Thank you, Mr. Chair. As a former soccer coach, I'm a little sensitive to yellow and red cards, so I hope you won't be using them.
I'm the CAO of York Region. There are nine cities and towns that extend north of the City of Toronto to Lake Simcoe that serve as home to over 1.2 million Canadians. We are an upper tier municipality and provide 14 core services to all of our communities, ranging from courts to policing, transit, water and wastewater, to name a few.
We also deliver public health services, as one of 34 public health units in Ontario, under the direction of Ontario's chief medical officer of health, as described under the Health Protection and Promotion Act. This is a model that differs from practices in other provinces.
Our public health responsibilities are also delivered through a community and health services department in an integrated model that also includes paramedics, social services, long term care and housing, all of which have a focus on the social determinants of health.
The perspective I'll provide you today is as the CAO of a large greater Toronto area municipality where our regional council also serves as the board of health.
York Region has a comprehensive emergency management and preparedness program that is tested annually as required by legislation. Through our emergency management program, threats are assessed annually using hazard identification and risk assessment. Since SARS in 2003 and H1N1 in 2013, pandemic risks have increased in priority and focus. Formalized business continuity planning is also part of our emergency preparedness, and is centred on maintaining critical services.
On January 23, 2020, our medical officer of health, Dr. Karim Kurji, activated the public health emergency operations centre to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic threat, one month before York Region recorded its first case. On March 17, 2020, York Region activated the regional emergency operations centre, and by March 23, York regional chair, Wayne Emmerson, had declared York Region's first ever state of emergency under the Emergency Management and Civil Protection Act.
Prior to, and throughout, the pandemic response, York Region and our nine local cities and towns have worked together very closely. Our local municipalities have been an added source of assistance during York Region's mass immunization efforts.
With public health embedded in our organization, we were able to redeploy approximately 1,000 staff from within our organization to support the public health response. Additional critical internal supports were immediately redirected to enable staff working remotely. We redirected procurement to rapidly acquire personal protective equipment, human resources to quickly hire required specialized staff for long-term care and public health, and communications to ensure updates were available through multiple communications channels.
Business continuity plans documenting essential services and functions with assigned priorities helped to quickly identify services that could be suspended or reduced to shift staff resources to support the COVID-19 response while ensuring that critical core services continued uninterrupted during the pandemic.
York Region has in place robust and well-tested incident management systems that will serve emergency response efforts well into the future. We've strengthened relationships with our local municipalities, community partners and elected officials, and forged new relations with experts from various fields, such as the Red Cross, St. John Ambulance, local physicians, hospitals and pharmacies, all of which will support our future decision-making.
What we have learned through forced digital transformation will not be lost, with efficiencies and opportunities incorporated into our new normal moving forward.
Provincial and federal funding programs have enabled many Canadians to refrain from going into workplaces while enabling business to receive support during shutdowns. Without this financial support, the pandemic outcomes would have been much worse with respect to community and workplace transmission. While most of York Region's population has access to consistent and reliable broadband technologies to support remote working, there are many rural parts of our communities that experience the ongoing challenges that persist in rural areas throughout Ontario and Canada. As we optimistically shift from the response phase of the pandemic and into recovery, individuals and businesses will continue to require provincial and federal assistance and supports, hopefully with a stronger commitment and component of funding critical public infrastructure.
Through the COVID-19 experience, York Region's state of preparedness is higher than ever before, and as we look ahead to the potential of recurring infectious diseases, it will become critical to remember this experience and guard against complacency. We're hopeful for progress in three specific areas, working together with our provincial and federal partners.
First is encouraging domestic production and he supply of personal protective equipment and vaccines; second is investing in broadband to support all Canadians in working and schooling from home; and third is ensuring consistent and clear communication among all levels of government to educate and inform the population we serve, as a vital component of any emergency response.
Thank you, Mr. Chair, for your time this morning and for the opportunity to share York Region perspectives shaped by our organizational emergency management and public health model and experience.
