National Defence committee  It was a couple of years back.

National Defence committee  Yes, that was actually the main recruitment tool for a long time for the civil protection approach. In the meantime, Germany has realized that it's actually the youth component that has the biggest potential. This is also why I started the youth program, because we have to think about why it is that Germany trains 500,000 youth starting at the age of six to be responders, and how this reflects on people's attitudes about the need for preparedness.

National Defence committee  That's a great question, because mandatory volunteerism is the death of volunteerism. It's much better to appeal to a bigger sense of purpose and being able to have a role. If you think of the fact that government does not have a choice and as citizens we also don't have a choice as to what happens with taxpayers' money in that respect, asking reactively for donations and solidarity—and there's always room for that—and then matching that with taxpayers' money again is not the best way we can do this.

National Defence committee  It is a government organization and a federal agency. Everybody expects a big building with bureaucracy in that, but in reality, it lives at the regional level, which makes it so unique. It's really the people who are the organization. Only 2% are paid staff, and the majority of that staff are at the regional level.

National Defence committee  It's very dangerous, because you lose control of the money. That's the quickest answer I can give.

National Defence committee  It's a tricky question, because I think the benefit in the German model lies in the standard that they have across the country. As an example, the catastrophic flooding that they had last year, which was the biggest deployment of this organization in its history, saw all 700 stations involved in the deployment.

National Defence committee  That's a very good question. I think one of the aspects that we keep ignoring is the cost of all this. There's the cost of involving the private sector, for example, or the cost of using the armed forces. This is another aspect. Most of the training is delivered by unpaid volunteers at the local level.

National Defence committee  That is a very good question. I think it points to a big problem that we currently have in making the best use of our volunteers and our volunteer organization. Germany has a system in place through which the federal government basically guarantees that you do not have any negative effects as a volunteer for this organization.

National Defence committee  Yes, I think that's absolutely needed, especially as it speaks to what we understand “capacity” to be. In my view, that is exactly why we call in the armed forces, because they are a reliable tool for the government. If we define “capacity” as hired short-term contracts, for example, like those often used in the pandemic—and health system as well—how do we guarantee that capacity is available next time?

National Defence committee  I appreciate the question very much, because it speaks to what I always try to explain and what we should understand: a whole-of-society approach. At the moment, everybody thinks everybody should do something. It refers to a system in which each sector needs to enable the other sector to play a role.

National Defence committee  I'm Eva Cohen. Before I moved to Canada back in 2003, I was a volunteer in Germany's Federal Agency for Technical Relief, the THW, a government organization that consists of 98% unpaid citizen volunteers and is located all across Germany at the local and regional level. I have experienced first-hand the many benefits of a community-based civil protection approach that is grounded in citizen volunteers.