National Defence Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you to both of our witnesses.

I would like to hear what you both have to say in response to my first question. You both talked about the importance of preparedness and mitigation.

Lieutenant-Colonel Redman, you talked about the role of the provinces and how that could be supported by the federal government.

For your part, Ms. Cohen, you talked about a civil protection model.

In light of the current climate crisis, the federal government will have to pay for everything upfront, either by sending funds that were not necessarily planned or through the armed forces, which is an extremely expensive endeavour.

I wonder if you could comment on the importance of predictable and recurring funding, for example to the provinces or to NPOs.

Would recurring, predictable and possibly increased funding be a key factor in successful preparedness and mitigation?

Ms. Cohen, perhaps you could go first.

[Eva Cohen]

Yes, I think that's absolutely needed, especially as it speaks to what we understand “capacity” to be. In my view, that is exactly why we call in the armed forces, because they are a reliable tool for the government.

If we define “capacity” as hired short-term contracts, for example, like those often used in the pandemic—and health system as well—how do we guarantee that capacity is available next time? Is it just because they have a name on a list? That's not the same thing. When we think about capacity, we should think about what is readily available. That comes at a cost. That is, in my view, why we don't have it at the local level. Even though the local level is the jurisdiction dealing with emergencies first, there is nothing it can afford beyond emergencies, which are the events that stress the system to the point where other help is needed. Even though we have emergency management capability across the provinces.... I like to describe emergency managers as general contractors. They're not the ones actually clearing the debris, fixing the infrastructure or providing power. They are the ones managing the incident, and they need tools to do that efficiently.

I would like the committee to explore what capacity exists at the provincial level that could be used in a local emergency. I'd like to talk about the disaster or catastrophe, because, if we confuse the scale, it adds to some of these things being so unclear.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Lieutenant-Colonel Redman, I'd like to hear your answer to the same question.

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

Absolutely. Let me first of all comment on Ms. Cohen's concept. It is a concept that I know. As a soldier, I did three tours in Germany during the Cold War, and I counted on the civil defence organization of Germany to make sure that my troops could get from their barracks to the border when we were deployed. I worked with them extensively in other areas as well.

Let's talk about the actual.... You're talking about funding, but I want to give you a structure. In Alberta, first of all you have first responders. Every citizen is expected to be able to take care of themselves for 72 hours. The first responders come to the aid of the citizens who are directly affected. Then the municipal order of government must have a municipal emergency plan, which is verified annually and includes a lot of volunteer organizations that exist in their community and MOUs with their bordering communities. Then there's the provincial order of government that does exactly the same thing and has those volunteer organizations embedded, things like ham radio operators.

At each order of government, there's a responsibility, and it is assumed that they are accountable for the funding. However, what we expected of a town of 100 and what we expected of a city of one million were completely different with respect to their emergency management plans, and we monitored their plans based on that level of capability, with the province filling in the gaps. I expect the same with the federal order of government: that it would work with all 13 provinces and territories, understanding their capabilities and limitations, linking in volunteer organizations, linking in the other agencies and providing funding and assistance where they are needed.

Edmonton didn't need any funding. A small town like Hanna might. You work based on a requirement, and that's from knowing your jurisdiction at each order of government.

I'm sorry. If I may, could I just add one piece?

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Please, go ahead.

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

The largest piece of funding that's missing in our country is for mitigation. Preparedness, response and recovery have been built. Certainly there are some shortfalls, but the largest piece that's missing is mitigation, which is either moving the target from the hazard or the hazard from the target. We could talk about that for hours.

[Christine Normandin, Bloc, Saint-Jean, QC]

Thank you.

This brings me to my second question. I don't know whether you'll have time to finish. We can come back to it in the second round, if need be.

There has been very little discussion about adapting to climate change. Consider the hurricane that hit Fort Myers, Florida, for example. If cities have to be rebuilt year after year where they stand, disasters will cost millions of dollars.

Are we investing enough in adaptation, from a climate change perspective?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Answer very briefly, please.

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

Mitigation is a huge part of emergency management. There are four functions. It is the first, so mitigation is an actual science. There is a discipline and a process to it, and it is the most neglected. If you have a huge flood on a river and then you rebuild in exactly the same flood plain, you're not doing mitigation.

The whole concept of mitigation is a shortfall that needs to be addressed nationally.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Ms. Mathyssen, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ms. Cohen, you talked about the capacity of the public or individuals in relation to the private sector and, ultimately, the investment in people on the ground, their skills, their education, their reaction to these things and how that can actually benefit an employer in that relationship.

Could you expand in terms of that model coming out of Germany? Ultimately, people will want to serve their country and serve their communities. That's an incentive on its own, but it cannot be the only incentive. I'll just give a brief example. In my riding, there's a gentleman, a constituent, who wanted to provide service in terms of one of the NGOs. He was unemployed at the time. He could not get EI to cover that leave because EI stipulates in Canada that you have to constantly be looking for work and you have to verify that. That's part of that system. However, he couldn't afford to go without that kind of compensation.

Could you explain how Germany handles that in terms of the model?

[Eva Cohen]

That is a very good question. I think it points to a big problem that we currently have in making the best use of our volunteers and our volunteer organization.

Germany has a system in place through which the federal government basically guarantees that you do not have any negative effects as a volunteer for this organization. It also guarantees something called the wage reimbursement program. That means that, if you are in a full-time job and your expertise is needed to respond in your region, your employer may ask the federal government for somebody to replace you and for the government to pay for that person.

