. The program includes visual aids (fixed and floating, such as buoys, lighted beacons, and light stations), electronic aids and beacons, and the Automatic Information System aids to navigation. The program is also responsible for the publication of marine safety information for public and industry consumption.

On a day-to-day basis, the Aids to Navigation program helps mariners navigate safely and efficiently by:

Waterways Management

Canada’s waterways and maritime channels are the trade routes that ensure the safe, secure, and efficient movement of goods to Canadian and overseas markets. This program:

The Waterways Management program supports the Canadian Coast Guard’s efforts for channel maintenance, as stated in the Oceans Act, by:

Maritime Security

In 2004, the Government of Canada identified the on-water resources and maritime information collection capacity of the Coast Guard as having a key role in supporting national security. Coast Guard involvement in maritime security is derived from its obligation under the National Security Policy, which established the Marine Security Operations Centres and amended the Oceans Act to provide the Minister of Fisheries, Oceans, and the Canadian Coast Guard with the mandate to support other government departments and agencies by supplying ships, aircraft, and marine services. This includes Coast Guard support to federal security and law enforcement organizations.

As a maritime security partner within government, the Coast Guard’s Maritime Security program:

Marine Communications and Traffic Services

Marine Communications and Traffic Services (MCTS) is a national program that provides communication for ships in distress and monitors vessel traffic movements to reduce the probability of vessel collisions and groundings. It’s one of the cornerstone programs for the collection and dissemination of marine information in Canadian waters. Using extensive communication network systems, MCTS officers are prepared to respond 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, contributing to the safety of life at sea, the protection of the marine environment, the safe and efficient navigation of shipping in Canadian waterways, and maritime domain awareness.

Services include:

e-Navigation

e-Navigation is defined by the International Maritime Organization as the “harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation and analysis of marine information on board and ashore by electronic means to enhance berth to berth navigation and related services for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment.”

The Coast Guard is the lead government agency for the implementation of the Canadian e‑navigation initiative, which includes:

Innovation, Planning and Engagement

The Innovation, Planning and Engagement Branch provides national leadership for the consistent integration, management, and coordination of the Canadian Coast Guard’s:

Services include:

Shipbuilding and Materiel Sector

Shipbuilding and Materiel Sector structure

The Shipbuilding and Materiel Sector, located in headquarters, includes two branches: Vessel Procurement and Integrated Technical Services.

The Vessel Procurement Branch is responsible for the acquisition and delivery of large vessels, helicopters and small vessels, as well as the development of new classes of vessels, vessel design, program management, business analysis, and policy support.

The Integrated Technical Services Branch delivers technology integration solutions in order to ensure that the Coast Guard’s complex and varied physical assets – managed at optimal life-cycle costs – are capable, reliable, and available to deliver Coast Guard programs to Canadians.

Shipbuilding and Materiel Sector programs

Operational excellence demands technical readiness. The Shipbuilding and Materiel mandate is the “cradle to grave” materiel responsibility for fleet and shore-based Coast Guard assets to generate operational capability. This important mission spans the spectrum from building new classes of ships to effecting ongoing maintenance for a varied fleet and shore-based asset base to enhancing life-cycle management practices to disposing of surplus materiel in a responsible manner. In the execution of this mandate, the sector works closely with headquarters and regional operational staff to understand the requirement, and is supported by a wide range of other government departments stakeholders. The sector links naturally with Public Services and Procurement Canada contracting managers and Transport Canada regulatory officials and relies on the expertise of our domestic ship building and ship repair industry, always mindful of the requirement to derive value for money for Canadian taxpayers.

Now more than ever, the Coast Guard has the resources and expertise to recapitalize its fleet assets to support an Agency mandate that continues to grow in terms of scope and demand. Significant investments have been committed for new Coast Guard assets, and the Coast Guard will be building ships for the next 20 to 25 years. This generational opportunity involves not simply replacing aging ships with the same capability and similar technology, but introducing “multitaskable” ships with emerging and environmentally sensitive technologies so that the new ships serve the Coast Guard for the next 40 years.

The sector is also responsible to manage the resources available to maintain the current fleet until new ships are delivered into service and for lifecycle management of fleet and shore-based assets, which requires understanding their condition, analyzing the risks, and proactively addressing identified risks to promote safe operation and generate technical readiness. In doing so, it has a commitment to working diligently and collaboratively to further institutionalize the concepts of technical risk management, project and program management, life-cycle management, and stewardship of public funds.

Fleet Procurement

The Fleet Procurement program is responsible for the management of the design and construction of new large and small vessels, air cushion vehicles, and helicopters. It is also responsible for the management of procurement based interim measures to support the operational requirements identified in the Fleet Renewal Plan and the Integrated Investment Plan.

The program provides project management support to ensure effective and efficient project integration, scope, time, cost, quality, human resources, communications, risk, and procurement. Activities associated with fleet procurement are guided by a number of international and national trade agreements; legal instruments such as the Financial Administration Act and Government Contract Regulations, as well as policies, directives, and guidelines provided by Treasury Board, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Fleet Maintenance

The Fleet Maintenance program ensures that the Coast Guard’s vessels, air cushion vehicles, helicopters, and small crafts are available and reliable for the delivery of Coast Guard programs. The program also ensures the availability and reliability of these assets through life cycle investment planning, engineering, maintenance, and disposal services.

