Public Safety committee  No, what needs to be there is there. The changes that need to be done are to have more of it and to improve and enhance the capabilities. Secure connectivity is an example. It's there, but it's not the fastest. We need to get faster equipment out there, and there are projects ongoing that do that.

Public Safety committee  Yes, there is the parliamentary precinct plan that's ongoing. Kevin Vickers, I believe, on the House of Commons side, is dealing with that. I believe yesterday there was a meeting with Diane MacLaren and Mr. Vickers on that. There are two different branches within the department: the police and law enforcement, which have RCMP responsibility, and ourselves, who have emergency management.

Public Safety committee  I can respond to that. From an ops centre to ops centre point of view, we were very engaged with the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA down there. We had a 24/7 connectivity, both in a secure and unsecure manner. There's also a common chat frequency on the international portal with New Zealand, Australia, the United States, the U.K., and ourselves.

Public Safety committee  Depending on what report you read out of Katrina, that's really difficult to answer, because their system is different from ours. Number one, in their infrastructure they have a FEMA, which Canada doesn't. They have the National Guard, which is a huge response resource to New Orleans.

Public Safety committee  Maybe I'll give two quick examples of what we did for the hurricane season this spring. It's only in the last two years that we developed a whole government contingency plan to assist provinces and territories, in this case, by and large, the eastern provinces for the hurricane.

Public Safety committee  Yes, and that's the basis of the national emergency response plan. We have a federal part of it that we've done, and now we're working with our federal and territorial colleagues. Our commitment to them was to have our systems be complementary to their systems. We've identified seven key functions that we do together.

Public Safety committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. One of the main mandates of the Government Operations Centre is to monitor for those kinds of events. In broader terms, this act refers specifically to emergencies. It also monitors for the broader public safety issues. So we were very actively monitoring when the shootings occurred in Montreal a few weeks ago, or months ago when there was an explosion in Tim Hortons in Toronto.

Public Safety committee  I'm going to focus on two things, Mr. Chair. One is the relationship between the provinces and their municipalities. Ontario Emergency Management, under Mr. Fantino, has legislation that determines when municipalities must report things centrally to the province in Toronto. We have a working relationship.