Public Safety Committee on Oct. 5th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

I would like to call the meeting to order. This is meeting number 12 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today we are having our first meeting on Bill C-12, an act to provide for emergency management and to amend and repeal certain acts.

We have officials with us from the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness. I welcome you all to the committee. We look forward to some very helpful discussions.

Mr. James Deacon is the director general for national security policy. Usually our custom before this committee is to allow you an opening statement of whatever length you need, but hopefully not too much more than ten minutes, and then if anybody else would like to make any comments they can do the same.

Mr. Deacon, you can introduce the people who are with you.

[James Deacon, Director General, National Security Policy, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC)]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. It is a pleasure to be here, and I thank you for the opportunity to address this important proposed legislation.

With me are Michael Baker, director general for preparedness and recovery; Bob Lesser, director general for operations; Suki Wong, deputy director general for critical infrastructure protection; and Tracy Thiessen, director general for coordination, who is responsible for our regional offices.

I have short remarks prepared, and if you wish I could simply start with them.

I should note, to start, that I am here in an acting capacity, as the acting assistant to the deputy minister. That said, the two persons who would be best placed to provide you with information on this bill unfortunately couldn't make it. The senior assistant deputy minister herself is unfortunately away on training and is therefore unavailable, and the director general for emergency management policy is out of the country. Nonetheless, my colleagues and I will do our very best to answer your questions today.

Bill C-12 would provide the Government of Canada a new basis on which to meet the challenges of its own internal emergency management activities. It proposes to create the emergency management act in order to address changing risks to Canadians and the need for legislation to help address challenges associated with that.

The Bill strengthens the foundations for the federal role in emergency management and critical infrastructure protection in the 21st century. And it recognizes the need for a coordinated federal response that complements those of other stakeholders and which respects provincial and territorial jurisdiction and authority over provincial emergency matters.

Canada has indeed faced a range of emergencies. Just to name a few, there was the 1998 ice storm in eastern Ontario and western Quebec, the 2003 outbreak of SARS, and the electricity outages that same year in Ontario. We've witnessed numerous floods in Alberta, New Brunswick, and Quebec, as well as forest fires in B.C. Of course, there are many other examples.

Federal efforts must focus on all potential hazards that Canadians could face, including natural disasters, terrorism or crime, cyber incidents, or other impacts on critical infrastructure. In addition, events such as Hurricane Katrina on the United States gulf coast remind us that Canada must be ready to respond to disasters outside of its borders. As we share our inland border with the United States, we must develop emergency plans with our neighbour for mutual support.

One particular lesson learned from the Hurricane Katrina experience was that governments need to have clearly established frameworks in place to facilitate coordination of their efforts, and they need to have these in place well in advance of any events.

In short, Mr. Chair, the risks facing Canadians continue to evolve. This is due, for example, to the increased incidence of extreme weather and the potential for cyber incidents. Bill C-12 aims to bring our statutory framework in step with this evolution. That's why the government has outlined in the proposed legislation how the Ministry of Public Safety and other federal ministries would have the authority necessary to fulfil their roles and to protect Canadians.

Underpinning this proposed legislation are two fundamental principles.

The first is that the Government of Canada understands the need for well-coordinated federal emergency management activity while recognizing and respecting the jurisdictional responsibilities of the provinces and territories. This means in practice that the federal government respects their authority and coordinates federal planning and response with the provinces and territories in partnership, and through them supports local authorities.

The second is that the federal government continues to provide appropriate emergency financial assistance to provinces and territories, building on existing arrangements.

Under the proposed legislation, the Minister of Public Safety would be responsible to exercise leadership by coordinating federal players in their emergency management activities and in cooperating with provincial and territorial governments.

Bill C-12 also recognizes the important role played by other entities, namely non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross and the private sector. I would note that the proposed legislation reflects that it's not the role only of the federal government to prepare for risks, but that all governments must work together to prevent or mitigate emergencies, to implement responses, and to help communities recover from the effects of emergency events.

The proposed legislation also sets out the Minister of Public Safety's responsibilities in all aspects of emergency management. In the event of an emergency in Canada, it would be the minister's responsibility to coordinate the federal response.

Through this proposed legislation, the Minister would exercise leadership by establishing policies and programs applicable to federal emergency management plans prepared by other ministers.

Assisting the minister, and in the future under the proposed legislation, is the Government Operations Centre, which operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week, monitoring and analyzing potentially imminent or actual emergencies and which coordinates the response to the incidents. With the centre's assistance and that of other ministers, the Minister of Public Safety can advise the federal government of proposed actions and act as the primary contact to support provinces and territories.

It's also important to note that the bill sets out the emergency management responsibilities for all federal ministers to identify risks; to prepare, maintain, and test plans; and to conduct training in relation to those plans. While those responsibilities are new, the bill reaffirms and focuses attention on the importance of these matters for federal government institutions.

