Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I am Conrad Sauvé, the CEO of the Canadian Red Cross. I'm going to talk to you today about emergency response in Canada.
I will speak in English, but it would be my pleasure to answer your questions in French, as well.
As just a reminder, when we talk about context, the Canadian Red Cross was created by an act of Parliament in 1909 as an auxiliary to the government for emergency measures. The Red Cross is not an NGO. Through the years, emergency response has become the pillar of our responses in Canada.
Although we are known for international responses, we respond every three hours to a disaster in Canada, from basic personal disaster assistance to evacuations in floods and fires, or a response like the one in Lac-Mégantic in terms of an explosion. We do that because we have a network of over 5,000 volunteers trained as responders throughout the country, with agreements with 800 municipalities and every one of the provinces. As the number of disasters and the size of the responses grow every year, our preoccupation remains on how prepared we are to respond to a major event in Canada.
In Fort McMurray, we've taken on the response on behalf of the provincial government to register and support 80,000 Canadians who were displaced from the city. As they left, many of them heading back to Atlantic provinces, we saw the complexity of emergency response, not only within the province but throughout the country. How do we respond and support these Canadians everywhere?
What we are looking at, as we go forward, is preparing a shared responsibility in the response to dealing with not just 80,000 but up to 200,000 Canadians in evacuation. We say “shared response”, because we are investing and responding thanks to the support of the Canadian public, with about $80 million a year for responses in Canada. What we are looking at is three recommendations.
One is to enhance our preparedness at the community level by increasing the number of community responders from 5,000 to 10,000. It's not just about a response at the community level. It's the ability to pool resources in one place and one event. In the Saskatchewan forest fires, we brought in over 1,000 responders from the outside to support that specific response. In the initial phases of Fort McMurray, it wasn't about Fort McMurray; it was about supporting the evacuees everywhere else.
More and more, technology is playing a key role in how we respond. As a reminder, in the first week of Fort McMurray we raised $50 million. We used direct cash transfers to support everybody. Since we had everybody's email, we dealt with their specific needs. Going forward, how do we use technology in supporting people?
The last part, of course, is our work with first nations across the country. We've put in a recommendation to increase our partnership with the training of 500 first nations responders.
Recent polls have shown that only 50% of Canadians are ready to deal with an emergency. These emergencies are growing. The amount the federal government, the provinces, and the municipalities are spending on responding is increasing every year. We are looking at this shared proposal going forward on behalf of supporting Canadians in these needs.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.