National Defence Committee on May 18th, 2022

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

My question would be for Mr. Burns, from the Government of Yukon.

Mr. Burns, did you hear the question?

[Damien Burns]

I heard it, but I will answer in English.

I believe you're asking whether it would be a welcome addition to our resources to have an equipped team of reservists to come and support us in more remote regions like the Yukon. I think the short answer is yes. I definitely think there's an enormous need for that type of resource to support a place like the Yukon. This is not to take away from our own internal resourcing, our important work with volunteer agencies to build capacity, and work with the private sector, which is also very important. The reality in the Yukon is that the response pool is so small that I think there are really important times when we would call upon a force like the one you're talking about, a specially trained emergency response type of reserve force that can come and really bring a comprehensive response.

I think the real value for us in the experience we had last year with those 200 armed forces members coming to support the Yukon was, additionally, that the agency was completely self-sufficient from a logistical sense. They housed themselves, they fed themselves, and they required very limited support from our responders and from the system that we had in place to feed and move around our own resources. It was really important that they were able to come in and work within our incident command structure as a wholly complete, trained agency that came with their own engineers and supervisors and complete structure there. That was very important, and that would be a very welcome addition to—

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

Thank you, Mr. Burns. That's it for time.

Thank you, Ms. Normandin.

Mr. Desjarlais, you're next.

[Blake Desjarlais, Edmonton Griesbach, NDP]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Thank you to the honourable members of this committee for allowing me this moment to speak to your committee on this very important issue. I really want to thank the witnesses as well for being present here. I commend each and every one of you for your work in this field.

I, myself, have experience in emergency management in northern Alberta.

I'll give a nod to Mr. Burns. I'm sure you're familiar with what happened in northern Alberta in 2019, which was the Chuckegg wildfire. It was a massive wildfire that threatened High Level and Paddle Prairie. During that experience, when I was the national director for Alberta's northern Métis, we had a huge fire called the Chuckegg wildfire, and this fire ultimately destroyed 15 homes. Today, unfortunately, that same community is actually being flooded. They've been evacuated and are continuing to evacuate as we speak.

I want to just back up to 2019. In my experience in that, there was a whole series of barriers, I'd say, to indigenous people and their access to emergency services. Ultimately, it did require the Canadian Armed Forces to send two planes to help us evacuate that community. We faced immense difficulty in trying to make sure that we had the logistics and the capability to do that work. Of course, we organized, as many of you will know, at the provincial level first. We had a PAC council called, a provincial organizing council. This provincial organizing council invited us to look at ways and means to support our indigenous communities in northern Alberta.

What I found was a series of unique problems. I think a member spoke about it, actually, the need to ensure that northern indigenous communities have access to support, and I think it was Christian Leuprecht who talked about what role the Canadian Armed Forces can play in supporting indigenous communities in particular, which, to date, lack the critical infrastructure, the critical support systems and the critical logistical centres, to actually tackle the crisis we're in.

I mean this in the full sense, that we're in the age of climate consequence right now. Each of our witnesses has spoken to that fact. By patterns we know that these crises, these natural disasters, are going to continue to get worse. Not only are they going to get worse, but they're going to get more devastating in terms of their impact to our infrastructure.

I have a series of questions, and I'll follow up in my subsequent rounds on this point, but to each of the panel members, you have the same experience I do, I'm sure, in organizing support for communities in the north, or at least some of you do. What can we do to ensure that we limit the barriers and get direct assistance to indigenous communities, maybe by way of a federal program, that may not require the consent of the province, which was a barrier to those indigenous communities during that time?

We can start with Mr. Burns.

[Damien Burns]

I'm a little curious about the end of that statement, around providing those supports without the consent of the province. In my experience, it's really critical that all levels are working closely together. I don't see, in the Yukon at least, indigenous or first nation communities being separate from any of our other response, so I would always hope that the province is involved in those resourcing decisions.

I don't know if I have much more to say than that. I think it's important.

[Blake Desjarlais]

That's fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Burns.

Just for the sake of time, maybe we'll move to Christian.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

I think that's a fantastic point, for a couple of reasons. One of the things that people forget is that doing any of this type of work in the north costs about 10 times what it costs to do the same type of development work, for instance, in the south. I think it's also lost on people that much of the infrastructure that exists in the south, of course, doesn't exist in the north. It is the state and the tools of the state that ultimately have to provide some of the resources that we would take for granted in the south, and to do it at a much lower cost.

This is why I think the state needs to be actively involved, and this is why I think of this sort of unit that can, on the one hand, be tasked with helping in the development of northern communities—and of course helping northern communities is a gain in terms of prosperity and is a gain on equality of opportunity for all Canadians—while at the same time having that unit be able to respond. When it's not needed, it can work on development issues in the north with particular communities, and when it's needed, it can flip to disaster response.

I just want to highlight, in response to your comment and also the previous question, that using the reserves to do this comes with a particular challenge, because the reserves are plagued by high turnover and an inability to reach certain training standards, and they're only available on a case-by-case, volunteer basis. That is why you need a permanent force structure, because then you can employ the reservists [Technical difficulty—Editor] on contract, who will actually be there for you permanently to be able to work on these particular issues, rather than this ad hoc reliance on whatever teams we can cobble together when we happen to need them.

[Blake Desjarlais]

Chair, how much time do I have?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

You're just at the end of your time.