Bill C-12 does not prescribe the specifics of emergency management activities, rather it allows for innovation and the building of community consensus by all levels of government. However, it does provide for the development and implementation of joint programs, national exercises, training, education, and research related to emergency management, and, very importantly, the promotion of public awareness regarding emergencies.

The bill recognizes that promoting a common approach to emergency management, including the adoption of standards and best practices, can enhance the effectiveness and efficiencies in programs at all levels of government, as well as within the private sector. A good example of this is exercise training programs that test emergency preparedness, where we can and do involve the private sector.

Mr. Chair, I noted earlier that the proposed legislation provides for emergency assistance to provinces. Currently to assist a province or territory to recover from a civil emergency or a natural disaster, the Government of Canada may allocate federal financial assistance to that province or territory through the disaster financial assistance arrangements, or DFAA. Nothing in this proposed legislation would change that. In fact, Bill C-12 would become the new legislative vehicle through which the DFAA assistance would be provided to provinces and territories.

Finally, Mr. Chair, when preparing for and during times of an emergency, the government needs to obtain information from the private sector to assess critical infrastructure vulnerabilities and risks, develop emergency management plans, improve warning and reporting systems, and develop better defences and responses. I should note that the information sought is technical in nature; it doesn't include personal information.

Related proposed amendments in the bill to the Access to Information Act are necessary and would allow the government to exchange specific and reliable technical information with private sector partners for critical infrastructure protection and emergency management purposes. Those amendments would encourage information sharing by explicitly recognizing in the Access to Information Act that sensitive private sector critical infrastructure information requires protection from disclosure.

Mr. Chair, in times of emergency, clearly Canadians look to their governments to work together to manage a situation. Preparation for emergencies means that governments must have the capacity to monitor, assess, and prevent identifiable risks and have in place well-tested plans for effective and coordinated action.

Bill C-12, the Emergency Management Act will help the federal Government to better serve Canadians before, during and after emergencies.

My colleagues and I will be happy to respond to your questions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you very much.

That gave us a bit of an outline of the bill and its intent.

We will now move to questions by the opposition, and in the first round we have seven minutes.

Mr. St. Denis, you are going to be the first questioner.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you to the officials for the presentation.

It has certainly evolved a long way since I was a child and every town seemed to have the air raid siren. Does anybody remember the air raid siren test when you were a youngster? I do. Some of my colleagues might not; I'm a lot older.

So things have evolved a long way, and by and large, I think Canadians are typically very impressed with the way the various levels of government respond to emergencies. There are always questions afterwards; it seems inevitable.

My first question, in my seven minutes, relates to this. In the first moments of a quickly emerging disaster of whatever kind, somebody, somewhere, has to make the critical decision. In the next ten seconds something has to start here. In the next few moments something has to start. In creating a national emergency management system with this bill, is there a single person or group that on behalf of all levels—accepting that it might be just a local fire, but on anything significant, is there any doubt about who is making the first, instantaneous call on what happens?

You could have a 9/11 kind of situation, which is one type of potential disaster when it involved planes in the air, or a very different kind of emergency, such as the ice storm.

It's sort of like the big bang theory. Something happens in the first instance after the big bang, which is still a mystery, but certainly we don't want any mysteries when it comes to this.

Could you just walk me through the moments of a disaster?

[James Deacon]

Certainly. I will start off, and perhaps colleagues could add.

It's important to remember the response, depending on the situation, will vary greatly. Emergency management is typically bottom up. It begins with first responders: the police, health services or others, and transportation people at an airport. It starts there, and people have to make decisions based on the specific circumstances they're faced with. They do that based on local plans.

Beyond that, sometimes there will be local arrangements at the municipal level and certainly at the provincial level as well, in terms of any infrastructure or additional support that might be needed in a given context. So we build on that. Then there's the federal level. We have an opportunity to work and exchange information further along in the process of managing an event. That's the general approach; it's very much bottom up.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Presumably, information from the local or regional event gets to the centre quickly enough that should there be a need for a larger response, that happens fairly quickly?

[James Deacon]

I think it does. Perhaps I could ask Bob Lesser to discuss it from a Government Operations Centre perspective, which has responsibilities in that area.

[Robert Lesser, Director General, Operations, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC)]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

One of the main mandates of the Government Operations Centre is to monitor for those kinds of events. In broader terms, this act refers specifically to emergencies. It also monitors for the broader public safety issues. So we were very actively monitoring when the shootings occurred in Montreal a few weeks ago, or months ago when there was an explosion in Tim Hortons in Toronto. Were they terrorist events? Exactly what were they?

We monitor from a number of sources, obviously from federal sources, such as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP. Canada Command also has a monitoring service through the United States Northern Command as well. We also monitor media to get the first, perhaps unconfirmed and uncorroborated, information, but certainly a heads-up on a lot of those things. There is a process of notification within the federal family and then also to our provincial and territorial colleagues of events that happen.