Activities associated with fleet maintenance are guided by a number of international and national trade agreements, legal instruments such as the Financial Administration Act and Government Contract Regulations, as well as policies, directives, and guidelines provided by Treasury Board, the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, and Public Services and Procurement Canada.

Shore-Based Asset Readiness

The Shore-Based Asset Readiness (SBAR) program ensures that the non-fleet assets are available and reliable to deliver Coast Guard programs. The programs supported by SBAR are Aids to Navigation, Marine Communications and Traffic Services, Icebreaking, and Marine Environmental and Hazards Response.

These non-fleet assets include fixed and floating aids to navigation, such as visual aids (e.g., buoys and daymarks), aural aids (e.g., fog horns) and radar aids (e.g., reflectors and beacons), and long-range marine aids. They also include the electronic communication and navigation systems delivered through a network of radar, microwave dishes, radios, the information technology tools delivered via more than 300 remote installations, and marine environmental and hazards response physical assets used for spill containment (e.g., boom), collection (e.g., skimmers), and storage (e.g., barges).

The Shore-Based Asset Readiness program ensures the availability and reliability of these assets through life cycle investment planning, engineering, acquisition, maintenance, and disposal services.

Personnel Branch

Based on the recognition of the dedicated planning and resources that are needed to support our people, the Personnel Branch was created to integrate the College, Operational Personnel and Certification, and Force Generation functions. The Personnel Branch has been hard at work implementing the departmental policies that support the recruitment, retention, career development, and health of employees as well as ensuring operational marine related needs, certification requirements, and tactical training are provided and maintained.

Personnel Branch structure

The Personnel Branch includes three sections: the College, Force Generation, and Operational Personnel and Certification.

Personnel Branch programs

The Coast Guard is a people-focused organization comprised of a diverse, highly-trained, professional at-the-ready workforce. People are our greatest asset, and the Personnel Branch is focused on ensuring that our employees are trained, agile and operationally ready to deliver services to Canadians.

Never has the role of the Personnel Branch been more critical than now. The Branch exists not only to support the Coast Guard’s more than 6,500 employees, but also to lead initiatives that respond to the current requirements and future needs of the Coast Guard. There is incredible demand for qualified mariners globally, and the Personnel Branch is committed to working with colleagues, partners and other stakeholders to identify our operational personnel requirements and to establish mechanisms to address the current and long-term needs of the Coast Guard.

The Personnel Branch is also embedded into the work of the Fleet Sustainability Initiative (FSI). To ensure organizational readiness to deliver on the Agency’s operational mandate, the Personnel Branch is focusing their work on the development of three separate plans:

The Oceans Protection Plan and the National Shipbuilding Strategy investments allow the Canadian Coast Guard to continue its essential work protecting mariners and the coastal environment, and ensuring the safe and efficient movement of ships that are key to a vibrant economy. Securing skilled certified personnel to design, sail, maintain, and support safe marine navigation will be critical.

The Branch will continue to strive to meet the needs of current and future Coast Guard employees across the regions and at national headquarters through the development of a Personnel operation plan and continue to prioritize all the essential components of a supported workforce —marine related training and certification, work-life arrangements, increase safety prevention to mitigate workforce injuries, recognized employees’ contribution through departmental and operational awards and recognition programs, and supporting overall health.

Canadian Coast Guard College

The Canadian Coast Guard College is the centre of excellence for Coast Guard operational training that educates the marine professionals needed to deliver Coast Guard’s programs in support of marine safety, security, and environmental protection. Located on Cape Breton Island, the College was established in 1965 to ensure a reliable source of professional marine officers and crew for the Coast Guard.

In addition to the officer training program, the College trains Marine Communications and Traffic Services officers, who receive 24-week intensive training programs consisting of mixed theory, practical, simulated, and virtual learning. It also offers operational training to personnel in electronics and informatics, environmental response, and search and rescue.

As the national training organization for the Coast Guard, the College is committed to delivering the highest quality training to support our operational personnel. With new modernized learning platforms, such as OnCourse, as well as new regional learning centres, the College is poised to meet the evolving training needs of the organization. This is essential to ensuring that our people receive the operational training they require to better serve Canadians for years to come.

Regional overview

While the Coast Guard plans and sets policies at a national level to ensure consistency in the delivery of its services, it is the fleet and shore-based personnel in our regions who deliver Coast Guard services. While all four regions deliver core Coast Guard programs, the focus in each region is different depending on climate, geography, and client needs.

Arctic Region

The Arctic Region boundaries were announced in March 2021 and include the Yukon North Slope, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and the marine regions of Hudson Bay and James Bay. This boundary includes all of Inuit Nunangat.

The Canadian Arctic environment is vast, with 162,000 km of coastline and a harsh and challenging climate. Interest and activity in the Arctic continue to rise with growing populations in many of the isolated and remote communities, increased ship traffic, and growing international interest. This leads to a challenging operational environment where less than 14 percent of navigable waters have been surveyed to modern standards. The effects of climate change, including extreme weather and melting permafrost, are leading to increased navigation risk, while Canada is seeing more vessels in the Canadian Arctic.

This impacts food security and marine safety, as well as the cultural and harvesting activities of Arctic communities. There are increased demands to improve marine infrastructure and Coast Guard services, and implement climate change adaptation measures to mitigate increased risk and potential impacts.

