Letter: Chopper relocation doesn’t pass the smell test

In a press release, Vince Hawkes, commissioner of the OPP, has made some claims with respect to the relocation of the OPP helicopter from Sudbury to Orillia that I find quite puzzling.

First off, it now appears that the reason for the relocation is not to save $254,000 per year as was the original position.

The reason now is to provide better service to the residents of Sudbury and points north, as well as all of Ontario, by centralizing maintenance at the headquarters in Orillia.

Apparently, according to Mr. Hawkes, all Ontarians will be better served if both helicopters are inspected and maintained in a single hangar located in Orillia.

Mr. Hawkes states, “Down time for both helicopters will be reduced and safety improved because the senior engineer is located in Orillia, which will make inspections more efficient. Trouble shooting will be easier with two engineers at the same site working together with a common pool of spare parts. Communication will improve with the aviation team in one location, and they will all be closer to technical support from the manufacturer and Transport Canada.”

This statement doesn’t pass the smell test on a number of levels.

The statement they will be closer to technical support from the manufacturer and Transport Canada is absurd.

Technical support by all manufacturers is by way of telephone contact and the occasional visit by a tech rep to all of the bases that your aircraft operate from, so no matter if you have one base or two or 10, tech support availability and quality does not change.

To suggest that one would get superior technical support because Orillia is closer to Fort Erie than Sudbury is patently false.

The statement they will be closer to Transport Canada being located in Orillia is again false, the fact that the Transport Canada Regional Office is located directly across the street from the Sudbury OPP Hangar at the Sudbury airport is a detail that must have been overlooked when preparing the press release.

As far as trouble shooting is concerned, the best tools for accomplishing that is telephone and Internet access, as opposed to having two engineers in the same hangar. Trouble shooting is routinely carried out via telephone communications to very remote locations throughout the world and is not dependent on multiple engineers attending at the helicopter’s location to make it easier.

The commissioner states the Sudbury-based helicopter responded to 185 calls south of Orillia between May 2011 and September 2014 and 165 to the north of Sudbury. How many of those calls were as a result of the Orillia-based helicopter not being able to respond, and what was the reason — weather or unserviceability of the Orillia helicopter?

If you take a look at the total number of service calls for each base, they look pretty even: Sudbury at 347 and Orillia at 337.

As I stated earlier, this whole move to relocate does not pass the smell test. It would seem that a big part of the concerns being raised by Mr. Hawkes centre around the serviceability and inspection of the helicopters that the OPP are currently operating.

Dan Melanson
President, Trend Tec Canada