After the U.K. bombings, the federal family got together very quickly. It was four in the morning out west for our minister at the time, and we had a telephone conference call to make sure everybody, including the commissioner and the director of CSIS, etc., was up to speed. The provinces were immediately notified of what was going on. The provinces then—and I was just talking to our colleagues in British Columbia last week—very quickly notified their transportation facilities and transit companies, etc., throughout the Lower Mainland in British Columbia to make sure they had the information they needed, so they knew the risk to Canada from the bombings.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I have another minute or two, I think, Mr. Chair?

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Oh yes, go ahead.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Further to that, I have a large number of municipalities in my northern Ontario riding, and recently I was in the town of Hearst. The room I use happens to be the room where they have the section for the—it's a boardroom, but it has a series of cabinets for emergency response. There's a fire department cabinet, a police cabinet, one for public works, and so on. Those are at the local level, and I assume the province works with the municipalities in the creation of their municipal response plans.

If I were to look at the plan for Hearst, would there be something that says—and I assume there's a checklist—call the Government Operations Centre? You're not going to depend on the news reports to find out something serious has happened in Hearst, for example. Is there a voluntary willingness by the province and the municipalities to include the national...? Is there a protocol, an agreement, either through this legislation or past or future legislation, that makes sure you get the official call from the fire chief or the police chief that something is happening?

[Robert Lesser]

I'm going to focus on two things, Mr. Chair. One is the relationship between the provinces and their municipalities.

Ontario Emergency Management, under Mr. Fantino, has legislation that determines when municipalities must report things centrally to the province in Toronto. We have a working relationship. We have regional folks in Toronto who work very carefully with Ontario Emergency Management, and we have permanent seats in their operations centre, as do the RCMP and the Canadian Forces.

At a certain level there is always a judgment call as to what level people need to know about these things, but certainly it was clear...there were evacuations out of some northern communities over the last while to more southern communities. Hearst and some others were involved with that, Indian and Northern Affairs on the federal side, as well as our colleagues in the Ontario government. It was time to take a look at whether they needed support trying to transport people out of areas. Kashechewan was another good example.

There is no formal criteria that would go from a provincial EOC to us that says under these circumstances you are mandated to do that. And this legislation doesn't require that. What this legislation sets up is...we talk about the national emergency response system, agreements we're working on currently with all the provinces on how we can link at the federal-provincial level to have information passed forward that's appropriate to pass on.

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

I would say this is part of an evolution. You continue to find better and better ways to link the communication channels--federal, provincial, municipal, and first nations. That's a work in progress then.

[Robert Lesser]

Yes, and that's the basis of the national emergency response plan. We have a federal part of it that we've done, and now we're working with our federal and territorial colleagues. Our commitment to them was to have our systems be complementary to their systems. We've identified seven key functions that we do together. We're in the process now of determining how exactly we do those seven functions.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Mr. Deacon, do you have something to add?

[James Deacon]

Further to what Mr. Lesser said, we do have eleven regional offices across the country, and their job is to work with provincial and territorial governments to build those relationships in a very systematic way. We're putting a lot of resources and effort into those relationships because they are critical.

[The Chair, Conservative, Garry Breitkreuz]

Thank you.

As this discussion evolves around the table, what we really want to zero in on is what does this add, what does this do, how does this build on what we have at the present time, and what does this bill add to the whole response we make to emergencies. I hope that will be coming out as the questions are posed.

Mr. Ménard, for seven minutes, please.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I would like to know if you see a role for the federal Government in the approval of municipalities' emergency plans.

[James Deacon]

That's not a role for the federal government. Clearly, we're interested in what the municipalities are doing. And working with the provinces, we're as aware as we can be in terms of what the municipalities do. We certainly support municipalities through our relationship with the provinces, but I wouldn't say that we have a role in that particular regard.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

As concerns the training of first responders or other people that might intervene in an emergency, what role do you see for the federal Government?

[James Deacon]

Perhaps I could look to Mr. Baker to address that.

[Michael Baker, Director General, Preparedness and Recovery, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC)]

We have the Canadian Emergency Management College that offers two key programs, both of which have been growing--the emergency management training program and the chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear training program. And that is directly involved in the training of some of the first responders.

This act supports the training. It's a very important part of this act.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

If I am not mistaken, this is a very specialized training that might not be available in every province or every territory.

Why does the federal Government want to target that training?

[Michael Baker]

The federal government has been working with the provinces and the territories to come up with a framework on the training that also includes an e-based learning program, whereby municipalities and the provinces on basic training can access this information to help them in the training of their first responders. This is something we're working on now to assist, and it is a major part of this act.

[Serge Ménard, Bloc, Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC]

In regard to recovery assistance, I suppose that Mr. Baker would be the best person to answer my question. I know that there is legislation providing a federal contribution for losses resulting from a major disaster. If my memory serves me well, under that legislation, the federal contribution is calculated on the basis of each province's population. It might not be the exact number, but I think that if it is less than $1 per capita, the federal Government does not contribute, if it is between $1 and $2, its contribution will be 25 per cent or 20 per cent, etc. up to the total cost.

First of all, could you tell me if that information is accurate and be more specific if you can?