Military will find crash cause, minister says

Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan swore Thursday night that investigators will figure out what caused one of the military's Cyclone helicopters to crash Wednesday evening off the coast of Greece, leaving one sailor dead and five of the air crew missing.

The voice and data recorders from the chopper have been recovered, Sajjan told The Chronicle Herald Thursday evening.

“This tragedy is absolutely gut-wrenching to everyone, but we're going to get to the bottom of this so that we can prevent incidents like this from happening in the future,” he said.

Restrictions meant to stop the spread of COVID-19 have not hampered the search for the missing helicopter, Sajjan said.

“Absolutely not,” he said. Debris from the chopper crash has been found, but the Cyclone itself has not been located, Sajjan said.

“Right now for us all the efforts are towards finding our missing Canadian Armed Forces members,” he said.

Sajjan wouldn't speculate on the possibility that the five missing flight crew members might never be found as their helicopter went down in extremely deep water. “It's way too early to tell.”

The minister also wouldn't say if HMCS Fredericton, the frigate the helicopter was flying from, would return soon to Halifax. “Right now our focus is on the search and rescue.”

The military's top general has said its Cyclones are now on an operational pause. Sajjan said that doesn't mean they're grounded.

“An operational pause and grounding are two different things,” he said, calling the pause decision prudent. “We take the safety of our people extremely seriously and we want to make sure that we find out what the preliminary results might be from (crash investigators') findings. And the team will get to the bottom of that and the commander of the air force will make the determination of which way to go from there.”