The Coast Guard is working closely with Inuit, First Nations, Métis, and Northern partners in the Arctic Region to develop innovative and alternative approaches to service delivery that best meet the needs of communities.

In addition to contributing to the delivery of national priorities, including Reconciliation, the Arctic Region will focus on continued collaboration with Indigenous organizations and governments, industry, provincial and territorial governments, and other federal departments operating in the Arctic on the development of alternative service delivery models, developing plans for the expansion of Coast Guard services, developing an Indigenous recruitment strategy with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and reflecting Northern priorities in policy and program design and implementation.

Increases in Arctic vessel traffic, especially from cruise ships and adventure tourism, as well as international attention on the Canadian Arctic, a growing domestic Arctic population, interest in resource development projects, marine conservation targets, and a rapidly changing climate all have a profound impact on the Canadian Arctic and Coast Guard services.

We expect the demand for marine services in the Canadian Arctic to grow significantly in the coming years. The implementation of our Arctic Region is meant to help address these important issues, while advancing Reconciliation with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis peoples in the Arctic through a collaborative approach to increasing the Coast Guard’s presence in the Arctic.

The Canadian Arctic is vast and diverse, and meeting shared safety, security, environmental, and economic goals requires cooperation. The Coast Guard has a deep, ongoing commitment to working with Inuit, First Nations, Métis peoples, provincial and territorial governments, mariners, and international partners to support marine safety and the protection of the environment on Arctic waters. In the Arctic, we work with partners on an Inuit-Crown, nation-to-nation and government-to-government basis, and from the lens of how to support implementation of current and future land claims, which apply to most of the region.

Arctic communities have expressed concerns about increasing vessel traffic and its impacts on wildlife, habitat, and traditional activities. Communities also want to be empowered to participate with the Coast Guard in search and rescue and environmental response activities.

In the coming years, the Coast Guard is committed to:

The Coast Guard is developing and implementing a human resource plan that seeks to increase employment opportunities for Inuit, First Nations, Métis, and Northerners to join the Coast Guard and guide the Arctic Region’s operations and future program development. The Arctic Region is increasing diversity through the continuation of the Oceans Council of Indigenous Youth, and by building internal capacity on the applicability and principles of local and Indigenous knowledge in service delivery and corporate culture. The Arctic Region is implementing cultural learning into its training and development plans to build an inclusive, dynamic and diverse team, and attract new talent in the Arctic.

Priorities for the next three years include:

Showcase item: The Arctic Strategy

The Arctic Region and the Innovation, Planning and Engagement Branch are finalizing the Coast Guard Arctic Strategy, which articulates the Agency’s level of ambition for enhanced operations and incident responses in the Arctic over the next ten years. The strategy’s foundation originates from numerous engagements on the implementation of the Arctic Region with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis governments and organizations, federal and territorial officials, commercial operators, as well as academic fora.

The Arctic is changing rapidly, driven by climate change, increased economic development, and opening sea routes. As a result, there is a growing interest in the region by both domestic and foreign actors. The Arctic Strategy will guide the Coast Guard in navigating both anticipated risks and opportunities to ensure it is well placed to build renewed relationships with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis, adapt to climate change, respond to maritime incidents, support economic development, and uphold Canada’s enduring sovereignty. It is built on the following strategic pillars: Reconciliation; Cooperation and Collaboration; Modernization and Northernization; and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Workplace. These pillars are foundational to achieving the strategy’s vision and guiding Coast Guard in delivering modernized, innovative, and inclusive programs and services in the Arctic.

Atlantic Region

The Atlantic Region operates in a vast geographical area comprising the four Atlantic provinces. The region delivers services covering more than 29,000 km of shoreline, 2.5 million km2 of continental shelf, and 5 million km2 within the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization Regulatory Zone (2.3 million km2 inside the 200 nautical mile limit, and 2.7 million km2 outside the 200 nautical mile limit). It encompasses the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre Halifax’s area of responsibility for search and rescue, which for this program includes the eastern half of Quebec and the northwest quadrant of the Atlantic Ocean.

The Atlantic Region includes many small coastal communities, and everyone has a connection to the water. The Coast Guard is well known and embedded in every community, which is one of our strengths in the region. Another one of our strengths is that we have a long history of working organically with members and leaders from small communities. For example, some of the local leaders with whom we work are also members of the Coast Guard Auxiliary. They have an in‑depth of understanding of what we do, and this is incredibly valuable.

Now and in the future, we will continue to formalize community engagement and to build these relationships. Whereas in the past we engaged primarily on operational concerns, and we continue to do so, we are also focused on strategic priorities that range from Reconciliation and building our partnerships with Indigenous Peoples to advancing the oceans economy and economic recovery.

The demand for our services is increasing and the expectations of what the Coast Guard can and should do are high. There is a strong demand for the Coast Guard to be part of decision-making tables. Whether it is helping to protect marine mammals such as North Atlantic right whales or addressing vessels of concern, we are part of the marine conversation with leaders in each of the Atlantic provinces, whether that is Indigenous leadership, mayors and city councillors, or provincial or federal representatives and groups.

Like other regions, our workforce needs are top of mind. We are committed to focusing on recruitment and retention, finding ways to build up a qualified workforce, including strategic succession planning and talent development, as well as addressing issues that are deeply important like the pay system, workload management, classifications and staffing delays.

