Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Let me speak very candidly here and bring maybe some good news. By that I mean there are three aspects, three facets I would like to explore when you say the money. In fact, it's an important aspect.
First, when the Red Cross is asked to jump into operations we bring volunteers. This is usually at no cost for municipal, provincial, or federal governments. We can, as I said, deploy thousands of volunteers. I can go through figures for the ice storm, the Saguenay flood, the blackout in Ontario, for SARS, and for Badger, the little municipality in Newfoundland where people felt frozen after the flooding. Indeed, volunteers went in from adjacent provinces and from Newfoundland. So that's something that is not costly, if you will. It is a cost for us to prepare the volunteers.
The second facet or interesting aspect--and Badger is another example--is that the generosity of the Canadian public is just outstanding. To support those communities, we can bring forward some money through the generosity of Canadians. In the case of Badger, if my memory serves me rightly, we raised about $1.5 million to $2 million. This is incredible for a small municipality of 800 people.
The third aspect is are we working for free? The answer is no. Do we need money? The answer is yes. We need money to prepare and train our volunteers to have this capacity to respond. This is the unknown part of the story. The difficult aspect is that Canadians want to see our being able to respond, but there's no money for that. For this we need support.
So good news. And also, if you want, not bad news but a reality check: I think the message here, in line with the preparedness aspect, is that if you want the civil society organizations to be able to respond, you also have to let them be prepared and provide them with the minimal resources to be able to operate.
About the best practices--absolutely, absolutely. We are 185 Red Cross and Red Crescents in the world. We are learning from each other, and Canada is in the forefront of those leaders. This is just fabulous to be able to count on that pool of resources and expertise. We debrief each time there's something happening. The Canadian Red Cross is active in 40 different countries in the world and we exchange information. We also exchange our people.
Iain Logan, a Canadian from Alberta, is one of the top persons in disaster management and is often requested by the International Red Cross to assist. So I think we should be proud of that.
Lastly, Mr. Chair, with your permission, I would like to come back to the comment were we consulted on the bill. The answer was no, and the answer is still no. I just want to nuance what I said previously.
Through the different contacts we have with the different departments of the Canadian government and through the International Law Commission we were indeed in contact and we knew what was happening. Although it was not formal consultation, we were put into the loop a bit. Were we formally asked to assist? The answer is no.