National Defence Committee on May 18th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I call the meeting to order.

Colleagues, as I am understanding this very confusing day, we have until 6:17, at which point the bells will start ringing for a vote at 6:47. That's what I understand to be the truth, which is probably good for the next 30 seconds, at which point everything will change again.

I want to thank the witnesses for being so gracious with their time. It is extraordinarily frustrating to have all of these votes and delays and cancellations, etc. This time of year is just difficult. Again, I thank you for helping us out with the study.

First of all, we have the Emergency Management NGO Consortium, led by Mr. Goodyear and Mr. Saugh.

We are waiting for Mr. Damien Burns. He will join the panel. He was originally scheduled for the second panel.

We haven't been able to make contact with Mr. Leuprecht, who is in Europe. My guess is that we won't be able to hear from him, which adds to my frustration because that's the third time we've invited him and had to cancel at the last minute, all of which is not good news.

I thank you again for your patience and invite you to make your opening statements, and then we will go to the first round of questions.

Colleagues, since the vote is going to be called at 6:17, how much flexibility can you give me? I guess we can run that up to 6:17. We'll have a few minutes anyway.

Let's start with the Emergency Management NGO Consortium of Canada and Mr. Goodyear.

[Perron Goodyear, Chair, Emergency Management NGO Consortium of Canada]

Thanks very much. I appreciate the opportunity.

First, I'd like to acknowledge that this is sacred land, upon which I am privileged to live and work. I recognize the deep connection and the long-standing relationship between indigenous peoples and the land of London, Ontario. This land is the traditional territory of the Anishinabe, Haudenosaunee, Lunaapéewak and Attawandaron, and continues to be home to diverse indigenous peoples, whom we recognize as contemporary stewards of the land and vital contributors to our society.

I speak today as the chair of the Emergency Management NGO Consortium of Canada, or EMNCC.

EMNCC's mission is to optimize the contribution of non-governmental organizations that help increase disaster resilience in communities in Canada. The purpose of EMNCC is to facilitate coordination, collaboration, co-operation, communication and consideration among all emergency management partners, including indigenous peoples, municipalities and communities. EMNCC champions the capabilities of member organizations active in disaster and emergency management and promotes a whole-of-society approach to serving communities across Canada.

EMNCC's membership includes the following organizations: the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, ADRA; the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team; the Canadian Red Cross; CanOps; the Civil Air Search and Rescue Association; the Canadian Coast Guard Auxiliary; Food Banks Canada; Humane Canada; the Mennonite Disaster Service; Radio Amateurs of Canada; Samaritan's Purse Canada; the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada; St. John Ambulance; Team Rubicon; the Salvation Army; and World Renew.

The value of EMNCC lies within its ability to provide coordinated support to government agencies and local authorities. Our influence is derived from a proven collective ability to support emergency management organizations by providing a simple, trusted and unified base of NGO support. The EMNCC also strives to reduce complexity within the decision action cycle during a domestic disaster.

In addition to the coordinated emergency response services that we provide, a vital component is also acknowledging the severe impact it has on individuals' emotional and psychological health and well-being. We also have the capacity and expertise within our consortium to provide psychosocial support during times of emergencies, crises or disasters, which helps to address the initial dramatic experiences caused by life's disruptions.

During our recent Emergency Preparedness Week, the Government of Canada announced $150 million in funding to support non-governmental organizations in their humanitarian response to COVID-19 and other large-scale emergencies. The funding will support capacity building and domestic response resources for four of EMNCC's NGOs: the Salvation Army, the Canadian Red Cross, St. John Ambulance and the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada.

Specifically, this funding has gone to support vital services on the ground for several provinces and all three territories that have requested federal assistance, including critical care nurses in hospitals, support in long-term care facilities and retirement homes, epidemic prevention and control, and vaccination support. It has also supported deployments to respond to outbreaks in remote indigenous communities. With this funding, organizations will continue to maintain a highly skilled and qualified group of emergency responders and emergency management professionals, which will help fund the development of emergency management systems, deliver top-tier training and acquire some equipment needed for rapid mobilization.

Finally, in addition to these four organizations, EMNCC member organizations are able to bring significant expertise to domestic response, allowing the Canadian Armed Forces to support other efforts, or as an enhancement to any CAF domestic operations.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

I see that Mr. Burns is online.

Mr. Burns, do you have a five-minute opening statement?

