National Defence Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

I call this meeting to order. This is meeting number 33 of the Standing Committee on National Defence.

We have in the first hour Deryck Trehearne, director general, government operations centre, Public Safety Canada.

Welcome to the committee, sir. You have five minutes for your opening statement. Go ahead, please.

[Deryck Trehearne, Director General, Government Operations Centre, Public Safety Canada]

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to be here.

As you said, I'm Deryck Trehearne. I'm the director general of the government operations centre at Public Safety.

I just want to spend a little bit of time this morning talking about my organization, the process for requesting federal assistance and our very special relationship with the CAF and the armed forces. I'd also like to maybe give you a sense of the lessons we've learned over the last few years. As you know, there have been very significant efforts by my organization, the CAF and all federal partners with regard to COVID-19 as well as a variety of very major events of national interest.

We have a very special relationship with the Canadian Armed Forces, and we play a key role in CAF domestic deployments to respond to emergencies and risks through the request for federal assistance process.

Over the past two and a half years, as you know, Canada has contended with at least six distinct waves of COVID-19. We began, as you may recall, in March of 2020, by repatriating thousands of Canadians from Wuhan and from certain cruise ships around the world. We established a quarantine facility at CFB Trenton and then later on at Nav Centre in Cornwall. During this period, my partners in the CAF and I responded to significant seasonal flooding and wildfire events in 2021 and 2022, especially in B.C. last year, including unprecedented weather events like the atmospheric rivers in B.C. and the Atlantic provinces last fall, which created extensive damage to infrastructure. Those were followed by the truckers' protest in Ottawa, and more recently and ongoing now, we have damage from hurricane Fiona.

It goes without saying that this was and continues to be an unprecedented period for my organization, all federal departments and the CAF. Every Canadian, including every member of this committee, I'm sure is well aware of the impacts of some of these events, including those with respect to your ridings and your regions.

We have engaged RFAs, requests for federal assistance, in every province and territory multiple times during COVID and, in the case of some provinces, many times.

I just want to speak briefly about the role of my organization and the request for federal assistance process. In general terms, as I'm sure you've heard repeatedly, emergencies in Canada are a shared responsibility. That being said, the level of government best able to respond to emergencies does so, beginning at the local level. By far, most emergencies in Canada are managed at the local and provincial levels. It is when those emergencies spill across jurisdictions or require support beyond the capacity of a province or a first nation to respond, or there is an event in the national interest, that the federal government is then engaged under the relevant acts of Parliament.

Under the Emergency Management Act, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Minister Blair is responsible for exercising leadership related to emergency preparedness and response in Canada. The federal emergency response plan, otherwise known around here by its acronym, FERP, details how that authority is exercised. Within that plan, Public Safety, my organization, is the lead federal coordinating department for emergency response.

As you've no doubt heard by now, the National Defence Act outlines cases in which the CAF may be authorized to provide assistance in emergencies for public support, inter alia. In my world, the CAF is always considered a resource of last resort in Canada, and there must be ministerial approval and support from our minister and the Minister of National Defence before an RFA can be authorized.

The government operations centre specifically helps the Minister of Emergency Preparedness to deliver on a number of responsibilities including response and some preparedness aspects.

As I said, with respect to the RFA process, should a province or territory make an official request for federal assistance, there is a well-established process in place to manage that, beginning with regional contact with members of the GOC team and including interdepartmental consultation. This is often behind-the-scenes work that takes place before the formal RFA is received and as an event is unfolding.

Prior to the pandemic, just to give you a sense of the workload in Canada, the GOC—and by osmosis the CAF in many cases—was supporting probably five to 10 RFAs per year. I'm happy to report that since March 2020, we have now crossed the 200 RFAs threshold in Canada in support of provinces and first nations and territories.

Those RFAs were for public health supports, health care supports, vaccination rollout supports, assistance to law enforcement, national coordination and evacuation supports. Of those 200 RFAs, 157 were supported in some way, shape or form by the CAF or CAF rangers. In the case of first nations, at least 56 deployments of CAF rangers were used to support first nations during COVID and other events.

In addition to general RFAs, some requests fall under CAF assistance to law enforcement. You've seen some of those discussed already. One notable example was the support provided to long-term care facilities in Quebec in the spring of 2020, where approximately 1,300 CAF members supported 47 long-term care facilities in Quebec during the first wave of COVID. There were also supports for Ontario.

The government operations centre acts as a single window to access federal supports, as I said, including supports for primary health care, COVID-19 efforts and health human resources. The CAF is one of several federal departments, including Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, that created a single window in support of the COVID efforts.

