:
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here, and I thank you for the opportunity to address this important proposed legislation.
With me are Michael Baker, director general for preparedness and recovery; Bob Lesser, director general for operations; Suki Wong, deputy director general for critical infrastructure protection; and Tracy Thiessen, director general for coordination, who is responsible for our regional offices.
I have short remarks prepared, and if you wish I could simply start with them.
I should note, to start, that I am here in an acting capacity, as the acting assistant to the deputy minister. That said, the two persons who would be best placed to provide you with information on this bill unfortunately couldn't make it. The senior assistant deputy minister herself is unfortunately away on training and is therefore unavailable, and the director general for emergency management policy is out of the country. Nonetheless, my colleagues and I will do our very best to answer your questions today.
Bill would provide the Government of Canada a new basis on which to meet the challenges of its own internal emergency management activities. It proposes to create the emergency management act in order to address changing risks to Canadians and the need for legislation to help address challenges associated with that.
[Translation]
The Bill strengthens the foundations for the federal role in emergency management and critical infrastructure protection in the 21st century. And it recognizes the need for a coordinated federal response that complements those of other stakeholders and which respects provincial and territorial jurisdiction and authority over provincial emergency matters.
[English]
Canada has indeed faced a range of emergencies. Just to name a few, there was the 1998 ice storm in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, the 2003 outbreak of SARS, and the electricity outages that same year in Ontario. We've witnessed numerous floods in Alberta, New Brunswick, and Quebec, as well as forest fires in B.C. Of course, there are many other examples.
Federal efforts must focus on all potential hazards that Canadians could face, including natural disasters, terrorism or crime, cyber incidents, or other impacts on critical infrastructure. In addition, events such as Hurricane Katrina on the United States gulf coast remind us that Canada must be ready to respond to disasters outside of its borders. As we share our inland border with the United States, we must develop emergency plans with our neighbour for mutual support.
One particular lesson learned from the Hurricane Katrina experience was that governments need to have clearly established frameworks in place to facilitate coordination of their efforts, and they need to have these in place well in advance of any events.
In short, Mr. Chair, the risks facing Canadians continue to evolve. This is due, for example, to the increased incidence of extreme weather and the potential for cyber incidents. Bill aims to bring our statutory framework in step with this evolution. That's why the government has outlined in the proposed legislation how the Ministry of Public Safety and other federal ministries would have the authority necessary to fulfil their roles and to protect Canadians.
Underpinning this proposed legislation are two fundamental principles.
The first is that the Government of Canada understands the need for well-coordinated federal emergency management activity while recognizing and respecting the jurisdictional responsibilities of the provinces and territories. This means in practice that the federal government respects their authority and coordinates federal planning and response with the provinces and territories in partnership, and through them supports local authorities.
The second is that the federal government continues to provide appropriate emergency financial assistance to provinces and territories, building on existing arrangements.
Under the proposed legislation, the Minister of Public Safety would be responsible to exercise leadership by coordinating federal players in their emergency management activities and in cooperating with provincial and territorial governments.
Bill also recognizes the important role played by other entities, namely non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and the private sector. I would note that the proposed legislation reflects that it's not the role only of the federal government to prepare for risks, but that all governments must work together to prevent or mitigate emergencies, to implement responses, and to help communities recover from the effects of emergency events.
The proposed legislation also sets out the Minister of Public Safety's responsibilities in all aspects of emergency management. In the event of an emergency in Canada, it would be the minister's responsibility to coordinate the federal response.
[Translation]
Through this proposed legislation, the Minister would exercise leadership by establishing policies and programs applicable to federal emergency management plans prepared by other ministers.
[English]
Assisting the minister, and in the future under the proposed legislation, is the Government Operations Centre, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring and analyzing potentially imminent or actual emergencies and which coordinates the response to the incidents. With the centre's assistance and that of other ministers, the Minister of Public Safety can advise the federal government of proposed actions and act as the primary contact to support provinces and territories.
It's also important to note that the bill sets out the emergency management responsibilities for all federal ministers to identify risks; to prepare, maintain, and test plans; and to conduct training in relation to those plans. While those responsibilities are new, the bill reaffirms and focuses attention on the importance of these matters for federal government institutions.
Bill does not prescribe the specifics of emergency management activities, rather it allows for innovation and the building of community consensus by all levels of government. However, it does provide for the development and implementation of joint programs, national exercises, training, education, and research related to emergency management, and, very importantly, the promotion of public awareness regarding emergencies.
