Canadian expert to speak in Melbourne

Inspector (Ret) Lance Valcour OOM, executive director of the Canadian Interoperability Technology Interest Group (CITIG), will present the keynote address at the Comms Connect conference in Melbourne in November.

Inspector Valcour had a 33-year career in the Ottawa Police Service, retiring in 2010. A member of the board of many public service organisations, he has received numerous national and international awards, including being invested as an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Police Forces in 2010 and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012.

We caught up with Inspector Valcour for a quick Q&A about the situation in Canada, and what we can expect to learn from him at the Comms Connect 2013 conference.

Inspector (Ret) Lance Valcour OOM.

Can you please tell us about CITIG, its members and the work it does.

CITIG’s mission is: to improve Canadian public-safety interoperability at home and abroad through collaborative efforts, innovation and leadership. CITIG was first created in 2007 as a partnership between the Tri-Service Chiefs and the Government of Canada. In 2012 CITIG ‘spun-out’ of government to become a not-for-profit corporation under the governance of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs and Paramedic Chiefs of Canada.

How closely interoperable are public safety agencies in Canada? Is there more work to do?

This is really a regional question. For example, in the lower mainland of British Columbia (around Vancouver) and the Province of Nova Scotia there is excellent interoperability. The reason being that Vancouver had a major riot years ago and the Swiss Air crash off the shore of Peggy’s Cove acted as ‘causal factors’ to initiate the building of regional land mobile radio systems.

However, over the past six years, since CITIG was first created, there has been a major shift in jurisdictions across Canada towards improving public-safety interoperability. This is, in large part, due to the creation of the Communications Interoperability Strategy for Canada and the fact that it is based on the Canadian Interoperability Continuum. Both will be discussed at length at Comms Connect in Melbourne.

What are the implications for 700 MHz developments in North America, and Canada in particular?

This is an absolute game changer - a ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to harness 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum just for public safety use. CITIG is very proud of the fact that we were the ones who announced that we were going after this spectrum with our Action 700 program (www.action700.ca).

Since then, we have the entire federal government, all provinces, territories, Chiefs of Police, Fire and Paramedics, Federation of Canadian Municipalities and a host of other governments and groups supporting this effort.

Now that we have consensus, we need to complete our governance work by setting up a not-for-profit corporation that will be licensed to hold the spectrum and begin a series of pilot programs.

Do you see TETRA gaining a foothold in Canada, or is P25 more suited to the country's geographic and demographic spread?

CITIG does not support the use of TETRA by public safety operators in Canada. We support the use of P25.

With only a limited amount of spectrum to go around, some industries and operations seem to be under a ‘spectrum squeeze’ at the moment. What’s the situation for public safety operators in Canada?

Absolutely the same, or worse. We have the longest ‘unprotected’ border in the world with the United States, and 85 per cent of our population lives within about 120 kilometres of the border. This raises all sorts of challenges and, in some frequencies that were not managed effectively years ago, almost zero availability of licences. With 700 and 800 MHz narrowband, the situation is somewhat better, depending on where you are in Canada.

For broadband, we are spending a great deal of time working with our American counterparts to ensure we get it right.

What are the topics you’ll be speaking about in Melbourne in November?

I will be sharing information about our international research into issues such as:

• the need for interoperability and information-management strategic plans at the local, regional, state, national and international levels;
• wireless broadband for public safety; and
• technology trends in public safety, including: Next Generation 9-1-1; location-based services; in-building 3D location and tracking for responders; and Precision Information Environments.

What do you hope to learn about the Australasian situation from your visit?

I have spoken and conducted research in Australia and New Zealand numerous times. I spent a week in Australia just after Black Saturday and interviewed numerous public safety officials and visited the command centres that had managed those horrific wildfires and dealt with the paramedic issues that the extreme heat caused. This is a wonderful chance to revisit this research, meet with many of the same interviewees (and many new leaders) and to gain a better understanding of the new ‘current state’ of public safety communications interoperability in your beautiful country.

We have also been supporting, from a distance, efforts by first-responder groups in Australia to gain access to the same 20 MHz of 700 MHz spectrum that we have in North America. This trip will allow us to continue our dialogue, but this time face to face.