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Summit
The first annual Canada-United States Coast Guard Summit meeting was held June 15 to 16, 2005 in Cleveland, Ohio. The summits were initiated to provide officials of the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) and the United States Coast Guard (USCG) with an opportunity to meet face to face to discuss issues of interest concern and strengthen the longstanding partnership between the two agencies.
The Summit ended with the CCG and the USCG signing a joint statement of intent to increase the already high level of cooperation between the two organizations. At this year’s Summit, held from September 26 to 28 in Halifax, Nova Scotia, CCG Commissioner George Da Pont played host to his U.S. counterpart Admiral Thad Allen, Commandant of the USCG.
Summit Leaders
Appointed Commissioner of the Canadian Coast Guard on September 5, 2006, George Da Pont had been Acting Commissioner of the CCG since December 2005. Admiral Thad Allen assumed the duties of 23rd Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard on May 25, 2006. Prior to that, Admiral Allen was Principal Federal Official in charge of hurricane Katrina response and recovery operations for the U.S. beginning in September 2005.
Canadian Coast Guard
The Canadian Coast Guard is a Special Operating Agency (SOA) within Fisheries and Oceans Canada. It supports the programs of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and of other government departments. The CCG is Canada’s civilian maritime organization and operator of the Government of Canada’s non-military fleet.
The CCG’s mandate, derived principally from the Oceans Act and the Canada Shipping Act, is to provide aids to navigation, marine communications and traffic management services, icebreaking and ice management services and waterway channel maintenance.
In Canada, the responsibility for maritime security and safety is shared among several federal government departments – the Coast Guard, Transport Canada, the RCMP, Citizenship and Immigration and the Department of National Defence.
United States Coast Guard
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) is a military, multi-mission, maritime service within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It is one of the nation's five armed services.
The USCG has a fundamental role in maritime safety, protection of natural resources, maritime mobility and security as well as national defence.
The USCG’s core roles are to protect the public, the environment, and U.S. economic and security interests in any maritime region in which those interests may be at risk, including international waters and America's coasts, ports, and inland waterways.
CCG/USCG Cooperation
The Canadian and the U.S. Coast Guards collaborate in environmental response activities, search and rescue, vessel tracking, marine aids to navigation, icebreaking and research and development projects.
The search and rescue program on the St. Lawrence Seaway system and Great Lakes provides an excellent example of this cooperation. When a distress call is received, the closest Coast Guard vessel able to respond is assigned to the incident, whether in American or Canadian territory. It is not uncommon for USCG resources to respond to incidents in Canadian waters and, conversely, for Canadian resources to respond in US waters.
On the Pacific Coast, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, a cooperative vessel traffic management agreement is in place to ensure safe and efficient navigation and to reduce, to the greatest extent possible, the environmental risks presented by tanker traffic in the Strait and in Washington State’s Puget Sound.
In the Great Lakes, the USCG and CCG coordinate icebreaking activities to pool resources and maximize efficiency. The two agencies also collaborate on the placement, removal and repair of navigational aids along the St. Lawrence Seaway system and in the Great Lakes, to be efficient and avoid duplicating effort.
The two agencies, together with military and police agencies from both countries, periodically carry out joint, role-playing exercises for marine security on the Great Lakes and on the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic coasts. For both countries, the information gained from these exercises is crucial to planning and implementing security measures.
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