National Defence Committee on Oct. 4th, 2022

[Jaime Battiste, Liberal, Sydney—Victoria, NS]

What is the expiry date of the matching?

[Conrad Sauvé]

The initial expiry date is 30 days, but I understand that may be prolonged. Presently, it was 30 days from a few days ago. In the next coming weeks all dollars will be matched, and we will share exactly how we will distribute that.

Again, the registration is key for us, because it's understanding the needs. Of course, we will use all of the funds to support those immediate needs and local organizations as well. We're doing that assessment now, at the same time as we're raising the money.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Battiste.

Mr. Desilets, you have six minutes.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for Mr. Sauvé.

Earlier, you may have heard our other witness, Mr. Fadden, who made a recommendation. He suggested setting up an independent commission of inquiry given the scale and complexity of crisis interventions that are likely to become more frequent.

What are your thoughts on that?

[Conrad Sauvé]

I didn't hear that part of Mr. Fadden's presentation.

I think it's important to take the time to really understand the events of recent years, the response to those events, where the gaps are and whether there is unused capacity in the community because of inadequate preparation. I think that's one of the important issues too.

I heard the end of Mr. Fadden's presentation, and I could not agree more about the importance of gaining a better understanding of the risks and being better prepared to deal with them. We spend a lot of time talking about responses after the fact, but I think lots of things have to be done at the preparation end of things. It's important to understand the risks and be better prepared to deal with them at the local level.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

I have another question for you, Mr. Sauvé.

Earlier you talked about how 90% of your work is done in Canada, not abroad, as it used to be. Given that, and given your capacity to intervene domestically, are you in a position to respond to what's likely to be growing demand in the coming years?

[Conrad Sauvé]

I don't think we will be if we don't invest more in our standing capacity. That said, I do have to thank the federal government because, after the COVID‑19 pandemic, it invested in more permanent capacity. Investing in capacity is one of the important parts of the conversation.

Over the past few years, we've mostly responded to emergency situations. We'd like to do a lot more simulations, prepare for risks, prepare for emergency response and better coordinate our efforts.

We need to accept that these kinds of events are going to happen more often. We also have to invest in our permanent capacity, not just response where an event occurs.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Sauvé.

My next question is for Mr. Botha.

Based on your expertise, your experience and your university training, if you had to make recommendations to this committee, what would they be?

[Johanu Botha]

Thank you so much for the question.

I will certainly echo Mr. Sauvé's emphasis on greater preparedness, especially at the local level. Increasing municipal emergency management capacity through civil society and volunteer organizations, and preparedness at the individual level, the family level and the residential level, are all very important. But I would tell this committee that, even if all of that preparatory activity had occurred, and even if we had large-scale infrastructure mitigation layered on top to reduce disaster impacts, for large-scale events like we're seeing with Fiona at the moment, there is no obvious labour alternative to the Canadian Armed Forces and what they can bring to bear.

It's also important to note what makes Canada a bit unique when compared with such other comparable federal countries as the U.S. and Australia. The Canadian Armed Forces is the one operational player that links municipal, federal and provincial responses. Otherwise, we're very decentralized. If you deploy into a disaster zone anywhere in the country, nine times out of 10 you're going to see a lot of provincial activity with our EM partners. The one player that links all three levels is often those frontline soldiers and their chain of command. There is an operational matrix that the armed forces allows during a large-scale response.

My recommendation to the committee would be that, for large-scale responses, look to how CAF can be supported in terms of their capacity but also their morale. We've heard before that there is maybe a sense of not feeling a ton of motivation for domestic disaster response. As with combat, the will to fight on the humanitarian side will be very important. What is happening to enhance morale on the CAF side? I think the research is quite clear, from the trends from at least 2007 onward, that they will be needed.

[Luc Desilets, Bloc, Rivière-des-Mille-Îles, QC]

Thank you.

I have one last question for you.

Mr. Botha, do you think the Canadian Armed Forces are really capable of responding to what's asked of them?

I'm not talking about financial demands; I'm talking about operational demands.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Be very brief, please.

[Johanu Botha]

Thank you.

Not quite at this time. I think we need greater capacity. That's clear, because the receiving jurisdictions almost always ask for more than they receive, especially on the labour front.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes, please.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Thank you.

Mr. Botha, there's a question that often comes to my mind. There have been lots of conversations about different provincial governments not putting in as many resources—simply because of costs and abilities—into those emergency management systems, with a reliance upon the armed forces to be not just the last resort but the only one. There's a lack of tools and so on and so forth.

Ultimately, what is your response to the idea or the fact that there are certain provinces that are hit more often with the need for emergency response? I think of your province of Manitoba and the yearly flooding that occurs up north, and especially the impacts on first nations. How can the federal government play a role or help provincial governments, which have more of that needed response as opposed to others? How can we find that balance?

[Johanu Botha]

Thank you so much for the question.