The bill recognizes that promoting a common approach to emergency management, including the adoption of standards and best practices, can enhance the effectiveness and efficiencies in programs at all levels of government, as well as within the private sector. A good example of this is exercise training programs that test emergency preparedness, where we can and do involve the private sector.
Mr. Chair, I noted earlier that the proposed legislation provides for emergency assistance to provinces. Currently to assist a province or territory to recover from a civil emergency or a natural disaster, the Government of Canada may allocate federal financial assistance to that province or territory through the disaster financial assistance arrangements, or DFAA. Nothing in this proposed legislation would change that. In fact, Bill would become the new legislative vehicle through which the DFAA assistance would be provided to provinces and territories.
Finally, Mr. Chair, when preparing for and during times of an emergency, the government needs to obtain information from the private sector to assess critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and risks, develop emergency management plans, improve warning and reporting systems, and develop better defences and responses. I should note that the information sought is technical in nature; it doesn't include personal information.
Related proposed amendments in the bill to the Access to Information Act are necessary and would allow the government to exchange specific and reliable technical information with private sector partners for critical infrastructure protection and emergency management purposes. Those amendments would encourage information sharing by explicitly recognizing in the Access to Information Act that sensitive private sector critical infrastructure information requires protection from disclosure.
Mr. Chair, in times of emergency, clearly Canadians look to their governments to work together to manage a situation. Preparation for emergencies means that governments must have the capacity to monitor, assess, and prevent identifiable risks and have in place well-tested plans for effective and coordinated action.
[Translation]
will help the federal Government to better serve Canadians before, during and after emergencies.
[English]
My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to your questions.
:
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the officials for the presentation.
It has certainly evolved a long way since I was a child and every town seemed to have the air raid siren. Does anybody remember the air raid siren test when you were a youngster? I do. Some of my colleagues might not; I'm a lot older.
So things have evolved a long way, and by and large, I think Canadians are typically very impressed with the way the various levels of government respond to emergencies. There are always questions afterwards; it seems inevitable.
My first question, in my seven minutes, relates to this. In the first moments of a quickly emerging disaster of whatever kind, somebody, somewhere, has to make the critical decision. In the next ten seconds something has to start here. In the next few moments something has to start. In creating a national emergency management system with this bill, is there a single person or group that on behalf of all levels—accepting that it might be just a local fire, but on anything significant, is there any doubt about who is making the first, instantaneous call on what happens?
You could have a 9/11 kind of situation, which is one type of potential disaster when it involved planes in the air, or a very different kind of emergency, such as the ice storm.
It's sort of like the big bang theory. Something happens in the first instance after the big bang, which is still a mystery, but certainly we don't want any mysteries when it comes to this.
Could you just walk me through the moments of a disaster?
:
I'll start off with the visit.
When we became a new department, we inherited what was there. That didn't meet anybody's needs, so we just totally destroyed it. We have a temporary ops centre that's still there, but early November would probably be a great time to come back. You're certainly welcome to tour that once we get rid of the construction helmets and those kinds of things.
As for what it does, there are a number of main functions. The first one is a monitoring and reporting function. As I mentioned before, there are different areas that it monitors for, and they're fairly wide. It's much more than for emergencies, it's for public safety writ large, if you will. Then there are a number of kinds of products that it will report on. There's one that we call an information bulletin, and it primarily goes to our minister, the minister's staff, and the Privy Council Office, to give them a heads-up. It contains unconfirmed, uncorroborated information, and within thirty minutes we'll come back with what we call a notification. That then comes with accredited and, as best we can, certified information as to what may be occurring.
Depending on that, in the other areas that we have, we gather situational awareness. It's really that whole thing to develop, in more military terms, a common operating picture. With that kind of information, we then take a look at doing a risk assessment. We don't do threat assessments. Those are done by CSIS, the RCMP, DND, etc. We do a risk assessment that asks the questions, “What do we care? What does this mean? And if it does mean something, what do we do? Is there a particular plan that's already in place that we implement, or do we have to develop something to respond specifically to this?” There will be an immediate action plan if we don't have a plan to do that.
