Health committee  From the perspective of the Canadians located in Hubei province, of course these are very difficult situations, especially when you're not able to leave your home under these kinds of restrictions. We can understand completely the anxiety and the difficult situation in which they

Health committee  Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. My name is Heather Jeffrey. I am the assistant deputy minister for consular, security and emergency management at Global Affairs Canada. I want to thank you for the opportunity to appear in front of the committee, alongside my colleagues from the CBSA,

Foreign Affairs committee  I'll defer to my colleague Cheryl Urban to respond to that.

Foreign Affairs committee  I can tackle that one. I would say all of our humanitarian assistance is delivered first and foremost based on need. It's about the very real needs we see in different situations across the world. The need is always greater than any one country could possibly respond to. We prior

Foreign Affairs committee  It requires a creative and flexible approach. There is no-one-size-fits-all solution. In conflict areas, often our access is restricted or limited, so we have to work through trusted multilateral partners—for example, the Red Cross or the World Food Programme—which have access,

Foreign Affairs committee  I am Heather Jeffrey, Assistant Deputy Minister for Consular, Security and Emergency Management.

Public Accounts committee  Yes, they're advised of the operational and physical security measures in place around their mission and the need to respect them to ensure the safety of not just—

Public Accounts committee  On arrival at mission, all of our staff are fully briefed on the situation and the measures in place. That includes not just the physical security measures that they're aware of—gates and access—but also the operational security, which can supplement and in some cases compensate

Public Accounts committee  On an annual basis, we review the security postures and evolving threats in our missions abroad and we adjust the course offerings. There are quite a number of courses of gradated importance. Some focus more on information security and environments where espionage could be a prob

Public Accounts committee  We have a number of specialized course offerings for high-threat missions—the hostile environment training and the personal security seminars—which are multi-day, very specialized, very well-regarded courses. The issue we had faced in the past was that, while people were being t

Public Accounts committee  What I would say is that all departmental staff receive on a regular basis a basic level of security training—the types of document classifications, entry protocols, access. However, in travelling to a high-threat environment, as would be the case, for example, in Afghanistan or

Public Accounts committee  We agree that our management consular stream is the engine room of our missions abroad; they have a large number of business lines. In the complex security environment that we're dealing with, it has been very important to supplement that capacity with dedicated readiness and sec

Public Accounts committee  I would just add that as part of the whole-of-government approach we've been taking, we have worked with a number of different medical institutions—hospitals, primary physicians, health care providers, including Dalhousie University, which is very involved in a research program—a

Foreign Affairs committee  The figures that appear in the main estimates are the direct expenditures that go to providing assistance to Canadians abroad, consular services and emergency management, whereas the DPR also reflects the indirect expenditures, for example, our platform of missions abroad and the

Foreign Affairs committee  My name is Heather Jeffrey. I'm the assistant deputy minister for consular, security and emergency management.