The Story of Peter MacKay and His Helicopter

In which military leadership proves once again to have more common sense than political leadership.

Hey! Remember a few months ago when it came to light that Defence Minister Peter MacKay had ordered a search-and-rescue helicopter to pick him up from a fishing vacation in Newfoundland? MacKay explained his use of one only three of the helicopters on the Atlantic Coast as following up on a longstanding offer from the Canadian Forces to see how a search-and-rescue operation works. As it turns out, that was basically a big mound of hooey. Government memos gleaned from access-to-information requests show that the military official in charge of the helicopter squadron used by MacKay had serious concerns about using one of the craft to pick him up. Among them were that it would be too dangerous to land one of the choppers at the camp. Also, this insight from the colonel in charge, one Bruce Ploughman (via the Star):

"So, when the guy who’s fishing at the fishing hole next to the minister sees the big yellow helicopter arrive and decides to use his cell phone to video the minister getting on board and post it on Youtube (sic), who will be answering the mail on that one?"

"If we are tasked to do this we of course will comply,” Ploughman continued. “Given the potential for negative press though, I would likely recommend against it.”

Funny how that worked out in the end, isn't it? The same access request also revealed that there was no reference to the MacKay operation being a search-and-rescue demonstration until well after the trip request had been made. Also, since the helicopter couldn't land at the fishing resort, the chopper had to lower a hoist down to the ground so that MacKay could be lifted up into the chopper. (For some reason the mental image of a senior cabinet minister hanging by a cable attached to a helicopter hovering over the wilds of Newfoundland is really cracking us up here. Maybe it's just us.)