Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, for having us here to speak today.
My name is Conrad Sauvé. I am the CEO of the Canadian Red Cross and I'm joined today by my colleague Amy Avis, who is general counsel and lead for our recovery, risk reduction and resilience programming. We are joining you from Ottawa, which is on the unceded territory of the Anishinabe people.
I would like to start by thanking committee members for your leadership in the timely study of Canada’s domestic response capacity. My presentation is in English.
I can certainly answer committee members' questions in French.
Each year with increased frequency and severity, we're seeing the growing impact of climate change on Canadian communities. In the last two years alone, the Canadian Red Cross has responded to floods and fires in B.C. and to an annual flooding in northern Manitoba in indigenous communities, and our teams are currently on the ground supporting those impacted by hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada.
Unfortunately, these events are not isolated incidents. What once was a once-in-a-lifetime disaster is increasingly an annual event, stretching Canada's emergency management system to its limits.
When I started with the Red Cross, our emergency operations were almost entirely international. Today, 90% of our efforts are focused on assisting Canadians at home. At the Red Cross, we believe the time has come to stop treating these large-scale events as exceptional, and we must do more now to prepare ourselves for a new normal.
This must include seeking new ways to adapt, enhance and modernize Canada's response capacity and reduce the current strain on governments and response organizations, including the Canadian Armed Forces. While the Canadian Armed Forces have always been there to help in times of disaster, they must remain the force of last resort and should not be the only permanent national surge capacity in times of emergency.
As we seek to address gaps in Canada's emergency management capacity, we can point to a few critical lessons that we've learned during the past two years in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to unprecedented funding from the Government of Canada, the Canadian Red Cross was able to build the first-ever humanitarian workforce comprised of thousands of Canadians across the country who were eager and willing to lend their skills and expertise. These efforts began in the spring of 2020 as part of a highly successful effort to relieve the Canadian Armed Forces in long-term care homes in Quebec and Ontario. The highly collaborative effort saw the Canadian Red Cross and the CAF personnel sharing skills, experience and lessons learned to ensure that Canadians were well supported throughout the transition. In fact, prior to our deployment, the Canadian Red Cross helped to train hundreds of CAF members in epidemic prevention control measures.
Since that time, this investment has resulted in more than 7,500 Red Cross personnel deployments to respond to more than 180 requests for assistance from federal, provincial and territorial partners. Even today, the Canadian Red Cross continues to deploy health human resources into communities to support COVID-19 outbreaks as well as ongoing vaccination clinics across the country, particularly in the north. While our country must be hugely grateful to the Canadian Armed Forces for their effort in responding to COVID-19, we have learned that, with strategic foresight, a continued investment in the development and maintenance of emergency health support is a role that organizations like the Canadian Red Cross can and should be trusted to play.
In addition to the gap in humanitarian service delivery early in the pandemic, we are also increasingly seeing gaps in civil protection capability, such as the critical work the CAF is supporting in Atlantic Canada. The Canadian Red Cross has recently studied a number of emergency management models internationally, including through discussions with our Red Cross counterparts in Germany, Australia and the United States. What we have seen, in terms of best practices for Canada, is an emergency strategy that clearly articulates predefined roles, responsibilities and capabilities for each actor. These are further strengthened with appropriate funding and coordination structures to ensure effective readiness and deployment of these resources.
While these models all include a mandate for civil protection capability, they also recognize and define an auxiliary role for their national Red Cross Society on the provision of humanitarian services. As we look at potential options for such models in Canada, we also caution that any model must be built for purpose, considering the unique risks, peoples and geography of this country.