Public Safety Committee on March 24th, 2021

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Could we ask the clerk to read the question first?

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Mr. Clerk, can you repeat the question, whatever it is?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Mark D'Amore]

It's a challenge to the ruling basically. I will repeat the question.

Shall the chair's decision be sustained? I will proceed to call the roll for those members present.

(Ruling of the chair sustained: yeas 7; nays 4)

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Thank you, colleagues, for that ringing endorsement. Maybe I should bring up the impeachment motion now that I'm on a roll.

With that, I am going to turn to my good friend, Mr. Motz, who has six minutes, I believe. I have Mr. Motz, Madam Damoff, Madam Michaud and Mr. Harris for six minutes each.

Unless I'm guided otherwise, we have one hour. Within that hour we also have to vote on the estimates, so I will probably call the questioning to an end around five or 10 minutes prior to the hour.

Mr. Motz, you have six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair, and to think I was going to compliment you on your activities earlier this week.

Anyway, I just want to assure Ms. Geddes, Commissioner Lucki and a few of the others who are on from different organizations that I won't be questioning you today. I want to focus my questions specifically to Mr. Stewart on issues around public safety.

It's about our emergency preparedness, sir.

The minister has told the committee here just recently that many aspects of the pandemic response are not and were not his responsibility, despite his being the minister for emergency preparedness.

Just to clarify, is the public safety department responsible for emergency preparedness and planning across the government as set out in the Emergency Management Act?

[Rob Stewart, Deputy Minister, Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Yes, sir. It is in many ways, although not entirely.

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

Okay.

The Emergency Management Act states:

The Minister is responsible for exercising leadership relating to emergency management in Canada by coordinating, among government institutions and in cooperation with provinces and other entities, emergency management activities.

My question, then, sir, is this: Was the COVID-19 pandemic ever considered an emergency under the Emergency Management Act?

[Rob Stewart]

The answer to that is no, not under the Emergencies Act.

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

The Emergency Management Act....

Even though provinces invoked states of emergency, that did not trigger any federal powers under the Emergency Management Act, not the emergency measures act.

[Rob Stewart]

Yes, I beg your pardon. Just to be clear, then, on the Emergency Management Act, it enfranchises the minister to do a number of things, including to coordinate requests for assistance from provinces and territories, which have happened on a numerous basis over the past 12 months. He is the counterpart to those jurisdictions when those requests are made.

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

You thought my question was about the emergency measures act—

[Rob Stewart]

Yes, I did.

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

—and it was the Emergency Management Act. There's a huge difference, as we both know.

[Rob Stewart]

Yes.

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

There were clear national emergency management plans in place to respond to pandemics in this country. In fact, Canada was at the table with the World Health Organization in 2019 when they did their influenza planning and they prepared those documents.

Can you explain to Canadians why Canada's emergency management pandemic plans have been ignored during this pandemic?

[Rob Stewart]

I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to agree with the premise of the question. I don't think the emergency management plans have been ignored. I think they have been functioning as they were laid out.

Obviously, the pandemic is an event of a magnitude that was, in a sense, unprecedented. If you go back to the Spanish flu, perhaps that would be equivalent.

We've had plans in place for interdepartmental coordination, which is what the Department of Public Safety does to work with the Public Health Agency of Canada, other provinces and territories and their emergency management organizations.

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

Okay. Thank you, sir.

Given that, can you undertake to table to this committee the emergency management plans that were in place pre-COVID and then how those were implemented in Canada for this pandemic? That would be awesome. Thank you.

We saw—the news obviously reported it and we all experienced it—the Senate draft reports on the state of readiness in Canada's emergency management systems over the last number of years. Both reports highlighted a lot of issues for us, which have been, again, exacerbated with the pandemic.

Has there been any significant review of the emergency preparedness of Canada launched, sir, since the pandemic hit last February-March?

[Rob Stewart]

We have launched work on reviewing our preparedness in a number of dimensions. I would have to say it's at its early stage, because we're still very much preoccupied with responding to the pandemic as it exists today. To say for any second that we have the resources necessary to do both things simultaneously would be a mistake. We are fully occupied with the resources we have in dealing with the various issues we are confronted with, including responding to events in first nations, rolling out the vaccine, etc.

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

Understanding that you haven't had time to look at improving our emergency response and our readiness—and that's something the department will certainly be undertaking, moving forward—has Public Safety been involved in restocking or restoring our early warning system, which we know was shut down by Health Canada prior to the pandemic?

[Rob Stewart]

That question needs to be directed to the Public Health Agency, because that's where that early warning system resides.

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

Thank you. I believe that's my time, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

It is indeed. Thank you.

Madam Damoff, you have six minutes, please.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioner Lucki, my first question is for you, and I don't think you'll be surprised that I'm going to ask you about the report on Colten Boushie's death. You and I have talked about this in the past.

I was pleased to see the report come out. It certainly confirmed what I heard from the family when I spoke to Debbie Baptiste and Jade. The report from the CRCC said that the family experienced racism and discrimination. I really appreciate that you have said you were going to be implementing, I think, 16 of the 17 recommendations.

My question is this, Commissioner. The same day the report was made public, the RCMP union put out a press release, which said that the CRCC report advances a perspective that disrespects our [Technical difficulty—Editor].

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

For the last 10 or 15 seconds, we lost audio in the room. There was no sound for about the last 10 seconds of Ms. Damoff's question.

[The Chair, Liberal, John McKay]

Are we back on?