[Damien Burns, Assistant Deputy Minister, Protective Services, Government of Yukon]

Thank you very much.

My name is Damien Burns, and I am the assistant deputy minister of protective services with the Government of Yukon.

To open today, I would just like to say that every summer across western North America and across the world, wildfires threaten communities and infrastructure. Evacuations displace communities for weeks at a time. Air quality plummets to dangerous levels, and livelihoods are impacted by area closures, reduced tourism and damage to critical infrastructure.

The changing climate is increasing the length of the fire season. The severity of the weather within the season and the chance of ignition are widening. Most important, our neighbourhoods and communities in Yukon are expanding into the wildland/urban interface at an increased exposure to the mix of accumulated fuels and worsening fire climate. All across the world we are experiencing longer, more intense fire seasons that have pushed our fire response capacity to the brink of failure.

This perceived increase in extreme fire behaviour and the challenges of the past few seasons have really raised that awareness to a level of national significance, but it is believed that over the next few decades climate change will continue to significantly affect wildlife, fire management and emergency management in Canada. We do expect longer, more intense fire seasons and more extreme weather events, including droughts and flooding. We expect these environmental catastrophes to be more difficult to manage. This is, of course, a Yukon problem and a national problem.

This problem was clearly amplified last summer when in the Yukon we had to contend with the worst flooding in recent memory. Over 400 homes and pieces of critical infrastructure were threatened by rising water in our southern lakes. The challenges of this flooding, coupled with an average challenging Yukon fire season and the ongoing challenges of managing the global pandemic at the time, truly strained our emergency response providers in the Yukon. We were forced to call upon the Canadian Armed Forces, which kindly and generously provided 200 members to come and provide support to those 400 homes and the critical infrastructure that was affected. The support from the armed forces was invaluable in protecting these homes, which, in effect, represent the second-largest community in the Yukon.

The support was invaluable, but we see these emergencies increasing and further pressuring our resources. We see this climate emergency as an oppressing and immediate threat, and we are seeing the effects of a changing climate on our environment and across our Yukon communities.

I think I will leave it at that for now. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you.

I also want to thank you for your patience and your flexibility in coming onto the first panel instead of the second panel.

With that, colleagues, we'll go to the first round of questions. I'm looking at the time. We have 50 minutes, so we will start by giving at least the first round a full time allotment.

Mrs. Gallant, go ahead for six minutes, please.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

For the ADM for the Yukon, would you outline what happens when you are anticipating some type of natural disaster? For example, when you know the melt is sufficient and all the conditions are right for a flood, do you call together a command centre? Who gets contacted? At what point do you start reaching out to higher levels of government for assistance? What are the circumstances under which you would ask for federal assistance?

[Damien Burns]

We have several standing response structures in the Yukon. We have a very mature and well-developed wildland fire program. We benefit in that program from a very robust resource exchange program across the country. We have certain levels of preparedness that we are used to and plan for in the Yukon. We've resourced ourselves accordingly in the Yukon for what we anticipate to be an average fire season. We look at the weather, and we look at the anticipated fire behaviour. We look at the available resources, and we manage those through a type of coordination centre, which we call the Yukon duty room, and that manages those internal Yukon resources.

Those levels of preparedness are set. When I say “levels of preparedness”, that is the number of crews we would have deployed in certain areas of the Yukon, the number of aircraft, helicopters and air tankers. Those would be determined based on the weather and the level of preparedness that is required.

We would report in daily through the fire season with other agencies across the country to understand the level of preparedness across the entire country. We would then take advantage of those mature agreements we have under the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre to exchange resources as required.

For other emergencies, we would manage those through our emergency measures organization and our emergency coordination centre. Similarly, we would evaluate our level of preparedness that is required based on the given factors of fires or flooding. For example, last year, with the flooding we had, it was a very slow-moving event where we understood the significance that existed in the headwaters of the southern lakes, and we had enough historical data to understand that we were going to have flooding. We were able to resource, similar to what we do with wildland fires, and understand the risk and the resources that were going to be required, and we dedicated those resources.

Of course, we are not used to having these competing climate emergencies that we've undergone in the Yukon of fires and floods at the same time. We did initially stand up the response to that flood with all internal resources, but as the fires became more significant and as fatigue set in with emergency responders, it became apparent that we would need some additional support externally, the type of manpower and human power that would be required to stand up a response and construct the temporary infrastructure needed. We built about a five-kilometre berm, and it became apparent that we would not be able to resource that in the Yukon.

