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.