From an operational perspective, in each of the provinces we operate in marine environments that have their own unique challenges. In Newfoundland and Labrador, this includes Placentia Bay and Strait of Belle Isle; in Nova Scotia, the Strait of Canso; in New Brunswick, the Bay of Fundy; and in Prince Edward Island, the Northumberland Strait. Some of our regional risks are ongoing due to a massive and varied operational area — one that faces extreme weather. We operate in an environment that includes year-round commercial activity and traditional seasonal use. We continue to plan and implement measures that address these risks.

Central Region

The Central Region operates in a unique context covering the Great Lakes, the St. Lawrence waterway, and the northern half of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which includes maritime movements impacting one hundred million people who receive goods by sea. This is a vital transportation network for goods traded between North American and more than 59 overseas markets. More than 100 commercial ports and wharves are operational within the region. These activities represent 35 billion dollars in economic activity and 238,000 jobs in Canada and the United States.

The Central Region encompasses more than 50 coastal Indigenous communities and organizations in Ontario and Quebec, with a wide range of priorities and concerns related to Coast Guard’s mandate. The region operates within a context of significant heritage, social and ecological value, and a unique ecosystem of great biological richness.

Some of our biggest risks are related to the increase in the density of vessel traffic, in part driven by major projects, and increasing vessel size. In addition, there are ongoing demands from industry for an extended shipping season, and for more icebreaking, as well as to effectively maintain dredging volumes.

These risks are being mitigated in a number of ways. Operationally, we are maximizing the zonal approach to icebreaking, and supplementing our capacity through icebreaking contracts, as well as supporting increased use of electronic navigation. We are taking a proactive approach to communication and engagement with industry to ensure we work together on these issues.

We also made progress in building relationships with Indigenous partners. There are a wide range of priorities and concerns that will require continued effort and collaboration. We will continue to identify collaboration opportunities, such as training and exercising, ways to better share information, and will focus on contribution agreements and procurement opportunities that encourage and facilitate Indigenous participation.

Recruitment and retention will continue to be a challenge. In order to compete, it will be important to demonstrate the value in joining the Coast Guard and to ensure that we provide the support to our employees including providing a more family-friendly work environment and work-life balance.

The Central Region is a bilingual region, which is both a challenge and a strength. Learning a second language requires an ongoing investment of time and a high level of commitment from the employee, both on and off the job. These requirements can create barriers to the internal development of the workforce and adversely affect employees’ motivation. Our region will continue to support bilingualism by encouraging language training.

As more than 25 percent of the shore-based workforce is eligible to retire in the next five years, it will be a priority for the region to implement robust knowledge transfer before those employees leave the organization, and to develop remaining and new staff through talent management plans. We are in a period of growth and increasing professionalization. What is already in motion for the Coast Guard of the future is a more robust structure, processes, and governance that build organizational maturity. More than ever, we are strongly focused on regional operations, and on fully supporting our operational posture.

Western Region

The Western Region comprises a large landmass (four provinces and the Yukon Territory) as well as 27,000 km of coastline, and the Coast Guard has international search and rescue obligations out to the mid‑Pacific. The Western Region does not experience large swings in on-water seasonality like the other regions (sea ice is non-existent) and therefore experiences a consistently high volume of activity on the water. Almost 50 percent of all Marine Communications and Traffic Services national vessel traffic movements take place in the Western Region.

The recognition of Coast Guard’s efforts, value, and consequently our morale has grown exponentially. In part, this has been part of the national and international spotlight put on Coast Guard in Western Region in recent years. This includes emergency situations and major resource development projects where Coast Guard had a critical role to play, not only in operational aspects such as planning and preparedness, but also in public awareness and confidence in our ability to respond.

Over the next few years, the region will continue working with Indigenous and other coastal communities as partners in the marine safety system. We have an opportunity to continue to build and expand lasting relationships and partnerships with the more than 60 First Nations along the coast, and personnel in the region are committed to building on aspects such as joint training opportunities, the community boat program, and much more.

In terms of operational concerns and priorities, the region is focused on the Portland Canal and mining exports, including how that will affect commercial ship traffic and the concerns and rights of Indigenous partners.

For the inside passage, the region is looking at what assets are needed related to tug traffic. In the Kitimat Corridor, areas of concern include the impacts of liquid natural gas developments and route management. Seymour Narrows is an area where there is substantial cruise ship and tug traffic, thus increasing operational risks. We will continue to assess and respond to these risks, and to integrate an all coast/all hazards review of gaps and mitigation.

One of our greatest advances in Coast Guard is learning and building on how we can work together to expand our delivery of services and meet shared goals. Adopting the Incident Command System is one of those methods, as the region has experienced firsthand how including Indigenous, provincial partners and others into the shared decision-making of Unified Command makes for a much more effective response.

The coming years will include efforts to increase the diversity and inclusion of the workforce, and to leverage the ingenuity of all Coast Guard personnel. These are essential to the region’s mission, as is the promotion of innovation. There is a lot of attention paid to how the public service can and should be innovative, willing to take risks, and learn from those endeavours. Our skilled tradespersons in the Coast Guard, and in our mariner community, will remain masterful in that regard.