First, we looked at our internal resources, firefighters and emergency response professionals. Second, we looked to the private sector in the Yukon, to companies that may be able to support, and we called for new employees. We also coordinated a significant volunteer movement to make that happen. The reality was that there were not 200 additional people in the Yukon available through any of those means to support us. It was at that point that we were forced to turn to the Canadian Armed Forces for that support.

[Cheryl Gallant, Conservative, Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, ON]

To Mr. Saugh, I've had the experience of working with the Mennonite disaster team in the floods in Winnipeg in 1997. They came in after the flood waters had receded and the military had left. You are coordinating a group of these types of NGOs. When you are doing your command and your organizing of who goes where, is it a matter of putting the groups in certain places chronologically as they're needed or geographically based on where the areas are hit the hardest? How do you decide who goes where and when a certain group comes in?

[Dr. Daniel Saugh, Strategic Director, Canadian Program Manager, Emergency Management NGO Consortium of Canada]

Mrs. Gallant, thank you so much for the question.

A response is a coordinated effort. We look at the strength and capacities that each NGO brings. We set up an EOC—emergency operations centre—and then we have our incident commander.

We look at what each one brings to the table. The needs may have to do with psychosocial support, meeting essential emergency needs, donation and warehouse management or in-kind donations. We are then able to tap into the unique expertise that each NGO brings and coordinate the efforts through them in a co-operative and collective way.

We start with that, and then of course they are able to bring that to the table. We have periodic debriefing sessions where we see what is being done to address the needs at hand and to kind of address and close those gaps. It's really about helping the people who have experienced that immediate loss and displacement by meeting those needs and then being able to assess or evaluate it periodically and—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, we're going to have to leave the answer there. I'm sorry about that.

We'll go to Mr. May for six minutes, please.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm going to address my questions to Mr. Goodyear, please.

So far we've heard testimony advocating for greater investment in civilian emergency response capacity at the provincial and territorial level. We've also heard some calls for additional resourcing and dedicated capability in the military, whether that be in the regular or reserve force.

What do you see as the appropriate division of responsibility between the military and the civilian? What are those advantages and disadvantages? Can you maybe identify the limitations of each?

[Perron Goodyear]

Thanks, Mr. May. I appreciate the question. It's a great question

One thing we often say as NGOs is that if we're not needed, that's great, but we would hate to find out that there was something we could have done where somebody just didn't know to engage with the NGO community.

The NGOs that are part of the humanitarian workforce program funded by the government look at some of those requests for federal assistance and look at what the needs are. Is it something really specialized that only military personnel can accomplish, or are there capabilities within the NGO community where they could offer those things?

The majority of the time, we find that it's not necessarily only the military that can do it. It's just really about being able to rapidly get them on the ground. Because they are a federal resource, they're kind of that first go-to. The entire goal behind the humanitarian workforce program is not to have the military be the first line of defence when there's a request for federal assistance.

Many, if not all, of the NGOs within our consortium have a presence. They're not just national NGOs, but they have a presence in communities all across the country. Locally, they may already be engaged, and then other resources from within that NGO from other provinces or territories may also be engaged. Then it's adding another layer. Really, in many cases they're already there. There's just more that NGOs can do.

In my mind, investing in the NGO capabilities is a very strong way forward to make the investment there, as opposed to in specialized military forces, which can be used for other things. As I said in my opening statement, there may be roles that NGOs can play on their own. In other cases, it may enhance what our military can do.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Can you maybe talk a little bit about that specifically? What core capabilities are able to be filled by NGOs and a volunteer base, and which capabilities are perhaps beyond the capacity of a primarily volunteer-based organization?

You talked about timing and being able to get people on the ground quickly as one potential barrier, but are there particular capabilities? Maybe you can explain to us what those NGOs and volunteer-based organizations can tackle?

[Perron Goodyear]

It's interesting because most of the NGOs that we have experience with and that are part of our consortium have their everyday things that they would provide, everything from donations management to psychosocial support, food, hydration, all those kinds of things, but often they are also able to fill in the gaps.

Throughout my 15-plus-year career in disaster and emergency management, I've never responded to two things that were exactly the same and where the needs were exactly the same. It's also the advantage with an NGO consortium that often we will figure out if there is a gap, if there is something unique with this particular situation, and then which of those NGOs is best in a position to actually meet that need. It can be everything from those normal things to.... One of the recent examples with the humanitarian workforce was actually the Search and Rescue Volunteer Association of Canada, whose day-to-day operations are obviously doing search and rescue, but they were able to go into an indigenous community and do things like provide firewood, food, and those things into a remote community because they're very self-sufficient.

