Thank you very much. I'm very pleased to be here.
When it comes to emergency management, the federal government is responsible at the national level and on lands and properties under federal responsibility. Provincial and territorial governments exercise responsibility for emergency management within their respective jurisdictions, except where legislation allows for direct federal interventions or for shared responsibility. You can think about rail incidents, for instance.
The Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is responsible for providing leadership relating to emergency management in Canada and ensuring a coordinated response to events affecting the national interest, including natural and human-induced disasters, as well as terrorism. Through the Government Operations Centre and our regional offices, we work closely with other federal departments and agencies, as well as provincial and territorial, emergency management organizations and other key partners, to ensure that impacts to people, property and infrastructure are minimized as much as possible.
The government operations centre is an interdepartmental organization that supports the minister in his leadership and coordination role in emergency measures. The GOC supports the coordination of federal responses to events affecting the national interest, including major forest fires. During a major forest fire, the GOC coordinates responses to the disaster in close collaboration with NGOs and other federal departments.
During the immediate response phase of an emergency event like a major forest fire, communities leverage existing service delivery capabilities within first nations, municipalities, provinces, territories and third party emergency management service providers such as the Canadian Red Cross.
Each year the government operations centre, in consultation with the provinces and territories, conducts a preliminary risk assessment of general trends expected for the upcoming fire season. This assessment is based on potential fire risks that are identified through Natural Resources Canada's modelling capabilities.
The Government Operations Centre engages key federal and provincial stakeholders in preparation for the upcoming season and prepares an annual Wildland Urban Interface Fire Season Contingency plan. In addition to the contingency plan, the Government Operations Centre establishes an event team to coordinate specific planning for the season, ensures arrangements are in place for access to earth observation resources, including satellite imagery, prepares for the provision of geomatics and imagery services that may be requested by federal, provincial and territorial partners and readies the government for potential requests for assistance from provinces, territories, and Indigenous Services Canada.
The Government Operations Centre maintains continuous communication throughout the fire season and, in the case of major wildfire events, shares situational awareness through timely and accurate reporting. The Government Operations Centre monitors these events on a 24/7 basis and shares a daily brief with partners to inform them of events of interest.
During the wildfire season, Natural Resources Canada and the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre coordinate the distribution of firefighting resources across the nation. CIFFC—and you heard about it—will also request international resources when needed. Indigenous Services Canada has a lead role in working with the provinces and territories regarding emergency management to ensure first nations communities receive necessary response and recovery services. During a wildfire event, Public Safety Canada works diligently to coordinate a response to the disaster in close collaboration with a wide range of partners, including the Canadian Red Cross.
Moving to the emergency management strategy, building on Minister Goodale's mandate commitment to work with provinces and territories, indigenous peoples and municipalities to develop a comprehensive action plan that allows Canada to better predict, prepare for and respond to weather-related emergencies and natural disasters, Public Safety Canada is working with partners to build a strategy that ensures all Canadians have access to the tools and resources they need before, during and after a disaster strikes, including wildland fires. After consultations with a wide range of stakeholders, we identified five strategic objectives for the emergency management strategy.
One is to enhance whole-of-society collaborations and governance to strengthen resilience. Another objective is to improve understanding and awareness of disaster risks to enable risk-informed decision-making in all sectors of society. Another is to increase whole-of-society disaster prevention and mitigation activities. Then there's enhancing preparedness activities to allow for better response capacity and coordination and foster the development of new capabilities. Finally, there's the objective to leverage lessons learned and best practices to enhance resilience, including building back better, or like my minister would say, building back better faster, to minimize the impact of future disasters.
Public Safety Canada, along with provinces and territories and in partnership with indigenous communities, will continue the work to advance this national vision for emergency management. In May, the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management agreed that officials would accelerate the remaining consultations to ensure it reflects the views of their respective stakeholders so that ministers are in a position to approve and release the strategy in early 2019.
In May 2017, the ministers also agreed to work collaboratively with indigenous representatives and communities to develop an inventory of emergency management capability in indigenous communities across Canada.
Public Safety Canada, in partnership with the Assembly of First Nations and other national indigenous representatives, are co-developing the inventory of emergency management capabilities. The inventory will enable risk-informed decision-making by improving our understanding of existing emergency management challenges and resources in indigenous communities. Obviously, we're working very closely with Indigenous Services Canada.
More specifically, FPT ministers and indigenous leaders are committed to developing an inventory of risks facing indigenous communities, and to identifying emergency plans and capacities to address these risks. This approach, based on increased engagement, has been undertaken with the key principles of co-developing solutions—and I'm stressing co-developing solutions with indigenous leadership—that are sustainable, inclusive and culturally sensitive. The indigenous inventory project has brought many partners together to develop a methodology that will allow indigenous communities an opportunity to provide their perspectives on emergency management challenges that impact their communities, as well as community-led best practices that are considered success stories.
The project is in a piloting phase, and we'll be reaching out to select indigenous communities across Canada over the fall. We've been really busy this summer. We've met with about a dozen of them. The outcomes of the pilots will inform the broader pan-Canadian rollout in early 2019.
Despite improvements in federal response coordination, there is still significant modernization required in a broader emergency management system, in order to build resilience and enhance readiness in a climate-impacted future. As with most emergencies, while fires are managed at the local and provincial levels, when an emergency exceeds a province's capacity to respond, it may request federal assistance through the government operations centre, which coordinates the federal response to the events affecting national interests. Public Safety regional offices and the GOC works with the provinces to ensure that their needs are met, and that the safety and security of Canadians are safeguarded.
In 2017-18, first nations communities requested federal assistance, which was provided by the Canadian Armed Forces. In 2017, 25 first nations communities were evacuated, displacing over 1,900 people. In 2018 the same number of communities were evacuated, with greater numbers of evacuees, over 2,200. Federal assistance to the provinces is most visible when the Canadian Armed Forces assist. They have been on the ground, with soldiers helping with sandbagging and mop-up operations.
Other contributions from the federal government include imaging and geomatics services such as the national aerial surveillance program, or the provision of emergency supplies from the national emergency stockpile system. At the end of every wildfire season, the government operations centre leads a lessons-learned exercise with its partners to identify best practices and areas for improvement. The data collected from this process informs future planning processes.
Mr. Chair, I'm going to stop here.