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NUNAVUT
The Canadian Forces and the Rangers will practise search-and-rescue techniques and emergency response during the first of three annual sovereignty operations in the North later this month.

About 150 Canadian Forces personnel - including about 50 Rangers, the army, the air force and the navy - under the command of Joint Task Force North, will gather in Resolute from April 10 to May 1 for Operation Nunalivut 2012.

Nunalivut is Inuktitut for the "land that is ours." One of the goal of the operation is to show the Canadian Forces' capabilities to respond to a simulated mission, said Capt. Sandra Levesque, a public affairs officer with Joint Task Force North. She said the military also wants to enhance its capacity to operate in a challenging and austere environment.

This year's operation involves two scenarios. The first, to be conducted in the vicinity of Beechey Island, involves search-and-rescue training combined with a dive operation, said Levesque. The second one, in the vicinity of Devon Island, east of Cornwallis Island, is a Northern ground search scenario allowing the Rangers to practise area search techniques, including a search simulated situation where a Ranger is lost on the land.

"We practice the portion Canadian Forces would have to play in a simulated mission. We do not have other government agencies with us," said Levesque.

She added each scenario will last about 10 days.

Two transport and search-and-rescue squadrons, one from Greenwood, N.S., the other from Comox, B.C., will conduct High Arctic search-and-rescue training for about five days, supported by a CC-130 Hercules, CH-149 Cormorant and a CC-115 Buffalo, said Levesque. She said they are seizing the opportunity to train at the same time.

As for the diving operation near Beechey Island, 17 clearance and port inspection divers from both coasts will survey the wreckage of the HMS Breadalbane, a rescue ship which sank in 1853, when sent on an ill-fated mission to find the lost Sir John Franklin expedition, with a remote operated vehicle, said Capt. Levesque. She added Canadian Forces will support Defence Research and Development Canada's Northern Watch in the survey.

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