That is an excellent question, Ms. Normandin.
I will send to the committee my study on this issue.
There are three options when it comes to this.
First, there is the American option. We could create an organization like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA, which is a large bureaucracy that costs a lot of money and moves very slowly. I assume that is appropriate for the United States, but there are good reasons why other allies have not adopted that system.
Second, we could have organizations that respond to emergencies. For example, Australia and many European countries have emergency response services. In the medium term, we could set up that kind of an organization in Canada, but, over the short term, that infrastructure does not exist. For years, I have been insisting that this type of infrastructure is necessary.
Currently, when we use the Canadian Armed Forces for domestic deployments, resources are available; we have that luxury. However, if a widespread international crisis occurred and we needed forces to protect our allies, our country and the continent, those kinds of resources would no longer be available. So it is necessary for the provinces to create organizations that could provide volunteers and a skilled workforce.
The third option is the one we have adopted, and it consists of an increase in the resources and expertise of the Canadian Red Cross. But that also has its limitations. The Red Cross staff has limited expertise. The Red Cross needs to have a staff with broader expertise to meet your stated requirements.
The fourth option, which I presented in my study, is my preferred one. It consists in creating a unit of about 2,000 people within the Canadian Armed Forces. That unit would be dedicated to domestic deployment and would work on achieving your stated objectives. If we don't need to mobilize that unit for a domestic deployment, it could participate in the development of indigenous communities in the far north. On the one hand, such a unit could improve Canada's response capacity to national requirements; on the other hand, it could be a complement to the development efforts of communities in the far north. The far north needs the staff and resources that only the Canadian Armed Forces have.