Our last function is operations coordination, which is done at the strategic level, which is different from the very pointy end, the tactical level or, say, the mid-level operational level. Within the operations centre right now, the director of the operations centre is from the Canadian Forces. We have a planner from the Canadian Forces who is responsible for their pandemic plan, so he's a highly trained planner. And we are integrating our planning system with the military planning system. We're finding a lot of that is then in line with the 2010 planning for the Olympics. We have former RCMP and CSIS members within the entire Government Operations Centre who look at situational awareness, risk assessment, planning, as I talked about, and ops coordination.
When something happens, if it's very small and very quick.... There are a number of times that you've probably read about in the papers when there are people who are on aircraft who are on the American no-fly list. Sometimes it's required that either Canadians or Americans under NORAD will scramble jets to do protection on that, and then they go through a series of checks to find out whether or not they can confirm a risk or deny a risk. We are immediately involved with five key departments in terms of determining the risk. If there was ever an opportunity or the occasion when it was decided at the highest levels that the aircraft would have to be shot down, we'd be involved in the consequence management of that, notifying the provinces and providing the assistance that would be needed.
Some events will happen in less than twenty minutes. Other events are fairly long-term. Our role with the repatriation of the Lebanese citizens took about three or four weeks. By and large, that was a fairly simple thing for us as the interlocutors between Foreign Affairs Canada and the provinces and the local municipalities, like Montreal. Certainly Quebec did an excellent job of looking after returning citizens for the first 72 hours. Ontario and the City of Ottawa equally did some excellent work there. So we would also perform that liaison function, that situational awareness, that passing of that kind of information.
As an event grows for us to level two and then level three, simplistically we'd do more of the same, but we'd bring in people from other departments and agencies. We see ourselves as simply the experts in the process, the emergency response process. We are not experts, nor do we intend to be experts. If there was a radiological threat or a biological threat or a national security threat, we'd bring in the experts from the areas that have that expertise and they would fit into the planning process, the risk assessment process, and the ops coordination process, and they would be very key in that one.
:
Sure. That sounds good.
I came from the municipality of Pickering, where I was a councillor for seven years, and also from the region of Durham.
In the region of Durham, we have two large nuclear facilities, and we ran a lot of emergency preparedness drills around them. And when we had local emergencies, we ran local operations centres and saw firsthand how effectively they worked on the ground.
I understood very clearly, at that point in time, the relationship that existed between municipalities and the provinces in developing those plans. And I well understand the need for the federal government to monitor the level of preparedness of provinces and municipalities for potential emergencies, to ensure that they're properly resourced, and to understand where they are going to be.
But where are we heading? I just say that in this context. If we have three levels of government, at a certain point, if the federal government takes too much of a lead, do we risk becoming too involved and therefore actually slow down the response process?
How do we ensure, in the municipalities, in particular, which are the first responders and the ones closest to the ground in understanding the situation, that we don't move to a situation where, in trying to be helpful from a federal context, we create problems for them in terms of their response time, because we start creating an overly bureaucratic situation?
:
Thank you for coming this morning.
Your group is near and dear to my heart. In a previous occupation I was involved as a supervisor in a communications centre and later as a kind of partner in a tiered emergency response from a policing perspective.
Both from a communications centre standpoint and from a basis of allocating resources on a tiered response, one of the issues I've noticed is that we often view emergency responses from a vertical reporting basis, whereas in the field, often the actual application and delivery of services require a lateral or a horizontal reporting.
I was happy to hear you're concentrating primarily on the federal response and indeed recognize that in emergencies the immediate need tends to be from a local respondent, and then it goes up the food chain, shall we say.
When you view your relationship with the provinces and municipalities, as Mr. Holland mentioned, and the fear that perhaps we have someone who appears to know better than another, one of the key elements in almost every emergency is the ability to communicate directly and effectively. I was happy to hear you have software that actually dovetails with other agencies.
I know all the emergency fire and police personnel and ambulances aren't necessarily on the same radio frequencies. I know the Province of Ontario is working to have an overall communication strategy with regard to emergency responders.
Getting back to the software, I suspect Mr. Lesser would be the person to answer this. Are there any problems that you currently see in Canada in your relationship or the federal government's relationship with the provinces? You don't need to be specific, but generally, have you seen any places where the software, communication devices, and/or personnel don't fit seamlessly into the federal perspective?
:
I think it's a work in progress.
