I'm Eva Cohen. Before I moved to Canada back in 2003, I was a volunteer in Germany's Federal Agency for Technical Relief, the THW, a government organization that consists of 98% unpaid citizen volunteers and is located all across Germany at the local and regional level.
I have experienced first-hand the many benefits of a community-based civil protection approach that is grounded in citizen volunteers. For over 14 years, I have focused on highlighting the value that a Canadian version, modelled on the success of the THW, would bring to our society and how it could be done.
To start the process of changing the culture of preparedness and building capacity, I founded a non-profit social enterprise called Civil Protection Youth Canada.
There is no question that government needs to have a backup force to ensure adequate response to threats beyond everyday emergencies. We need to understand our risks, which capabilities are required to be prepared, and a structure to ensure readiness and rapid deployment of the needed capacity.
Even though our military is our only government tool to deploy in a disaster, it is not the armed forces' focus, and they are not adequately trained and equipped for all-hazards tasks. Using sophisticated military equipment for disaster response and recovery is expensive and not our best option. Instead of armoured vehicles, we need excavators, cranes, high-capacity pumps and other equipment—and the people trained to use them—to clear debris, provide emergency power and water, and repair damaged infrastructure.
Luckily, most of the required skills exist in our population and in the private sector. What is missing is the structure that enables government the same rapid response, boots on the ground and scalability as the armed forces but with a civil protection approach. The easiest solution often seems to be the one that builds on what we have. This is the rare occasion where the fastest and most affordable solution is to add something entirely new to what is missing and to provide the framework that mobilizes a completely untapped resource: Canadian citizen volunteers. We need an organization that would complement and integrate, not duplicate or take away from what we already have.
Even though we have seen an alarming increase in disasters over the years, none of our current stakeholders in disaster response have been able to address the need for our system to adapt with a robust and sustainable long-term vision, and now we don’t have the luxury of time. However, we are not alone in this situation.
I recommend that, instead of conducting lengthy inquiries and studies, we join forces with our international partners, Germany and the EU, and compare risks and capabilities. I ask the committee to please recommend to government that it make use of the standing offer of one of our closest allies, Germany, which, as a federation like Canada with jurisdiction of EM with states and municipalities, a vibrant NGO sector like ours and the military as the asset of last resort, has another tool for the government to rely on.
Seventy years of success and capacity building done in co-operation internationally is our shortcut, as we need to act now. The guiding principle is that government enables volunteers to be the backbone of the system and provides the long-term vision, structure and framework to ensure that this local, yet national, volunteer capacity is trained, certified, equipped and consistently integrated into the emergency response system.
This does not only guarantee efficient co-operation of all available assets; it shifts our completely reactive system to citizen-based proactive preparedness, readiness and resilience. A Canadian civil protection agency would provide the government with the operational arm that it is now missing.
Without adding an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy, it guarantees the focus, structure and standards needed for a national approach that connects all provinces, territories and indigenous communities, and enables them to provide their communities proactively with the capacity that is needed locally and regionally for rapid and prolonged response, all at a fraction of the cost of our current approach.