Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2017

[Serge Beaudoin]

Madam Chair, the short answer would be, for sure, there is a cost to remoteness. Many of our programs in the department have factored in remoteness in terms of the funding formulas. When we're talking about infrastructure, there's additional funding normally provided to recognize the fact that, to get the infrastructure up, you may need to use a winter road and what not, and there are additional costs to that. That is something that's factored into our funding formulas per se.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Could you provide that in a little information sheet, how much more it is, so we can look at a broader picture of how much the cost is?

[Serge Beaudoin]

We would be pleased to share with you the funding formula.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Good.

[Serge Beaudoin]

We can verify internally whether we have the actual overall cost difference.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right.

For jurisdictions that don't have an agreement—it sounds as if it's a few, but it's mine, and there may be others—in the early stages about the deployment of water bombers for when a fire is detected, is that INAC, Public Safety, the conservation authority in that jurisdiction? What kind of relationship do you have with the local resources?

A fire has started. Who's in charge to put out the fire?

[Patrick Tanguy]

If we use the B.C. wildfires as an example, as I was mentioning, the system is built to have municipal responders if there are some fires. The way that fires happen in B.C. means police and firefighters will be involved at the local level. When they need more support, they will elevate it and request provincial assistance in the form of an emergency management office.

In the case of B.C. for instance, they realized that they would need some additional assistance. They put in a request for assistance, and this a government operation centre that is receiving request for assistance that has been coordinating what was actually requested by the province. In that case, they wanted to have some air support, air assets, and to have those assets be pre-positioned. Our minister gets that request for assistance through a letter. In this case, there was also an exchange between officials at the officials level.

We were contacting and working with the Canadian Armed Forces to determine what kind of resources we could position. In the case of air bombers, it would be the province itself that would look into those kinds of air assets. As I was mentioning, the CIFFC, Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre will make sure that if B.C. doesn't have enough fire bombers, they will turn to Quebec and ask if they can get more Quebec water bombers to be deployed. That is a little bit of how it works.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Quickly, I would like to know about the Manitoba circumstance because they don't have an agreement, right?

[Serge Beaudoin]

The system that my colleague here has described is applicable to first nations, as well. When it comes to fire suppression activities, we have agreements for those across the country—it's a different set of activities—so that they're not water bombing an area where there's forest in non-indigenous communities and not taking care of the indigenous communities. That is made to be seamless within a jurisdiction, all jurisdictions.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Is there a difference between areas that are populated versus non-populated in terms of prioritizing fire suppression?

Absolutely, yes?

[Mario Boily, Acting Director General, Government Operations Centre, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

I would say yes, absolutely, for sure. Interface fires are more important in terms of the priorities.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right.

I do have another question. I'm looking around the table, but I did get a request from MP Harvey for a question or two.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Just quickly, in your submission, it says:

In the recovery phase of an emergency event, the Department supports the repair or restoration of critical infrastructure on-reserve to a pre-disaster condition to allow evacuees to return home.

How is that evaluation done?

[Serge Beaudoin]

It's a bit like an insurance company. Typically, if you had a bungalow with three rooms that burnt down or was flooded, you would get that back.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

If I went in there and I deemed it to be in substandard condition before the fire, is it restored to good condition, or is it funded to a level that gets it back to substandard condition?

[Serge Beaudoin]

It would be a reconstruction.

I'll give you an example. My colleague mentioned the build back better approach. This is something towards which we're moving. For instance, in Kashechewan, we had a community evacuated for flooding; 454 people were evacuated. There were 36 houses. That's 12 people per house. We could have just built that back, but that would not have made sense.

We used the opportunity to do a couple of things. We brought it back to Canadian occupancy standards. We constructed 52 duplexes to accommodate four people per unit. We didn't build it back to have a basement because it makes no sense to have that in a flood-prone community. Previously, the model we had was a bungalow with a basement, with a furnace and other appliances in it, and when that floods, the furnace is gone.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Right.

[Serge Beaudoin]

We raised that.

That's in the spirit of building back better, making investments that are smart, and also resolving issues that are more systemic like, in this case, overcrowding.

We deal on a case-by-case basis, but the idea is to build back better and build back smarter.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Perfect, thank you very much.

That's it.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Are there any other questions?

Hearing none, thank you very much for coming and taking our questions.

You're going to provide some information for us, and we're going to be conducting, I believe, five more sessions with various people across the country. I look forward to seeing you again. Thank you so much.

[Serge Beaudoin]

Thank you very much.

[Patrick Tanguy]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

The committee stands adjourned.