The Canadian Coast Guard is on a hiring spree, looking to fill 150 positions in B.C. to staff new lifeboat stations, ships and infrastructure projects.

The federal agency is looking to add 500 positions across Canada. While that will not reverse the cuts made under the previous Harper government, it will allow a quicker response to environmental emergencies and search-and-rescue missions, said David Heap, regional director for the coast guard’s integrated business management services.

article continues below

Some of the new positions on the West Coast will be tied to four new lifeboat stations and several new vessels, part of the $1.5-billion Oceans Protection Plan announced in November.

The locations of the stations have not been announced, but they will help fill in “some of the blanks that we’ve currently got up and down the coast,” Heap said.

Port Hardy will also get more resources to beef up the coast guard’s environmental-response capacity along northern Vancouver Island and the central coast.

The federal agency is hosting job fairs and looking to hire mariners, navigators, marine engineers and environmental response personnel, as well as technicians and engineers to work on infrastructure such as radar sites.

“Everything from electronic engineers who know about microwaves and radar and how they work to labourers that are going out on the work crews to help set up some of the shore-side facilities,” Heap said.

Allan Hughes, western director of Unifor 2182, the union representing coast guard workers, said he hasn’t seen details on where the new hires will be based.

But Hughes said he has concerns about what will happen to those positions when funding for the Oceans Protection Plan runs out.

“Unless that money continues after five years … where are those people going to go?” he asked, noting there will be a federal election within that time period.

Heap said none of the 500 positions will replace retiring workers. Upward of 20 per cent of the coast guard’s 4,500 employees could soon be retiring, he said.

“We have the same [aging] demographics as other industries, meaning there’s a lot of people looking to retire in the next five to 10 years,” Heap said.

While the coast guard carries out about 2,800 rescues a year on the Pacific coast, its role includes more than search-and-rescue missions and emergencies.

The crews of the 28 vessels stationed on the West Coast could be tasked to assist the RCMP or the Canada Border Services Agency, conduct scientific research for Environmental Canada or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or conduct hydrography surveys.

“We do a variety of different things along the coast,” Heap said, “and I don’t think the average Canadian knows that we do more than search-and-rescue and environmental response.”

kderosa@timescolonist.com