The Saskatchewan NDP says the province nearly lost one of its brand-new water bombers when flames breached the La Ronge airport earlier this month - due to no qualified pilots being able to fly it. The province maintains that pilot training is set to resume soon.
Citing publicly available flight information, the Opposition NDP says the Conair Dash 8-Q400AT airtanker was delivered to the province on May 30 – flying from Conair’s facility in Abbotsford, B.C. to the La Ronge area.
Flight records show the bomber has not flown since.
“While people were fleeing their homes and communities were burning, the Sask. Party left a brand new and badly needed air tanker sitting on the tarmac,” NDP MLA Nicole Sarauer said during an event Monday morning.
“The moment this plane arrived; the government should have brought it into action dumping water on the fires burning our communities.”
Furthermore, the NDP say that sources claim the plane was nearly lost on June 2 – as personnel had to move it to another area of the La Ronge airport to prevent it from being lost to the flames.
Minister of Corrections, Policing and Public Safety Tim McLeod said he first learned of the NDP’s accusations on Monday, and called it “unfortunate” that the Opposition is choosing to “politicize a wildfire state of emergency and tragedy.”
“This is not a situation where we had resources that were available that were left on the table - or in this case left on the tarmac,” McLeod said.
According to the minister, due to the plane arriving once the state of emergency was declared – a decision was made to reallocate the pilots training to fly the new aircraft to other duties.
“The reality of the situation is we were already in a state of emergency, the pilots that had been training to operate that plane had received all of the simulator training that they could until that time,” McLeod said.
However, he added that to comply with Transport Canada regulations – the pilots still need to train in the physical aircraft before it can be used.
“The operational decision was made not to remove those four pilots from active duty fighting fires and protecting our communities so that they could train on the new plane, but rather to continue protecting our communities and saving lives,” McLeod said.
He added that it remains a primary focus to have the four pilots complete the training and to use the aircraft during the 2025 wildfire season.
Responding to the question of why the province couldn’t hire other personnel to pilot the new plane – SPSA vice president Steve Roberts said that all available pilots trained to operate the Conair Dash 8-Q400AT airtanker, are currently doing so.
“Everybody who’s certified to fly one of those aircraft in a firefighting role is flying that aircraft in a firefighting role,” he said.
“That’s the bottom line, these are not generic positions. These are specialized positions on a specialized aircraft type, they can’t be hired off the street.”
Roberts says the agency’s training program is expected to pick back up in July.
Additionally, Roberts clarified that the Dash-8, along with several other aircraft at La Ronge’s airport were moved to other areas out of an abundance of caution on June 2.
“It’s not a light aircraft. It would have been towed into place with what’s called a tug,” Roberts said.
“So we moved a number of aircraft that weren’t in operations to the central part of the field to avoid any impact as the fire neared La Ronge in the early stages.”