Annex A: Canadian Coast Guard commitments

Diversity, equity and inclusion

Commitment OPI Due date
Lead the procurement of a marine labour market analysis which will lead to an actionable, measurable plan for effective and respectful outreach, recruitment and retention initiatives focused on designated employment equity groups. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24

Strategic pillar 1: Our people

Objective 1: Attraction and recruitment
Commitment OPI Due date
Deliver the Personnel Operations Plan to support key emerging priorities and build workforce‑planning capacity, capability and expertise to identify scalable solutions to critical crewing shortages through tiger team engagement sessions. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Build business intelligence as well as people analytics capacity and capability to meet the increasing demands for bespoke workforce awareness data to support senior and working‑level decision-making. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Objective 2: Training
Commitment OPI Due date
Maintain and evolve the College Training Governance, taking an active approach to the identification, development, design and delivery of training opportunities to meet the current and projected needs of the organization. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Modernize the identified infrastructures, systems and tools to support the needs of the organization, including the vessel traffic simulator, the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre and the regional learning centres. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Implement the Student Information System while also ensuring the development of the curriculum needed to support departmental initiatives. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Deliver the Command Courses. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Strengthen international engagement opportunities with Marine Training Institutions DG, Personnel Ongoing
Explore opportunities through the Canadian Association of Marine Training Institutions to identify bridging opportunities and associated training in support of rated positions required on vessels. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Utilize the National Operational Training Plan’s data as an objective measure to prioritize training delivery for 2023-24, and assist the fleet and programs in finding third‑party providers for specific training not delivered by the College. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24
Maintain and evolve the OnCourse learning management system, the Student Information System and the regional learning centres supporting the delivery of online, synchronous and asynchronous training, among other learning methods, ensuring the accessibility of learning opportunities for shore-based and seagoing employees alike regardless of location, region or language. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Develop and deliver the electronic chart display and information system as well as the Furuno courses to the fleet personnel and through the officer training program. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24
Objective 3: Career management
Commitment OPI Due date
Lead, maintain and evolve the Coast Guard’s second language training and the talent development and mobility initiatives. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Collect and analyze data pertaining to seagoing employees who leave the Coast Guard to better understand and articulate retention strategies. DG, Personnel Ongoing
Objective 4: Health
Commitment OPI Due date
Strengthen and grow the Coast Guard’s partnership with the Canadian Forces Morale and Welfare Services as an external source model within the four pillars of the Coast Guard’s Health Promotion Program. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24
Conduct a Coast Guard fleet morale needs assessment to understand the current and future needs of the fleet, while developing and delivering tailored programs and services. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24
Repatriate the national health coordinator’s position to HQ Operational Personnel and Certification Directorate from the Central Region, and begin developing a national health promotion services program through the creation of a national centre of expertise. DG, Personnel Q4
2023-24

Strategic pillar 2: Our assets

Objective 1: Delivering the new fleet
Commitment OPI Due date
Continue to deliver new search and rescue lifeboats under contract. DG, VP Q4
2023-24
Award the construction contract and commence work for the near-shore fisheries research vessel. DG, VP Q2
2023-24
Advance construction of the offshore oceanographic science vessel that will replace the CCGS Hudson. DG, VP Q4
2023-24
Start construction on Coast Guard’s Arctic and offshore patrol vessels project. DG, VP Q2
2023-24
Complete the concept design work for the new class of mid-shore multi-mission vessels. DG, VP Q3
2023-24
Award the ancillary contract and commence work on the polar icebreaker at Chantier Davie. DG, VP Q4
2024-25
Advance the construction engineering and the acquisition of long-lead items for the polar icebreaker at Vancouver Shipyards in preparation for construction. DG, VP Q4
2023-24
Award the ancillary contract and commence work on the program icebreakers at Chantier Davie. DG, VP Q2
2023-24
Award and commence work on the construction engineering and material procurement contracts for the multi-purpose vessel project at Vancouver Shipyards. DG, VP Q4
2023-24
Objective 2: Operating and maintaining the new fleet
Commitment OPI Due date
Update the Coast Guard’s multi-year maintenance plan to address any fleet maintenance gaps and new requirements to effectively operate and maintain Coast Guard vessels. DG, ITS Q3
2023-24
Undertake fleet renewal with a key principle of ensuring mission modularity. DG, VP Q4
2023-24
Objective 3: Vessel life extension
Commitment OPI Due date
Continue work on the conversion of the new light icebreaker CCGS Judy LaMarsh. DG, ITS Q2
2024-25
Continue to implement the comprehensive VLE program to increase both the reliability and availability of Coast Guard vessels. Planned work includes: DG, ITS n/a
  • Complete the VLE of CCGS Cygnus
 n/a Q2
2023-24
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS George R. Pearkes
 n/a Q3
2024-25
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Griffon
 n/a Q2
2025-26
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Phase 2)
 n/a Q1
2023-24
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Sir Wilfrid Laurier (Phase 3)
 n/a Q1
2024-25
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent (four phases)
 n/a Q3
2027-28
  • Continue work on the VLE of the 47’ MLB class
 n/a Q1
2028-29
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Terry Fox
 n/a Q3
2025-26
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Martha L. Black
 n/a Q1
2024-25
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Tanu
 n/a Q3
2024-25
  • Continue work on the VLE of the CCGS Mamilossa
 n/a Q3
2024-25
Objective 4: Shore-based assets
Commitment OPI Due date
Continue determining the shore infrastructure requirements needed to support the future fleet’s ship modularity concept integrated with the Fleet Sustainability Initiative based on stakeholder coordination. DG, ITS /
DG, VP		 Q4
2024-25
Assess the current condition of the Coast Guard’s shore-based facilities to ensure the future fleet can be integrated according to the Fleet Sustainability Initiative. DG, ITS Q4
2023-24
Continue implementing the Coast Guard assets and inventory protocols and procedures. DG, ITS Q4
2027-28
Complete the remaining deliverables at all six original search and rescue stations in 2024-25. The three stations in the Atlantic Region have been completed, and work is ongoing for the completion of the deliverables for Victoria and Hartley Bay. The Port Renfrew station will require four years to complete after site selection. DG, ITS Q4
2026-27
Continue to provide training on new environmental response equipment in accordance with the Environmental Response Equipment Modernization Initiative. DG, ITS Q4
2023-24
Complete the Oceans Protection Plan radar and OpNet projects. DG, ITS Q4
2023-24
Renew the College’s IT infrastructure to benefit students, increase bandwidth, and offer remote training over the internet. DG, ITS Q4
2023-24