From my operational experience, I'd like to note that, while a request for assistance for military support occurs essentially every year somewhere in the country, it's very rare for a particular provincial jurisdiction to be requesting support every single year. From the national perspective, you're seeing a lot of military activity to support domestic disaster response, but if you just isolate into one jurisdiction, it's not occurring as frequently as one might think. Operationally, if the Manitoba emergency measures organization, like its provincial counterparts, wants to issue a request for assistance, a lot of legwork needs to be done to demonstrate the true need. It's not an easy lever to pull, by any means.

In terms of how there could maybe be greater support from the federal side, as you noted in the question, I think it goes back to some of the risk assessment work that the committee has already identified as important. Where do we have cyclical hazards? Where do we have hazards that can be pretty much predicted? In those cases, maybe that is where provincial emergency management capacity can ramp up, be stable, maybe not expect federal support and have that kind of federal support ready for the “break glass” moments that we may not have anticipated as much—for example, the Fiona experience or the pandemic experience.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

I'll switch to questions for the Red Cross.

We heard about the legal liabilities in terms of emergency responses. Certainly the armed forces, in terms of those unique capabilities that we talk about a lot, have that legal status or structure. They can go into those dangerous situations.

Can you discuss, from the Red Cross's point of view, whether you face a lot of those same legal liability issues? How do you deal with them? How do you separate those from when the Canadian Armed Forces come in? What are your experiences with that?

[Conrad Sauvé]

I have with us our lead counsel. She's quite capable of talking about liability.

We responded, as we talked about earlier, to 180 requests for assistance from the provinces during COVID, where we deployed personnel in COVID situations.

Amy Avis can maybe talk about about our liability infrastructure. We work with the federal government and the provinces in that respect as well.

[Amy Avis, General Counsel and Chief of Recovery Services, Canadian Red Cross]

Yes, absolutely.

I think the Canadian Red Cross has an extremely high-risk appetite. It differentiates us from other NGOs, in the sense that we're able to assess, absorb and mitigate risk.

Absolutely we had to cross the threshold of risk sharing with different government departments in the context of COVID and other large-scale responses. We were able to traverse that, and in partnership with federal authorities find a way to risk share where appropriate. Again, we heavily rely on our capacity to risk mitigate and our high-risk appetite.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Okay.

Mr. Sauvé, you also mentioned the required training.

There were some questions I had before to previous witnesses about the armed forces potentially taking on that training. Would the Red Cross be interested? It would be part of that mitigation of liability, when you have those higher trained possibilities in the Canadian Armed Forces taking on the training-specific part.

Is that a possibility?

[Conrad Sauvé]

You're asking the Red Cross training for...?

I'm sorry. I'm not following that question.

[Lindsay Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

When they're put into situations, talking about woodcutting potentially, or maybe something a little more dangerous—not at the high end where the armed forces would be necessary to perform it—would that be valuable, and is that training a possibility?

[Conrad Sauvé]

You have to remember.... I said that the majority of our responses have increasingly been in Canada in the last few years.

The honourable member, in one of my first questions, reminded me of the past. We've deployed in Syria, and in numerous situations of both conflict and natural disasters. We've responded to a number of earthquake operations. That's an important part of how we maintain our experience. We have mobile field hospitals. We are experienced in deploying in complex situations.

I think you had a question earlier about events that are happening more and more often. I think it's right.

My experience in Canada is that we're starting to realize that these events are happening more and more. We haven't quite adjusted in terms of how we're preparing for that and understanding the risk. This is a new reality everywhere. Again, if the events happened once in your lifetime, then you don't feel like you need to set up a system. They may happen a few times in a year and you need to adjust. We're at exactly that point.

That's probably a point that Mr. Fadden was making earlier. We need to understand the whole response—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, Mr. Sauvé, I seem to have a facility for cutting you off. It's not something that I really work at.

Colleagues, we have a little over 15 minutes to ask 25 minutes' worth of questions. I have a hard stop at one o'clock. Arbitrarily, I'm going to say that those with five minutes now have three. Those with two and a half minutes now have one.

It will be three minutes to Mr. Motz.

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

Thank you, Mr. Sauvé. Don't take it personally; he cuts me off all the time.

Sir, you talked about private citizen donations. In this particular circumstance, with Fiona, the feds are going to match whatever public donations come in.

Can you explain under what circumstances the federal government actually pays for your operations?

[Conrad Sauvé]

We have some standing capacity that's funded by the government. Some of it is also paid for by our annual donations. We have a regular presence of volunteers and staff who are already in all the provinces.

We also have agreements with the provinces and municipalities as well. In the case of Fiona, we're also working with provincial authorities to distribute some of their assistance. We're playing all those roles, so we have part of that standing capacity.

Overall, if we look at the threats that are coming, what we're saying, both to the federal and provincial governments, is that we need to increase our standing capacity and funding, not just in emergencies. Everybody wants to contribute to the Red Cross when an emergency happens, but a lot of our work needs to happen before that.

I think my colleague from Manitoba also mentioned the need for preparedness and local preparedness, which are critical here in understanding your risks. When we help Canadians who have lost everything, more often than not, they tell us they didn't think it would happen to them. How we're increasing our understanding of the risk and how we're sharing that is going to be critical.