Indigenous and Northern Affairs Committee on Feb. 8th, 2018

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

That's no problem.

Kellyann, when you were talking earlier, you said something about similar training. Could you just elaborate on that a little? I brought up earlier that firefighting is firefighting. It doesn't matter who you are, but it matters where you are in the country, whether it's rural—a forest fire—or urban—a house fire or a commercial building or that kind of thing. It doesn't matter whether you're indigenous or non-indigenous, whether you're on reserve or not on reserve. It's the same thing. Can you elaborate on your comments?

[Kellyann Meloche]

Definitely, I wasn't referring to firefighting. It was more for emergency management. When it comes to emergency planning, it's not just about preparedness. We've gone from emergency preparedness to the four phases of emergency management—preparedness, response, mitigation.... We need to look at all of them and then teach the communities, not just give them a template on a preparedness plan and say there they go. I was referring specifically to emergency management.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Randall, you've talked extensively about how a lot of the time personal initiative or personal connections drive the development of some of these plans and also the resources that are gathered to enable this. Particularly in my line of work, it doesn't matter what we're dealing with. It always takes an individual to drive it. How can we inspire more individuals to do that, particularly in emergency management, if we're going to broaden it to that? How do we bring inspiration to that? I'll leave it at that.

[Chief Randall Phillips]

Again, I'm glad Kellyann is here, because I can always point to what she said earlier.

It's just a matter of giving our people an opportunity to grow in this. We support it. We support the environment. We support what they're doing. We support their education. We support them all along the way to say they're part of this community, that this fire department is part of it, that this ambulance service is part of it. Everybody's part of it. Once you get that notion of belonging, then you'll want to do your job better every time. I have yet to meet anybody who has been put in that environment who didn't want to succeed. That's what I'm trying to suggest here. That's the environment we need to put in our communities. We can do that, but we're being stymied by different rules and regulations and laws, and to be honest, helpful people. That's where it comes from. That's the only way to do it. You support individual opportunities. You support individuals. That's what we're trying to do with this. Emergency management is a complex thing at home. It's not one of the glory items, either. You're not going to get your face on the cover of Time magazine by doing this work. It's hard work, but as you see, it's important.

That's how I would do it. It just comes down to promoting; if you have a product that people will like, then they'll keep promoting it more and more. That's the key.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Kellyann, do you have any comments to add to that? You've travelled around the world, it sounds like, working on emergency management. How do you inspire local people to be that advocate for their own communities?

[Kellyann Meloche]

We look at community champions. Who is going to be your community champion for emergency management? I look at the emergency responders; that's where I try to pick from in getting help. I look at the responders and ask if they can champion emergency management. They've responded to community disasters or emergencies, can they look administratively? This is a wide position here, where you can work one day with social services, another day with public works, another day with transportation and buses, and then another day you're with the RCMP looking at bomb threat planning. It's a wide open field, getting that community champion and starting with the schools.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Very good. That concludes our question period.

It's time for me to thank you for coming out and talking with us about your situation in your communities and recommendations for our report. Thank you very much.

We'll take a short break and then reconvene for the second panel.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Let's get started on the second panel.

We have some technical difficulties. Our presenters from Kativik are not online yet and they're trying to hook up, so we could hear from you and hopefully we can get them hooked in as well.

We're going to start. You'll have 10 minutes to present. Then we'll check in with the north and we'll go from there.

We have the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs. I

[Sean Tracey, Deputy Chief, Ottawa Fire Services, Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs]

Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present here today on this crucial topic.

As you know, my name is Sean Tracey. I'm a deputy chief with the Ottawa Fire Services and have been asked to participate on behalf of my esteemed colleague, Chief Ken Block, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs.

I'm a fire engineer by training and previously served as a director with the Council of Canadian Fire Marshals and Fire Commissioners, as chair of the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness, and as the Canadian regional manager for the National Fire Protection Association.

I am joined at this table by CAFC's executive director, Dr. Tina Saryeddine.

I'd like to begin by telling you a little about the CAFC. Founded in 1909, the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs is an independent, non-profit organization representing approximately 3,500 fire departments across Canada. The primary mission of CAFC is to promote the highest standard of public safety in an ever-changing and increasingly complex world to ensure the protection of the public through leadership, advocacy, and active collaboration with key stakeholders. This collaboration occurs primarily through a national advisory council on which we have the honour of having each of the provincial fire chief associations as well as the national affiliate associations.

One of these groups is the Aboriginal Firefighters Association of Canada, AFAC, with which we have the privilege of collaborating closely. As fire chiefs, in either aboriginal or non-aboriginal departments or regions, we all have the same goal: safety of our people and communities. Unfortunately for our aboriginal communities, the situation is far more grave than anywhere else in Canada.