Strategic pillar 3: Our services

Objective 1: Fulfilling Coast Guard’s contribution to the Oceans Protection Plan
Commitment OPI Due date
Support and coordinate intra and interdepartmental governance of the Oceans Protection Plan to facilitate oversight and decision-making. DG, IPE Q4
2030-31
Contribute to the development of a comprehensive results narrative unifying the Oceans Protection Plan’s diverse initiatives to share how individual Coast Guard projects are connected to the Oceans Protection Plan’s high‑level outcomes. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Engage with Oceans Protection Plan initiatives to identify and monitor risks related to program management to ensure oversight and alignment of horizontal program outcomes. DG, IPE Q4
2030-31
Implement the first release of the Communication Portal for Integrated Incident Response in collaboration with Indigenous partners and gather requirements for future releases. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Engage with Indigenous communities to develop training plans to launch delivery of training under the Indigenous search and rescue training and exercising project. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Continue to engage with Indigenous and Auxiliary partners to deliver the Indigenous Community Boat Volunteer Program. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Provide on-site response capacity for the burning and spill treating agents field trials as part of the multi-partner research initiatives. DG, Response Q2
2024-25
Objective 2: Major resource projects
Commitment OPI Due date
Continue to work with Indigenous groups and coastal communities through the Trans Mountain Expansion Co-Developing Community Response accommodation measure. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Build capacity to support major project assessments by the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada, and through the navigation safety assessment program of the Oceans Protection Plan. DG, IPE Q3
2023-24
Objective 3: Reviewing Levels of Service
Commitment OPI Due date
No further commitment required under Objective 3 for 2023-24. n/a n/a
Objective 4: Program readiness
Commitment OPI Due date
Operationalize the new Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary Contribution Agreements, including allocation of new funding. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Develop a readiness profile for all marine navigation programs. DG, FMS Q4
2023-24
Develop a readiness profile for each response program (Marine Environmental and Hazards Response, and Search and Rescue) focusing on an assessment of the three principal elements of readiness (people, assets, and capacity demand) in order to identify gaps between current needs and anticipated future mission requirements. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Objective 5: Modernizing marine navigation programs
Commitment OPI Due date
Develop a strategy to advance supply chain resiliency through the modernization of marine navigation programs and safety systems including e-navigation/digital waterways initiatives and guide investments in aids to navigation and Marine Communications and Traffic Services. DG, FMS Q3
2023-24
Objective 6: Enabling innovation
Commitment OPI Due date
Ensure the development and sustainability of a Coast Guard operational fleet decarbonization plan. DG, FMS Q4
2023-24
Develop a roadmap to climate resilience with prioritized adaptation and mitigation strategies aligning with Greening Government commitments. DG, IPE Q3
2023-24
Trial and evaluate mobile tethered surveillance platforms to improve response, lower emissions and provide greater maritime domain awareness. DG, IPE and AC, Western Region Q4
2023-24
Advance the development of two novel kinetic energy harvesting technologies with the potential to support Coast Guard: offset the on-board energy requirements of its vessels; enable future asset capability through use of distributed sensors systems aboard vessels or aids to navigation; reduce stress/fatigue of ship materials, and enhance vessel crew/operator comfort. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Provide high quality, timely intelligence on marine contamination, ice condition and coastal ecosystems by developing, demonstrating and testing a prototype Earth Observation and Monitoring System. DG, IPE Q4
2022-23

