Good afternoon to the chair and committee members.
I'd like to begin by acknowledging that I am joining you from the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. I am honoured to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.
Climate change, the natural hazards it amplifies, limited provincial and territorial investment in disaster management resources, and the Canadian Armed Forces’ unique capabilities have led to the CAF’s transformation from a force of last resort in disaster response to a force of first—or only—resort.
As this committee has already heard, this tempo of domestic operations will negatively affect the CAF’s operational readiness and training for its primary combat role. Further, the CAF provides only response and relief. It does not do mitigation, preparation and recovery work. In short, the military is not a cure-all to the current disaster management gaps in this country, particularly its lack of a disaster workforce.
Possible military-centric solutions are to establish a special CAF branch or operational command focused exclusively on disaster response or to ensure a fully dual-use military that is equally trained and prepared to deal with traditional security threats and disasters. I would argue, however, that this will turn the CAF into a jack of all trades and a master of none.
The CAF has a central role that no other government body can perform: deterring and defeating potential enemies. This requires a very specialized skill set. Other civilian groups and agencies can assume most of the disaster response roles performed by the CAF, and far more cheaply, but not vice versa.
The RCAF Cormorants that rescued the 300 people during the landslides in B.C. last November, which Dr. Greaves referenced, offer a great example of the kind of contribution the CAF should be making to disaster response. So do the dozens of times Canadian Rangers patrols have been used to assist communities during floods, fires and severe weather. Additional investments in existing capabilities and responsibilities, such as increasing the CAF’s primary search and rescue assets or offering the Canadian Rangers more training and experience in disaster response, would allow the CAF to assist in disaster events across the country without affecting the primary function of the regular force.
During your meeting last week, Josh Bowen made a convincing case for the development of localized and interoperable volunteer teams with standardized training and competencies, building off of the array of NGOs that provide response, relief and recovery support in this country. As this committee has already heard, possible models exist, particularly Germany’s Federal Agency for Technical Relief or Australia’s state emergency service. Both organizations have small cadres of full-time professionals who assist with administering and training thousands of volunteers at the local level.
Importantly, however, both organizations have recently raised concerns about volunteer recruitment and retention. Australia offers a cautionary note on the volunteer system, particularly for Canada, given the similarities in our approaches to emergency management. Recent research there has suggested that the traditional model of volunteering is in decline, with high turnover rates, older volunteers and growing levels of burnout.
Much like the CAF, the Australian Defence Force has been shouldering more of the burden. Earlier this year, 6,000 military personnel deployed to assist in flood relief activities. As a result, Australia is also discussing how to move forward. Whether the military should embrace a larger response and recovery role, and if the country needs to adopt a new approach to volunteering, including incentivization, or if it requires a professional, civilian emergency response force are key issues that Canada must also consider.
Local responders help tremendously during the first minutes, hours and days of a disaster, but are eventually overwhelmed or are required to deal with their own personal and property concerns. While rapid disaster response aid NGOs help fill this group, they need help. It's time for Canada to consider investing in a professional and permanent disaster management workforce. Perhaps it could be a Canadian resilience agency or a Canadian resilience corps, an organization of paid full-time and part-time responders who could be quickly mobilized and deployed to disaster zones for response and recovery efforts.
To justify its permanent existence, such an organization must also be engaged in every phase of disaster management. It can't be just response and recovery, but mitigation and preparation, including the training of local response teams. These efforts would pay for themselves. Every dollar spent on mitigation and prevention saves between $6 and $13 in response and recovery.
Again, possible models exist. A permanent disaster workforce could, for instance, adopt FEMA's tiered system with a force of full-time personnel, a cadre of on-call response employees and a group of reservists. However it is structured, the establishment of a Canadian resilience agency or corps would provide the kind of disaster workforce that this country is currently lacking, and alleviate the pressure on the Canadian Armed Forces.
I look forward to discussing this further during the question period. Thank you for your time.