Mr. Speaker, a lot of the emergency response teams really deal with municipalities, whether they be fire, ambulance, police, et cetera. The bill talks about coordinating activities of government institutions relating to emergency management with those of the provinces and those of the local authorities.
I want it clarified whether the local authorities include municipalities and, if so, what kind of process is in place to do the coordination.
The other thing is that subclause 4.(1)(j) of the bill also talks about providing financial assistance to a province. However, my understanding is that a lot of these emergency response teams, such as the fire department, is 100% funded by local municipalities and not necessarily through the province. The subclause says that financial assistance to the province would only be provided when the province requested assistance. In the case of, say, the fire department, it may not come from the province. What if immediate assistance is required from agencies that are connected only through the local municipality?
The other concern I have is on the public health side. A lot of public health departments in urban centres, for example, are strapped in terms of their funding and have been unable to translate a lot of the material. In big urban centres such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, a lot of information needs to be translated into different languages if there is an emergency. This is critically important in order to reach all our residents, whether they speak English, French or another language, if unilingual that way, so they can immediately get the kind of information that is critically important.
Does the definition of local authorities really connect with municipalities and the financial arrangements?