Madam Chairman, a number of entities would become involved. What is important is that there is a co-ordination effort. The co-ordination effort in the past was called Emergency Preparedness Canada. It is now the Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness. It has a control centre and a crisis centre. It has a wide range of contacts with provincial counterparts. It has federal counterparts in different parts of the country. It has regional contacts which in turn have provincial contacts which in turn have local first responders. A wide network of people from the government and volunteer sectors is involved in the various emergency programs that can come together during a crisis.
We saw this during the ice storm. The Canadian forces played a support role but the initial role came from the people in emergency response organizations. It starts from the bottom up. It starts with emergency response teams at the local level through to the provincial level. The provincial level then calls in the federal level. In turn we were asked to bring in the Canadian forces in a support role during the ice storm. It was all put through a co-ordinated system.
The ice storm showed that the system was well tested. We also had it up and ready to go for Y2K. Thank goodness we never needed to use it, but on New Year's Eve 2000 I visited some of the control centres and saw the elaborate preparations for any problems that might have occurred. We can be quite pleased with the basic infrastructure we have. However post-September 11 we need to go further, certainly with respect to chemical and biological concerns.
We have put more money into increasing our operations. We have a small unit headquartered in Borden, Ontario which by and large has been a training unit. It will now be enhanced in terms of its capabilities. The unit works with the RCMP. It is both an RCMP and a military effort. As the hon. member pointed out, there will be a focus on Suffield in terms of research, development and co-ordination to deal with the possibility of chemical or biological attack. A lot of movement is being made in the whole area. The budget contained moneys to help strengthen this. It also contained moneys to strengthen our anti-terrorism commando force the JTF2. Various other areas were promised increased funds in the estimates to help make Canadians more safe and secure.