According to the 2007 CMHC study, “Fire Prevention in Aboriginal Communities”, aboriginal communities experience a fire death rate 10.4 greater and a fire damage rate 2.1 times greater than the Canadian average. Additionally, these communities are often at the greatest risk to wild land/urban interface fires like we've recently seen in Fort McMurray and Slave Lake.

CAFC recognizes the significantly proportional losses and the challenges aboriginal communities face and, as a result, has been working with AFAC to advocate for a better way to correct this aberration. We believe that a three-pronged approach is the way forward.

First, CAFC strongly supports the establishment of programs that look at fire prevention and public education as a first line of defence in protecting these lives.

Second, CAFC believes that services in these communities must be based on community risk assessments that provide them with services comparable to an equivalent non-aboriginal community.

Third, CAFC is working with and supports the efforts of AFAC and the Department of Indigenous Services Canada, DISC, in the establishment of an indigenous fire marshal's office.

Please allow us to expand on each of these points.

Fire prevention and public education programs are the cornerstones of any loss reduction program. Every community or band should have, as a minimum, a fire prevention and public education program that focuses on working smoke alarms. This is the norm in all provinces and we have seen significant gains as a result.

Having public education programs adapted for cultural references will be key and have been proven successful in the past. For example, national programs developed by organizations such as the National Fire Protection Association, the not-for-profit organization that brings you Fire Prevention Week, have adapted programs including Wisdom of the Fire, Risk Watch, and Remembering When. Future programs can include promotion of culturally specific messaging for Fire Prevention Week. It can include best practice programs such as presenting the family of every newborn with a working smoke alarm with a 10-year battery and instruction on what to do in event of a fire. Unfortunately, such programs need support in their adaptation and implementation in the communities.

Community risk assessments need to be developed for each aboriginal community so as to prioritize these limited resources. This would look at the number and condition of housing, businesses and industries and their risks. It would include demographic and geographical factors, the threat from wildfires, available mutual aid, isolation, etc.

This would then look at comparable services provided to nearby non-aboriginal communities with similar risk profiles, neighbouring communities where their citizens have funded their fire services through their tax bases. These risk assessments would determine the service levels that would form the basis for annual program spending. It would build capability through firefighter training programs, fund existing departments, and build capital expenditure planning. This would create long-term, sustainable fire protection capabilities in these communities. AFAC, with participation by CAFC, has done extensive work in developing a new level of service standards for DISC based on such risk assessments. This should be implemented and funded appropriately to ensure levels of protection on a par with non-aboriginal communities.

Finally and critically, there is the establishment of an indigenous fire marshal's office supported by legislation. The IFMO would be responsible for the further development of these concepts and the delivery of these services. The IFMO, with regional offices, would be able to develop and distribute prevention programs, work on their adaptation with local champions, and report on fire loss statistics. The IFMO staff can also guide communities in their development of risk assessments and ensure a uniform application of standards across the country. They can collect best practices and communicate these to their regions. They can run regional training programs for firefighters and prioritize equipment programs—all benefits that every province currently reaps through their fire marshal's offices but that are not available to aboriginal communities. The establishment of the IFMO can correct this.

In conclusion, CAFC firmly believes that the above elements are critical for the reduction of fire losses to these at-risk communities. All of these programs are deliverable by indigenous persons for their communities. We just need the commitment from you to make this happen. To the best of my recollection, we have never been as close as we are now to accomplishing our goal of reducing the embarrassing record of fire deaths in our aboriginal communities. It is critical that we follow through with these programs.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Thank you.

We're having a few technical difficulties here.

[Sean Tracey]

Madam Chair, can I address a question that was raised to the previous group?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Since we're waiting, absolutely; please do.

[Sean Tracey]

There was a question raised about what to do with regard to the limited use of funds and what you would direct these limited funds toward. The second point we had addressed was that of looking at risk-based comparisons for communities, setting a level of service standards. We believe this is actually a critical key, because past experience has been that program spending did not necessarily result in the best application of these limited resources in communities.

If we look at communities, it may not be that they can support a fire truck or an apparatus and all of the follow-on components that are necessary. But by comparing them and benchmarking them to a comparable community in their region that has a municipal tax base, we can then say, well, this is what you should have for a comparable level of service. You perhaps don't need a truck because you don't have the firefighters who can man the truck. What you need is a prevention program. We need individuals to go into the communities to run a smoke alarm campaign, and eventually maybe you can build up the capability, if you have proven yourselves to build up these capabilities, but it needs to be based on comparable services on risk assessments.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Very good.

We have Craig Lingard on the telephone.

You have 10 minutes to present.

[Craig Lingard, Coordinator, Civil Security Section, Kativik Regional Government]

I apologize for the technical glitch here.

