Thank you for coming this morning.
Your group is near and dear to my heart. In a previous occupation I was involved as a supervisor in a communications centre and later as a kind of partner in a tiered emergency response from a policing perspective.
Both from a communications centre standpoint and from a basis of allocating resources on a tiered response, one of the issues I've noticed is that we often view emergency responses from a vertical reporting basis, whereas in the field, often the actual application and delivery of services require a lateral or a horizontal reporting.
I was happy to hear you're concentrating primarily on the federal response and indeed recognize that in emergencies the immediate need tends to be from a local respondent, and then it goes up the food chain, shall we say.
When you view your relationship with the provinces and municipalities, as Mr. Holland mentioned, and the fear that perhaps we have someone who appears to know better than another, one of the key elements in almost every emergency is the ability to communicate directly and effectively. I was happy to hear you have software that actually dovetails with other agencies.
I know all the emergency fire and police personnel and ambulances aren't necessarily on the same radio frequencies. I know the Province of Ontario is working to have an overall communication strategy with regard to emergency responders.
Getting back to the software, I suspect Mr. Lesser would be the person to answer this. Are there any problems that you currently see in Canada in your relationship or the federal government's relationship with the provinces? You don't need to be specific, but generally, have you seen any places where the software, communication devices, and/or personnel don't fit seamlessly into the federal perspective?