[Blake Desjarlais]

Christian, we'll come back to it. I really enjoyed that point.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

You will have the chance again. Thank you.

Next, we'll call on MP Motz for five minutes, please.

[Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Conservative, South Surrey—White Rock, BC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Mr. Leuprecht, I think I know the answer already, but should there be a civilian arm of government trained for these natural disaster emergencies, like FEMA in the United States? What are your thoughts?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

Mr. Motz, if you look at my report, there are basically four models. The FEMA model is probably the most expensive and the least effective model that you can think of. No other democratic country has followed the FEMA model. I think it works for the United States simply because of the institutional structures and the significant challenges that the United States has in many places. It wouldn't work here.

What are the other options? The other options are, for instance, what Australia, Germany and most European countries do, which is to have a civilian component that is very significantly organized. For instance, the State Emergency Service in Australia has a few dozen full-time employees, but it has thousands of volunteers and expert capability to respond, such as engineers. When you need them, they can respond within hours—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Leuprecht, I am going to cut you off, because you did answer my question. I want to get to a couple of other questions with my limited time.

Mr. Goodyear and Mr. Burns, during domestic emergencies, of the NGOs, government organizations and other entities that involve themselves in helping out during a natural disaster, to what extent are their efforts duplicated? How could that duplication be avoided and efficiently maximized?

[Perron Goodyear]

That's a great question, Mr. Motz.

Let me just say, from the NGO perspective, one of the rationales for the development of the Emergency Management NGO Consortium is that we are not duplicating services and, in fact, are working together.

One example I would give you is back when the tornado hit Ottawa and Gatineau. One of our NGOs was tasked with donation management. Another one also had expertise in that, so they just partnered together to work on the ground, as opposed to competing against each other. It is really about that collaboration, to make sure we're not duplicating and also ensuring there are no gaps in any kind of response.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Mr. Burns, go ahead.

[Damien Burns]

That's part of that provincial coordination or that main body of coordination that I think is so important, with the provincial emergency coordination centre or whatever other agency is managing the resources across those various emergencies. That's how we avoid duplication. That's how we resource the different emergencies correctly if they're competing for resources.

That coordination is so important to ensure there's no duplication. That's how we avoid it.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Thank you for that.

When you look at the EMOs, the NGOs and the odd time when the Canadian Armed Forces are involved—and any other federal entities—how does co-operation and collaboration occur? Does that occur well? During the times when there have been co-operation and collaboration in natural disasters, what lessons have been learned from those interactions to improve that?

[Perron Goodyear]

I'm happy to answer that, Mr. Motz.

One thing I can tell you from my experience is that most of the NGOs, as well as other organizations active in disasters, work under the incident command system. We develop that structure with liaison officers who continually coordinate on the ground. We make sure we're sharing information and intel with one another to make sure we are avoiding those gaps.

I think one challenge we've seen is that since the closure of the former Canadian Emergency Management College, there has been no national model for the actual training of personnel. There's provincial training. A lot of the EMOs provide it, but for the national-level organizations, people are being trained provincially, not necessarily at a national level. You're having to learn some of the different models, even of the incident command system—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm just going to interrupt you there, Mr. Goodyear. I'm sorry.

Very quickly, because I only have a few seconds left.... I am a graduate of the Emergency Management College here in Ottawa, years back. Should our government focus on having standardized training for volunteers and stand-up forces, as Mr. Leuprecht has called them, so we're all on the same page?

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

Give a very short answer, please, as we're out of time.

[Perron Goodyear]

I also attended the Canadian Emergency Management College, and that was the advantage, that you can train with military, NGOs and municipal people all at the same time, and all receive the same training.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Kerry-Lynne Findlay]

Thank you.

Mr. Fisher, you have five minutes, please.

[Darren Fisher, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. It's nice to see you in the big chair.

Thanks very much to our witnesses, not only for their expertise but for their incredible patience with what goes on in the House in the 3:30 to 5:30 slot. Thank you all very much for your patience.

What we're studying is what this rising domestic demand poses to the readiness of the Canadian Armed Forces and its ability to respond to future requests for assistance.

Mr. Goodyear and Mr. Burns, you've both outlined the issues. You've talked about the incredible things that you've been able to accomplish within your groups, and you even spoke to building some capacity on how to be able to respond better in the future. You spoke about the large amount of federal funding and how that's a positive thing.

I was listening for what your thoughts were on the way forward, on what a model looks like. In your mind, is it the Red Cross, a special reservist entity or a private entity that's out there to take this pressure off the Canadian Armed Forces?

I'll start with Mr. Goodyear and then maybe go to Mr. Burns, to give us a recommendation on the way forward. I probably won't have time to go to Mr. Leuprecht, who's going to give us a different focus than what you two might give us with regard to NGOs.

How do you see this being solved in the future, as we know that there are going to be more demands on the CAF rather than less?

[Perron Goodyear]

I would say that it's certainly continued investment in NGOs. I mentioned in my opening remarks that some of our NGOs have received funding through the humanitarian workforce program. That's only guaranteed until March 31, 2023, so in order to maintain that.... I think it is about continuing to work with the military and CAF, whether it's a reservist group or the others, and have those groups, as I mentioned, with something like the Canadian Emergency Management College, training together and identifying those gaps, so that when those requests come in, it's much easier to see which of the organizations is best positioned to be able to meet that need, as opposed to the default being the CAF.