As I said, the CAF is always considered a source of last resort for responses to emergencies within Canada. As a result, requests for CAF resources must undergo a strict assessment by my organization when provinces and territories ask for help. Things we would look at, for instance, are regional capacity, commercial options and other federal sources. We discuss a number of criteria with the province or territory before we get to a situation of deploying the CAF.

In addition, we try to define in advance which tasks the CAF will do that are appropriate to its mandate and capabilities, along with time-limited and response-focused emergency help. Obviously, you know that right now the CAF is deployed in the Atlantic provinces in terms of support for Fiona. You can see the types of work they're doing there.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Trehearne, can you wind it up, please? We're over time already. Thanks.

[Deryck Trehearne]

Sure.

Obviously the CAF has demonstrated its ability to meet many concurrent operational requirements, but that's come at a cost, as I think you've heard from a number of folks who have presented here.

One thing I just want to flag is that the government and Public Safety did create a humanitarian workforce program. They announced $100 million early in 2020, and that's been added to since. You heard from Conrad Sauvé, I believe, of the Red Cross. The Red Cross, St. John Ambulance and others are part of that humanitarian workforce, which has created a strategic support for surge federally to take the burden off the CAF. That was developed in the midst of COVID.

I'll just close by saying that over the past two and a half years we've obviously had an impressive level of federal response in Canada for COVID and other crises. The CAF, obviously, has been at the centre of that. They have been outstandingly supportive and great partners in response to these large-scale events. Our federal capacity to respond, as you're all well aware, is finite. The provinces also have finite and very asymmetrical capacities, in many cases.

I'll stop there, Mr. Chair. I'm happy to take questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, sir.

Ms. Gallant, you have six minutes. Go ahead, please.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Do you have in place—and if you do, please describe them—types of civilian task forces in case a major disaster is pending? For example, do you have a number of companies that have heavy equipment and workers that you could call upon in a time of emergency, just a whole list of them spread out across the country, should something befall our people?

[Deryck Trehearne]

There are a number of ways to answer that question.

I would say that provincially there are workforces. Federally, there's the humanitarian workforce program that I just referred to quickly. That has at least four NGOs supported by the government to build capacity and to be ready to respond. That is something new in the last few years, as I pointed out.

In addition to that the federal capacity for contracting and procurement is available. We work with our partners at PSPC, in many cases to procure hotels or other supplies. I should also point out that you have the Public Health Agency of Canada with the national emergency strategic stockpile and other things. In terms of huge or strategic humanitarian workforces that are controlled federally, I would say, no, we do not have that.

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

Would it be of benefit to have standing contracts with people nearby so you don't have to go through the whole slow procurement process when a tragedy hits?

[Deryck Trehearne]

As I say—and this gets into the distributed accountabilities in Canada where there are these shared responsibilities—oftentimes the provinces will have those mechanisms.

We also have, as I said, procurement, but it's emergency contracting. This isn't your typical “put out a request for proposals and wait” weeks in advance. This is something that happens, in many cases, in hours and days. There are emergency contracting authorities that the federal government can pull on and that the lead departments, in their areas of policy responsibility, do utilize—for instance, for asylum seekers or other things like that.

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

Does the government regularly rehearse different scenarios for emergency preparedness?

[Deryck Trehearne]

We do, actually, and we typically refer to those as “exercises”. I think there's a demand in Canada for more of these. There is an extensive list that is available across the federal government of the national exercise calendar. There are many hundreds of small, medium and large exercises that go on every year in Canada, but there's always a demand for more, because it's a great step in terms of preparedness.

For instance, the biggest one that's out there, which you may be aware of, is “Coastal Response 2023”, which is being done with British Columbia. That's about a major earthquake scenario. They have done repeated national-level exercises, including huge commitments from the federal government and my organization over the last few years, in preparedness for that potential scenario.

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

When was the last time a whole-of-government exercise was held?

[Deryck Trehearne]

As I said, the coastal response is the most major one, and that involves almost every federal department. We have elements of that that are called “building blocks”, which are going on constantly, and they will have their crescendo in February, in late winter of this year, in British Columbia. That's a national-level exercise.

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

There were two exercises in the States pertaining to the pandemic that a number of countries participated in, and I didn't see Canada listed on them. There was one in the spring of 2019 and then one in the fall of 2019. One of them was called “Event 201”. Why would we not have participated in those?

