Canadians, and I am one, know so little about their Canadian Forces, why they have deteriorated so dreadfully bad. First off, no the Coast Guard isn't policing any more than they did before. If you see them, the odds are they are on training runs. How do I know this? Just about everyday I park about 30 feet from the Coast Guard in French Creek. I read, I nap, I watch the marina action, I ocean gaze, I walk around the boats, and I watch the civilian organization who's name was produced by a committee, no one can remember it. And right beside this rescue group is the Coast Guard vessel. And 98 % of the time it is in port. You can check it out on Marine Tracker, you'll see a red dot at the French Creek Marina. They often go out on Thursdays for their training run, so don't check on Thursdays.... lol.
There were reports a few weeks ago of CF navy vessels out and about along the Strait of Georgia and I didn't believe it, but following up on Marine Tracker I did find them and I thought "Uh, I'm wrong." Until I read an article in the paper and it was on CHEK TV, the reason the navy vessels were out and about was their way to quarantine. They didn't want to bring them back in from training they had been doing until the 14 day self quarantine had passed. They were just out there bouncing around more or less. I used to be in the Navy so I follow this kind of thing more than most, actually more than about 99.9 % of Canadians, which isn't at all hard to do. If you read two articles or more a year about the Canadian military you are in my exclusive club.
For those who challenge my assumption, here's some reading for you:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Canadian_Military?
Now onto the RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police - or Mounties. Just like the Coast Guard, resources are slim to non-existent. Most of the RCMP vessels are small. Imagine a murder at Newcastle Island just off of Nanaimo. It would be embarrassing for the RCMP to have to wait for one of the small ferries that services this island (and aren't running right now), so they have a larger run about for transport.
Here is a link about the RCMP Marine division:
https://www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca/en/gazette/coastal-connection
So I will just do a copy and paste from it:
Remote access
The WCMS unit consists of three 65-foot Catamaran boats: one patrolling the northern coast of the province, and two around the Vancouver Island/lower mainland area. Four officers work on each boat for seven days at a time, in rotation with other members of the 26-person unit.
As the operations commander, Sgt. Rod Pick co-ordinates the activity of all three boats in the unit. While some stops are determined in advance, the boats often respond to calls as they come in.
"First and foremost we assist detachments, whether that's general duty policing or just being that presence," says Pick. "We get into areas that detachments have a hard time getting into — usually remote places only accessible by boat."
The unit helps detachments handle crimes in peripheral communities, including assaults, mischief and liquor control. They also help with community outreach, visiting schools and putting on education initiatives.
So lets review. The coastal distance from Washington State to the Alaskan Panhandle is 600 miles (sorry Canucks, dealing with miles for the Yanks) but the entire coast line, this includes the islands, which number in the thousands, to inlets/fjords/sounds is 25,000 miles. So how effective do you think three boats are?
There is a reasonable marine police presence on the water around the lower mainland, Howe Sound and areas south and a bit west. But all these vessels are from the various police forces, I will just give one link, the Vancouver Police Marine division:
https://vancouver.ca/police/organiz...districts/district-two/marine-unit/index.html
PS: I just checked for any military/Coast Guard presence anywhere on the water along the inside passage from Nanaimo up and one Navy vessel, which is a training unit used by Fleet School at Esquimalt and a navy unit in the Whisky Gulf area, they don't count. And CG vessel is still moored at French Creek and is not out and about. And for you Americans reading this, when you read the word "about" you have to hear it in your head pronounced the Canadian way or it doesn't count.