It really is a benefit of being able to provide additional expertise, because we're used to being able to fill in those gaps, and even if it's not something we do every day, we're able to ramp up very quickly.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

The pandemic, obviously, has undoubtedly put new strains on resources across all levels of government, but particularly when it comes to NGOs in responding to emergencies. How have you seen NGOs step up over the last two years?

[Perron Goodyear]

That's a great question.

They're doing various things, such as assisting in long-term care facilities. It can be things like backing up some of the non-specialty jobs. It's not necessarily always providing nurses or health care professionals, but feeding residents. It's helping out with seniors care and school programs. For some of the schools when they were shut down, I know that the Salvation Army's trucks went out and provided food to families through their mobile canteen trucks, their disaster trucks, because school feeding programs weren't there. There were even truck drivers bringing critical supplies—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, we're going to have to leave it there, Mr. May.

I see Professor Leuprecht online. Thank you again, sir, for your flexibility and graciousness. I believe you are in Europe and speaking to us from there.

I'm going to interrupt our normal flow of questions in order for Professor Leuprecht to give his five-minute opening statement.

Professor Leuprecht, go ahead.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht, Professor, Royal Military College of Canada, Queen’s University, As an Individual]

I'll just make sure that you can hear me, Chair. Is that all right?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

You're coming in loud and clear.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Perfect.

Thank you for the invitation.

As usual, I will make my presentation in English, but it will be my pleasure to answer your questions in either official language.

I provided a written submission with more detail, but I will just get some of the basics out of the way.

The Canadian Forces has eight missions. Of these, the five missions that involve continental defence and international missions have a force structure associated with them. Then there are three other missions that don't have a basic force structure and fundamentals. On the domestic side, only search and rescue has a significant force structure. The two mandates that don't have a force structure are assistance to civil authorities for law enforcement and the provision of assistance to civil authorities in non-governmental departments to respond to international and domestic disasters or major emergencies.

From that, I think you can infer that the Canadian Armed Forces has, let's say, a distinctly ambiguous attitude towards domestic employment. There are hardly any forces dedicated to it except for the disaster emergency response team. Then you have the army reserve, which has 10 domestic response companies and four Arctic response groups. Those are plagued by high turnover. Therefore, the general philosophy is that disaster and emergency relief missions can be carried out by troops trained for conventional warfare.

You have heard a lot about the fact that somehow the Canadian Armed Forces is over-tasked or particularly stretched with domestic operations. I would say that if you look at some of the data that I've provided over the last 30 years or so, most of these operations are short and they involve a limited number of people, primarily surge capacity by the general forces and lift capacity by the Royal Canadian Air Force. There are elements that were stressed, such as the health services, during the pandemic, but I would say the Canadian Armed Forces has been managing with the capacities that they have.

The debate is whether this detracts from combat readiness. Wouldn't it be better to have a civilian agency? If the CAF retains the mission, it should create a specialized force structure.

The broader context of this is, of course, not just disaster response. It's also the ability for civil defence, because we live in a dangerous world, so we need to have a capacity for deterrence and resilience that can also signal to our adversaries that it's not worth their while to attack Canada, because we have a civil defence capability. Several countries in Europe have gone back to much more robust capabilities.

How did the Canadian Armed Forces end up with the civil defence domestic component to begin with?

In the late 1940s, there was a big debate about whether the Canadian Armed Forces should even be doing or be allowed to do domestic missions. In the early 1950s, the Canadian Armed Forces decided to take on these missions because doing so effectively allowed them a bigger force structure during peacetime than would otherwise be the case.

There are important economies of scale associated with this. For instance, it takes a lot of time and money to train a pilot, so if you have the search and rescue capability, as well as the regular Royal Canadian Air Force mandate, then that means you have considerable economies in the organization, both for the equipment—that is to say, the rotary and the fixed-wing equipment—and in the ability to train your pilots so they can get their flying hours and so forth. There is a significant economy of scale here.

I am concerned that we do, I think, need a dedicated force structure for this. I previously proposed that this might be about 2,000 people, perhaps primarily the Royal Canadian Air Force, since they provide much of the lift capacity, and a reserve component of perhaps another 1,000 people who can work on disaster response, but when they're not needed for disaster response, they can assist with development, in particular of indigenous communities in the far north. I think there is a permanent domestic mandate to be had by the organization.