[Deryck Trehearne]

I think you'd have to ask my colleagues at the Public Health Agency about their participation in those. If those were led by CDC in the public health sphere, they may have participated. I'm not really aware. I know that the Public Health Agency had plans and exercises that it was considering, I think, prior to the pandemic, but I'm not really up to speed on what the CDC did in terms of exercises.

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

In your opinion, does Canada have an effective system in place to detect all the different types of non-military related emergencies that could be enacted by belligerents from other countries, even, for example, cyber-incursions?

[Deryck Trehearne]

I think we have a pretty good system. It's a complicated one in Canada, as you heard me allude to. There are multiple levels of shared responsibility. I would say that when it comes to what we refer to as “cyclical” events—fires and floods—these things are well known. The capacities of the provinces and territories to prepare and respond are actually quite good, even despite some of the events we've seen in B.C. in the last couple of years.

In that area they are quite good. I think some of my colleagues may have presented on the cyber-aspects as well, and I think there's a lot of work going on in that area. We talk about all hazards in our world. The cyclicals are kind of the best known in Canada, and hurricanes now, as you can see, are something we're a little bit worried about in the future, as these things potentially become more frequent .

I think there is a very good system in Canada, but I think we've also been lucky historically, in the sense that we haven't had the kinds of catastrophes that other countries have had—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

We're going to have to leave it there.

Mr. May, you have six minutes, please.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you very much for sharing some of your time with us this morning.

You talked a bit in your opening about the partnership between the provinces, territories and federal government when dealing with these types of crises. Can you spend some time going into a little more detail on the process when a province or territory needs federal assistance? What does that look like?

[Deryck Trehearne]

I'm happy to go over that.

As I said, if emergencies happen and they impact the local level initially.... Think of the thunderstorm event in Ottawa a few months ago. In that case, the province did not seek federal support and did not ask to deploy the army. Ottawa managed that. It was mainly a hydro and infrastructure impact, and they managed it. Many events occur across Canada all the time that you may not be aware of. They occur locally, regionally and are handled.

If events begin to overwhelm a region or province, then conversations will begin between the emergency management teams in a province and locally. They may engage the government operations centre. We have regional offices across the country. They have very strong relationships with the emergency management operation centres in each province and territory. If something is overwhelming, say in the case of the atmospheric river last fall, there was an immediate response from the CAF for search and rescue and evacuating people from highways. Then there were additional conversations that were engaged with our team. We work with the province and its emergency management centre to deploy federal supports.

Of course, once the critical response crisis phase is over, there are a number of very strategic conversations that go on around disaster support and financing. You'll recall the ministerial working group on B.C. I'm sure folks have discussed that as well. Mainly there are conversations if the province feels that a region is overwhelmed. If something is of significant impact to the province, they'll engage our team and we will work with them to understand their needs.

As I said, in terms of the criteria of capabilities that are required, we'll understand whether the federal government has those capabilities, whether the provincial and regional assets have been leveraged and exhausted, and what private sector and public sector assets are available. That can all go on in a matter of hours or days leading up to a formal request for federal assistance.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Thank you.

In your opening, I think you mentioned the number of requests that have come in. I missed that.

Could you repeat what that number is, in terms of how many requests we've seen in recent years? I understand, obviously, that there was a surge at the beginning of the pandemic for those types of requests.

[Deryck Trehearne]

That's correct.

In the past, say three-plus years ago, we would maybe have five or 10 requests for federal assistance a year. As I said, we've now passed 200 requests for assistance in terms of COVID and all of the major events in Canada in the last two and a half years.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

Is there an issue with capacity on the Public Safety side when you see a surge of that kind?

[Deryck Trehearne]

Yes, there are definitely issues. Our group is fairly small at the GOC. We worked a lot of long days—every weekend and holiday for the first year and a half of COVID, for sure. That's in terms of capacity.

To get into the bigger question about the federal capacity to respond, in terms of COVID, there were huge supports by Indigenous Services Canada to first nations, with all kinds of funding and capabilities. There was also the Public Health Agency of Canada, with huge efforts and expenses in terms of safe isolation sites and a number of other programs that I'm sure they've spoken about. Then there were the efforts of the armed forces, of course.

Sustainability and capacity is an ongoing concern. Certainly we've had to manage ourselves accordingly during this very protracted event of COVID-19, which is unlike anything else we've ever seen.

[Bryan May, Liberal, Cambridge, ON]

We met earlier this week with the Red Cross and talked to them a lot about their involvement in a number of these crises.

In your opinion, would the federal government be able to meet these provincial and territorial requests without support from organizations like the Red Cross?