Depending on the province, a number of them have used software. I don't want to advertise any particularly, but Telus has E Team. It's been used by British Columbia for quite a while and is used extensively by Alberta. Ontario has their own software, which they wrote, and Quebec uses Neptune4. There are a number of federal departments that have started to use E Team. For example, the Health Agency and Health Canada have started to use it, as well as ourselves.
For us, it is an interim package and it is not fulsome enough for the needs we have for a national disaster. As in our plans and response system, we will develop a system that will be interoperable with provincial systems. We won't worry about hooking in municipally. We'll work on hooking in provincially and leave the provincial folks to click in municipally.
If I may also respond on the systems, technology supports the systems and how they actually function. In most provinces, and certainly at the local level—the U.S. system equally follows it, but it is known as the incident command system—it is a system we have used and adapted federally. It is very similar to or the same as the ones used in the provinces, and a very similar one is used at the pointy end of the tactical level. It is also very similar to the military system, the continental system.
On functions, as I mentioned before, there are a lot of similarities in working with the provinces. We have identified seven key functions we all do that are the same. We're now in the process of asking, how exactly are we going to share situational awareness to develop a common operating picture?
We were down in Washington about three or four weeks ago and took a look at what they call COP, which is sort of cute. Common operational picture is software they're developing. We want to make sure we're equally compatible with their particular system. As I said, it's a work in progress.
Again, going back to this legislation, by exercising leadership in emergency management, it allows us to then take the ball and lead in the development with other folks. They're wondering who is going to take the ball with this one. In a lot of areas, this legislation lays out the department's mandate.
I'd be reluctant to make any direct comparison to FEMA, because our system of government is different. Their arrangements are different.
I think there are a couple of basics that obviously have to be in place and that people have referred to already, such as the need for appropriate infrastructure in terms of authorities, as represented by the bill at the federal level, and in terms of information systems and connectivity.
Sometimes those information systems, as mentioned, aren't always perfect, so we supplement them with real people. If there's a disaster, we will send a liaison officer immediately to the provincial emergency measures organization. Practical arrangements that facilitate the exchange of information allow each jurisdiction to understand what the other jurisdiction is doing.
Is there a crystallized plan? I would say no. But there are some basic concepts that are understood in terms of what needs to be done and what needs to be known. I think we've made a lot of progress there. The federal-provincial-territorial fora that Tracy Thiessen referred to really give us an opportunity to enhance understanding and get consensus about what are the best ways specifically to work together. As often as not, we can see a disaster that goes across jurisdictions, and we have to be ready to respond to those as well.
So there are no lines respected in terms of the emergencies.
:
First, was the Federation of Canadian Municipalities consulted during the process of this legislation?
Will there be any change in funding for this part of the department, and have there been any cuts in the department, either in the last budget or in the cuts that occurred last week?
Ms. Wong, on ministerial responsibility, all ministers clearly have to develop these plans, but unless I'm missing something in the legislation, I don't see any mandate for either the Minister of Public Safety or anybody else to monitor those plans to make sure they are complete and updated on an ongoing basis. If I'm right about that, maybe that's happening somewhere internally.
Mr. Baker, you described the drills and testing we do of the systems. From some of the reports I read on FEMA, they did the same thing, and if we'd asked them the questions before Katrina they would have been satisfied that the drills were successful and effective. So I'm just wondering what we do to test the tests and drills we're conducting--if they're real to real-time situations.
Because of my experience during the blackout in Ontario, Mr. Lesser, I have this picture of the minister sitting here in Ottawa not being able to communicate with anybody. I think you said that's been taken care of, but I'd like specific confirmation.
Along the same lines of communications--Ms. Wong, you may need to answer this--one of the problems we had in Windsor at that time was that the local CBC station went off the air. It's both an English and a French service. It was crucial that communications go out in French because between 5% and 7% of our population rely on that as a tool, and they didn't have a backup generator. They were off the air for over an hour. Of course, there was some panic as a result of people not being able to get any communication in their language.
Is there some follow-up for crown corporations, rather than just departments? Are we going to monitor the emergency preparedness plans of crown corporations? I'm thinking in particular of not just the communication industry but the nuclear industry.
The other problem I ran into at that time was I had no idea what I was supposed to do as an MP. Since then I have made several inquiries of our local emergency preparedness people--the head of them is a friend of mine--and they can't tell me what I'm supposed to do. So I'd like to know if there are any plans to give instructions to all MPs or their offices, and I'm talking about their constituency offices rather than their offices on the Hill.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.