In reality, that is very rarely used, as you can imagine, because the private sector makes use of their corporate social responsibility that way and they're proud to have their employees helping. Usually, because these disasters are local, the region is probably impacted anyway, which impacts the private sector, so there is no issue with that.

If I may, I would also like to link it to the mitigation piece, because we try to see this in silos. However, I also think mitigation always happens in the response, and we don't have that capability to prevent the response from escalating if we don't have the civil protection capabilities in place locally.

Another point is that I totally agree that we need as much mitigation as we can have, but then all of those mitigation projects are not a guarantee that they're not going to fail. If we build dams or dikes, we need people who will service them and who can defend or protect them if something happens. All those things link together, but the availability of staff or volunteers is what is crucial and what is missing at the moment.

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

The world is experiencing this, but certainly in Canada, we have a labour shortage. If you're speaking about a company that is already experiencing that difficulty in terms of staffing.... The Canadian Armed Forces are experiencing that as well.

How does Germany deal with that, in terms of the labour shortage, to find that balance whereby they're ensuring that their employees can go and volunteer as part of that system when there is an emergency?

[Eva Cohen]

It's a tricky question, because I think the benefit in the German model lies in the standard that they have across the country. As an example, the catastrophic flooding that they had last year, which was the biggest deployment of this organization in its history, saw all 700 stations involved in the deployment.

One benefit is the surge capacity that the system provides, because if everyone is trained the same way, to the same standards and with the same equipment, depending on the module—as we discussed earlier—and what is needed in which region, all these people can then be rotated so that nobody has to leave for a long period of time.

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

In terms of the training that you spoke of, I asked you in the past if.... Because it's standardized training, you said that the government provides it and then it feeds back into their ability to feed back into their communities and the value of an employee overall.

In the German model, how is that training provided to standardize it? Is it provided through the armed forces? Is it provided in a different format? Could you explain that?

[Eva Cohen]

That's a very good question. I think one of the aspects that we keep ignoring is the cost of all this. There's the cost of involving the private sector, for example, or the cost of using the armed forces. This is another aspect. Most of the training is delivered by unpaid volunteers at the local level.

The “train the trainer” aspect is what the federal government provides the material for, and it makes sure the standards are there, but the training happens depending on the needs of the community and how they want to organize themselves. It's whenever it suits them. It may be after hours, on the weekend, once a month or every week. It's totally up to the community or the regional offices.

What also gives quality control is the fact that there are regional exercises happening all the time. These are not just tabletop exercises. People get together, not only in this organization but in co-operation with first responders and other NGOs. They have real-life scenario exercises. I can only speak for myself as a USAR volunteer. The exercises felt so real, I wasn't even aware sometimes that we weren't rescuing people in the rubble. It was so exciting. It was so well done—

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Unfortunately, we're going to have to leave the response there. Thank you.

Colleagues, we have 15 minutes. If I set aside five for the subcommittee report, that means we have 10 minutes for 25 minutes' worth of questions. That math doesn't work, even for me, so we will have two minutes, and then two, one, one, two and two. That will use up our time.

Mr. Motz, I'm counting on you to get it done in two minutes.

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

Mr. Redman, it's a pleasure to have you here.

I want to continue on with my colleague Ms. Gallant's question. We're studying CAF's domestic deployment implications. We know they deployed during COVID mostly to long-term care facilities. Can you please expand upon the government's massive failure in the COVID response and pandemic, please? At the end of it, can I ask you to submit your position paper to the committee for reference?

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

To answer your second question first, definitely. It's available at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. It's been published since July 1, 2021.

I'm sorry. I'll have to ask you what the first question was again.

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

We had a pandemic response developed for an influenza-type event through SARS and H1N1, and the government failed to follow that completely. It was a massive failure in all of society. Can you explain what should have been done differently?

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

The pandemic is an all-of-government response. We went from the mission statement, which is to protect the province from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, to protect the medical system. We needed to build a governance organization that covered all of the impacts of SARS-CoV-2 on the public. We needed to keep our businesses open and we needed to keep our schools open, because, by doing that, we are using what are called “non-pharmaceutical” interventions. There are 15 of them. Almost all of them should not have been used in this pandemic.

This pandemic should have had a targeted response to those who were most vulnerable—people over 60 with severe multiple comorbidities. Canada ranked last in protection of our seniors: 73% of the deaths in this pandemic happened in long-term care homes, and over 93% happened with our seniors. We didn't protect our seniors who were in the public or in our long-term care homes. We should never have closed schools. The impact on our children will last them their entire lives. What we've done is unconscionable.

However, I will leave it to that paper, which I will submit to the committee.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, Mr. Motz.

Mr. Robillard, go ahead for two minutes.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Lieutenant-Colonel Redman, would there be less need for the Canadian Armed Forces to be deployed to assist civilian authorities if capacity building efforts in emergency management were conducted at the local level?

[LCol (Ret'd) David Redman]

The simple answer is absolutely yes. I would put it to you that, when you look at provinces that have a very strong EMO—I'll give you British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario as the prime examples—you see the Canadian Armed Forces used far less and called far less. Working in the operations centre, they can say what their special capabilities are, and normally we meet them by other means.

If we do mitigation, it has to be done on a national level, not on a provincial level. If you build a dike to stop the water from overflowing into your community, what you've done is you've packaged the water and sent it to the next community. You can't build mitigation for flooding one community at a time. It has to be a whole process. That applies to every hazard.

But, yes, you would see the Canadian Armed Forces required less if we did emergency management in our country, as the Senate standing committee in 2008 reported.

[Yves Robillard, Liberal, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, sir.