Strategic pillar 4: Our governance

Objective 1: Strengthening national policies, processes, procedures and systems
Commitment OPI Due date
In collaboration with Public Services and Procurement Canada and Transport Canada, assist in the development of a standard for Canadian vessel recycling facilities to ensure environmentally sound recycling of the Coast Guard’s surplus vessels and vessels of concern. DG, ITS Q4
2024-25
Operationalize the reorganization of the Response Branch and transition into service the objectives of the Vessels of Concern program as identified under the Oceans Protection Plan. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Develop a continuous improvement manual and supporting tools to enable the implementation of the Continuous Improvement Framework. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Modernize intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance systems through the expanded use of autonomous systems, artificial intelligence data analysis, as well as improved data processing, exploitation, and dissemination to enhance maritime domain awareness. DG, FMS Q4
2023-24
Continue as project authority for the Marine Security Operations Centres third‑party renewal and oversee the development of the evaluation plan and the conduct of the evaluation. DG, FMS Q1
2023-24
Continue to implement a more predictable costing model that incorporates a fixed salary cost for each vessel and based on a crewing factor and human‑resource implementation plan that will enable the crewing factor to reach its recommended level while prioritizing key seagoing positions. DG, FMS Q4
2023-24
Review and implement a systematic approach to identify and mitigate safety risks during Coast Guard operations in order to improve the overall safety culture and ensure the Agency can deliver mandated programs. DC, Operations Ongoing
Develop a long-term strategy to articulate the organization’s vision to 2050 and beyond, taking into consideration the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, impacts of climate change, the urgent need to digitalize marine navigation services, international relations, a growing interest in the Arctic, fleet renewal, and the changing workforce. DG, IPE Q3
2023-24
In alignment with the Coast Guard budget and business planning cycle, update the Coast Guard’s risk statements and risk assessments to help inform and guide the Agency’s Integrated Business and Human Resource Plan strategic objectives and respective commitments. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Publish a Coast Guard governance framework. DG, IPE Q1
2023-24
Establish a robust risk-based multi-year planning process in collaboration with Transport Canada to address wrecked, abandoned and hazardous vessels in anticipation of the Vessel Remediation Fund. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Implement an enterprise-wide approach to administering and governing grants and contributions that takes into account the latest terms and conditions and the recent growth of the Coast Guard’s Vote 10 portfolio. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Develop the framework for the exercise planning cycle to implement a multi‑year all‑hazard exercise plan. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Develop a national concept of operations for emergency coordination centres to provide off-site support to incidents. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Objective 2: Engaging with partners and stakeholders
Commitment OPI Due date
Continue to serve as co-chair for the CANUS Maritime Domain Awareness Cyber Assessment Working Group and chair of the newly established Five Eyes Maritime Domain Awareness Cyber Assessment Working Group. The Coast Guard will continue its leadership efforts by advancing maritime cybersecurity within these partnerships and by sponsoring an annual cybersecurity industry day. DG, FMS Ongoing
Act as deputy chair in the Marine Security Operations Centre Governance Committees for a one-year term during fiscal year 2023-24. DG, FMS Q1
2023-24
Continue to engage Coast Guard stakeholders to inform Coast Guard’s priorities so we continue to better serve our clients, and adjust requirements and needs through regular reporting of the International and Industry Engagement strategies. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Develop and begin implementation of a strategy to engage with defence attachés in Canada, to strengthen engagement with other coast guards. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Develop and begin implementation of a domestic engagement strategy to strengthen relationships with other government departments, including appearances at the Parliamentary Committee in support of the Coast Guard’s objectives. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Support the implementation of the stakeholder database to drive data driven decision-making in engagement activities. DG, IPE Q3
2023-24
Objective 3: Engaging with Indigenous partners
Commitment OPI Due date
Support negotiations of Reconciliation agreements, arrangements, and frameworks which build meaningful and long-term relationships with Indigenous partners to empower communities with knowledge, personnel, training and equipment to protect culturally important and sacred sites on their traditional territories as well as to co‑develop roles for Indigenous communities in the broader marine safety regime. DG, IPE and DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Through relevant Coast Guard governance structures, ensure that Indigenous concerns and interests are widely understood across the agency and increasingly embedded in policies, programs, and activities. DG, IPE and DG Response Q4
2023-24
Continue to implement, monitor, track, and report on Coast Guard’s Reconciliation Action Plan, and conduct an annual review to reflect the Coast Guard’s commitments to its Reconciliation priorities with First Nations, Métis and Inuit. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Develop a national intercultural awareness training program in collaboration with Inuit, First Nations and Métis. DG, IPE Q4
2023-24
Engage with Indigenous communities to co-develop a framework for addressing hazardous vessels, and to identify and advance pilot initiatives, where feasible. DG, Response Q4
2023-24
Objective 4: Supporting the implementation of the Arctic Region
Commitment OPI Due date
Develop a Coast Guard interdepartmental Arctic Maritime Security Strategy as part of Coast Guard’s commitment within the Interdepartmental Marine Security Working Group. DG, FMS Q2
2023-24
Collaborate with Inuit organizations and governments to support the implementation of service delivery priorities in Inuit Nunangat, and develop a work plan to implement the Inuit Nunangat Policy within Coast Guard as well as a reporting structure to track progress as per the Inuit-Crown Partnership Committee. AC, Arctic Region Q4
2023-24
Lead the development of a joint DFO-Coast Guard Northern recruitment and retention strategy in collaboration with Inuit, First Nations and Métis. AC, Arctic Region Q4
2023-24
Develop and publish the Coast Guard Arctic Strategy. AC, Arctic Region and DG, IPE Q4
2023-24