I'll just conclude on a couple of points.

One is that I think one of the things we have here is that we can learn from the response to the pandemic that the armed forces need to be considering just how far they can go in assigning a core role to the primary reserves without the government first addressing some of the reserve problems. The armed services should be asking themselves what their core role can be, left without a permanent formation and an occupational structure to support it.

The armed services need to consider how to address the intelligence fiasco and the long-standing need to develop and implement a domestic intelligence policy. That is to say that I think the pandemic showed the Canadian Armed Forces that this was the dry run for the big one, when you will have significant demands on the armed forces far beyond what we saw here. That could come in the form of a much bigger domestic emergency or the combination of a domestic emergency, continental emergency and international, regional emergency in terms of stress.

My concern here, and I will close on this, is the moral hazard that we currently have. All Canadians need to have a signal that they need to be involved in the domestic defence and resilience of the country. This is not something we can just give to an organization and pretend that we're done with it. This is the attitude that we take to the Canadian Armed Forces—that the Canadian Armed Forces is a job for people who go off and train—rather than seeing this as a whole-of-society approach that we need to take to domestic response and resilience.

The other concern I have is the long-standing problem of making sure that provinces invest adequately in critical infrastructure. The Canadian Armed Forces is effectively a moral hazard that they can fall back on, because under the Crown prerogative, it is the executive of the day who decides how to deploy the Canadian Armed Forces. There are very few constraints. Canada has perhaps the fewest constraints of any democratic country on how it deploys its armed forces. We need to send a clear message to the provinces that we can't use the armed forces so that they can underinvest in critical infrastructure.

The precedent here is how the Canadian Armed Forces and the militia were used for law enforcement in the early 20th century. Essentially, the militia got out of that mandate by going to a cost-recovery mechanism that effectively made it cheaper for provinces to run their own police forces. We need to work on a much more systematic cost-recovery model when we deploy.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Professor Leuprecht.

To add to the confusion, colleagues, apparently the vote tonight has been deferred, which means that we have more time than we initially thought. Let's continue on with our six-minute rounds.

To add to the confusion on the confusion, I have a private member's bill that starts in a few minutes, and I'm going to vacate the chair to my learned and very capable vice-chair.

Ms. Normandin, go ahead for six minutes.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank all the witnesses for their availability and their patience.

Professor Leuprecht, I am happy you were able to join us.

I would like to hear your comments and those of the other two witnesses on the following.

I talked to a previous witness panel about Mr. Leuprecht's suggestion that part of the reserve force could be trained specifically to respond to climate emergency situations. Between those emergency situations, the unit could help improve infrastructure in remote communities and work on preparation, impact mitigation or prevention.

Here is what one witness said:

The Canadian Forces have an overriding policy of not competing with domestic business and domestic economies. Calling in the military to conduct routine “economic development”, for lack of a better term, would probably not be well received domestically.

I would like to get the opinion of three witnesses—the Government of Yukon official, an NGO representative and Mr. Leuprecht.

Is that idea well perceived on your end?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Over the medium term, there must certainly be more capabilities in the private sector and civil society to meet those requirements. They currently don't exist in the Canadian Armed Forces.

At this time, there are two problems.

First, it would take time for civil society and the private sector to build that capability. The idea is to build a unit that could respond to emergency situations. That is the case in Australia, for example, where thousands of volunteers with the required skills can be called upon. Germany has the same kind of capability. That is something Canada could do, but it could not do it in the near future. I think it would take about 10 years. The federal government should provide some money to encourage provinces to do that.

Second, there is a legal problem. The federal government prefers to meet certain requirements by using the Canadian Armed Forces instead of collaborating with provincial or private organizations. There are some legal obligations involved. If the government responds with its resources and its capabilities, it means it can meet those obligations. So the legal context must be considered and it must be determined how to change it, as the current situation does not encourage that kind of collaboration.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

I would like the Government of Yukon official to give me his opinion concerning the idea that the forces could compete with people on the ground, in Yukon. I am interested in hearing your opinion on this.

On the contrary, is it a good idea for a team of reservists to always be ready to participate in economic and infrastructure development in remote regions?

[Dr. Daniel Saugh]

I'm just jumping in here, if I may, or is that question directed to the professor?