On behalf of the regional government, we have submitted two documents for your record: our most recent statistic in our 14 Inuit communities here in Nunavik, northern Quebec, under the governance of the Kativik regional government. We have also submitted a PowerPoint presentation we developed and presented recently on the SAR data management and the challenges and objectives of our search and rescue management in the region. Both are very helpful and supportive documents in giving some of the background, the challenges, and the achievements we've made in recent years.

Of course, what we anticipate and continue to deal with as a major problem and a major obstacle is the lack of adequate funding to be able to achieve corrective measures in all of our challenges. We have very young municipalities, in that most or all are only slightly over 30 years since incorporation.

We're all isolated. There are no roads or rail connecting our communities with the rest of Canada. We have a smaller demographic—a smaller pool of people and resources to draw from—which is a challenge, but we are dedicated and we have been creative. The isolation and remoteness force us to be activated in all circumstances of local emergency, search and rescue, and fire intervention. Because of the distance, we cannot depend on any partnership with any other community, so there is a need for optimized local resources.

Communications are a challenge and continue to be, as we are experiencing here today: we have video conference capability, but it's not working for us—my apologies. We have very, very slow—sometimes non-existent—bandwidth for Internet connection, but we are growing and progressing.

We have made great achievements, and we continue to work hard towards that objective. We have professionally trained some 70 Fire Fighter 1 qualified volunteer firefighters from throughout our region, and we have another six who are doing our non-urban officer qualification to the NFPA standard. We've developed a great resource of local regional trainers who are able to communicate in the mother tongue Inuktitut language. This, we feel, is the key to enabling our people to work, train, and gain success for ourselves.

You have some of the statistics. You have some of the challenges we've laid out. These are fairly accurate and most recent.

I know you are all at the end of your day and of your meeting schedule, so I will relinquish the opportunity to continue speaking and answer any questions you may have for us.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

All right. We're going to move into our question period. We have a special request from MP Vance Badawey. Do you want to bring Kellyann up?

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

That would be wonderful, if we can bring Kellyann up.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Do we have agreement? Did anybody else want to ask her a question as well?

[An hon. member]

Yes.

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

We really appreciated your communication style and your knowledge, so we're glad to have you up.

We are going to start with a seven-minute round, with MP Anandasangaree.

[Gary Anandasangaree, Liberal, Scarborough—Rouge Park, ON]

Actually, MP Badawey was going to start first.

[Vance Badawey, Liberal, Niagara Centre, ON]

We'll switch. That's fine. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

By the way, great job earlier. I think you were bang-on.

And, Chief, I think you're bang-on as well with respect to some of the comments you made. In coming back to my former life as a mayor in a municipality, this is something that's very near and dear to my heart, having worked on strategic planning. The points that you both made very credibly are on how important it is to look at a more holistic approach and the bigger picture as it relates to not just emergency services, emergency preparedness, but really a plan for everything that is touched on and by emergency services, such as infrastructure, building code. And they were about the entire community's working together to ensure that, again, it's a community, bigger-picture plan to deal with these challenges.

I want to dive in a bit deeper because my desire here is to, hopefully, after this process, receive from you recommendations. I do sit on the indigenous caucus. This is something we're talking about when it comes to economic development, emergency preparedness, infrastructure, and the list goes on. I need to get something out of this versus just listening, and hearing, and talking.

What I want to gear at is the “how” to the “what”. We know what the “what” is here, and we know that there's individual strategic planning, identify deliverables, attach actions to those. And there are adequacy standards; Chief, you touched on how those are, essentially, not in a cookie cutter but specific to each individual community. There are emergency preparedness protocols, whether they be per incident or in the bigger picture in terms of emergency situations that are more community, regional, if not even provincial, in nature; the governance side with respect to the budget and being stewards of where the money goes, especially from capital; the operations side in terms of where money goes with respect to response, prevention. And I'll even throw emergency medical services, EMS, into that as well.

I'm not sure how you're dispatched. I'm not sure how you're tiered. I'm assuming that you're dispatched more on a regional area in different first nations communities. It would be more of a question, who actually does the dispatch, and are they tiered, and who are they tiered to with respect to fire, police, and EMS? Of course, included in all that is proper building code, which includes fire alarms, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms. Then with all that is your infrastructure, ensuring proper infrastructure, and we can go on from there. Then lastly is the economic development of all this, human resources. Who's actually going to person your EMS, your fire, your police, and so on and so forth? As well, with respect to infrastructure, who's going to build the infrastructure? Who's going to build the homes? Who's going to actually establish the inspections of the building code within those homes?

I throw all that on the table. Now I'm going to be quiet. I want to hear from you on recommendations that you think can actually satisfy all of the above so that this committee can actually make recommendations to the ministries to actually make this happen.

[Craig Lingard]

Madam Chair, may I respond, or was there another question that was going to be brought?

[The Chair, Liberal, MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Please respond.