Annex B: Canadian Coast Guard risk profile: Assessment and statements

Canadian Coast Guard risk assessment

Image décrite ci-dessous
Text version: Canadian Coast Guard risk assessment
Objective Risk score 2022-23 Risk level
Attraction and Recruitment 164 High
Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems 121 High
Delivering the New Fleet 111 High
Attraction and Recruitment 111 High
Career Management 108 High
Training 102 High
Modernizing Marine Navigation Program and Safety Services 101 High
Delivering the New Fleet 97.3 Medium
Operating and Maintaining the New Fleet / Vessel Life Extension / Delivering the new Fleet / Shore-based Assets 96.5 Medium
Health 83 Medium
Supporting the Implementation of the Arctic Region 68 Medium
Enabling Innovation 65 Medium
Engaging with Indigenous Partners 64 Medium
Health 56 Low
Reviewing Levels of Service 55.5 Low
Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems 49 Low
Reviewing Levels of Service 47 Low
Major Resource Projects / Fulfilling the Coast Guard’s contribution to the Oceans Protection Plan 42 Low
Program Readiness 39.3 Low
Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems 36.5 Low
Engaging with Partners and Stakeholders 34 Low
Canadian Coast Guard risk statements
Pillar Objective Risk Risk score 2022-23Notes* Risk score 2021-22Notes*
People Attraction and Recruitment Not addressing key at-risk positions of front line operational personnel could reduce the capacity to deliver programs and services to Canadians. 164 164
Governance Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems If the Coast Guard Safety Management System does not provide a systematic approach in managing safety risks in operations, it will not be fully effective in maintaining safe operations, therefore impacting Coast Guard’s abilities to deliver our mandated programs and the overall safety culture. 121 n/a
Assets Delivering the New Fleet Not meeting the required timelines for the delivery of the new fleet could result in operational capacity gaps and impact the levels of service. 111 124
People Attraction and Recruitment Not utilizing and leveraging social media and technology could impact the Agency’s recruitment strategies, recruitment levels and meeting of the Federal Public Service goals to improve diversity, equity and inclusion. 111 111
People Career Management Not ensuring appropriate developmental opportunities could impact recruitment and retention of employees. 108 108
People Training Not updating technological tools and regulatory and policy oversight will prevent the Coast Guard from optimizing service delivery and from meeting the information needs of the Agency, other federal service delivery partners, and service users. 102 100
Services Modernizing Marine Navigation Program and Safety Services Not updating technological tools and regulatory and policy oversight will prevent the Coast Guard from optimizing service delivery and from meeting the information needs of the Agency, other federal service delivery partners, and service users. 101 95
Assets Delivering the New Fleet Not delivering new ships in a timely manner could result in program capability misalignment given limited flexibility within the fleet renewal plan and interim measures to maintain operational capacity. 97.3 86
Assets Operating and Maintaining the New Fleet / Vessel Life Extension / Delivering the new Fleet / Shore-based Assets Not having an ongoing focus on project management, technical and planning excellence could impact the operations and maintenance of Coast Guard assets. 96.5 101
People Health Not communicating the Coast Guard vision for holistic health, incorporating it into personnel retention practices and the overall Coast Guard culture, and train and support its personnel, will impact the Coast Guard’s ability to foster a healthy, resourced and agile workforce. 83 72
Governance Supporting the Implementation of the Arctic Region Not continuing the implementation of the Arctic Region in a collaborative manner with Inuit, First Nations, and Métis partners and guided by the five pillars from the “What we Heard” report, then the Coast Guard will not benefit from the trust developed with its Inuit and Indigenous partners to enhance service delivery. 68 79
Services Enabling Innovation Not continuing innovation through the use of evolving technology, the Coast Guard may not be able to meet the targets set out in the Greening Government Strategy and the Federal Sustainable Development Strategy. 65 65
Governance Engaging with Indigenous Partners If the Coast Guard does not continue to engage respectfully and appropriately with its Indigenous partners, there is a risk of not adhering to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act, not respecting Canada’s obligations regarding historic and modern treaties, and overall negative impacts on the Coast Guard’s reputation. 64 39
People Health If the Safety Management System does not promote a logical approach in occupational health and safety hazard identification, there is a risk that existing safety procedures will not be fully effective in protecting employees. 56 n/a
Services Reviewing Levels of Service If the levels of service are not reviewed on a regular basis, then there is a risk that the services may not reflect the current marine environment or the current needs of service users. 55.5 36
Governance Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems Not having knowledge transfer and flexibility of the key Coast Guard enablers to adapt to our business requirements will impact the capability for the Coast Guard to deliver programs and services to Canadians. 49 n/a
Services Reviewing Levels of Service If service users do not see their recommendations are adequately assessed and considered for implementation, then there is risk to the established partnership and service delivery model that requires cooperation between the Coast Guard and service users. 47 46
Services Major Resource Projects / Fulfilling the Coast Guard’s contribution to the Oceans Protection Plan Not continuing the collaboration with partners to implement the multiple ongoing initiatives and investments, Government of Canada priorities related to the protection of the marine environment will not be adequately supported. 42 60
Services Program Readiness Not having a readiness profile will lead to programs not being able to optimize the resourcing of people, assets, and fully understand and assess capacity demand in order to identify gaps between current needs and anticipated future program requirements. 39.3 62
Governance Strengthening National Policies, Processes, Procedures, and Systems By not having clear roles and responsibilities among multiple federal partners, the Coast Guard will not demonstrate the culture of continuous improvement and optimized service delivery may be a challenge. 36.5 54
Governance Engaging with Partners and Stakeholders Not engaging industry and other Coast Guard stakeholders in an effective and coordinated manner will make the Coast Guard unable to deliver on its mandate, advance strategic and Government of Canada priorities. 34 20
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