National Defence committee  The Red Cross is, obviously, excellent at supporting Canadians and folks who have been impacted, organizing everything from coordinating a local municipal response, name checks and checking people in to finding accommodations, respite, food and clothing—what we call real-life sup

National Defence committee  I'll have to make my answers shorter, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry about that.

National Defence committee  I'm happy to. I think there are colleagues in Environment Canada and the Canadian hurricane centre who obviously might want to comment on that as well. I'll take a step back. Hurricanes are considered a cyclical risk every year in Canada. Every year in Canada the best scientific

National Defence committee  I'd have to check the exact dates, but obviously it was essentially the day it hit or the day after. I would have to go back and check the exact dates. I was away actually that week, but I can provide that to the committee if you like.

National Defence committee  There were requests for supports of all kinds. We kind of vet those calls with the province and the emergency management folks. We talk about what the need is, what the gap is, what the province has or doesn't have and whether it is overwhelmed, and then where we can fill the gap

National Defence committee  We work with the provinces to supply what they feel they need on the ground, and we work at the officials' level on that. For Dorian, I can't remember the exact number of CAF troops. I'm not sure if it was 700. I'd have to go back and check. They were there for a very short perio

National Defence committee  That's correct.

National Defence committee  As I said, the humanitarian workforce program was essentially time-limited funding that was used to scale up the capacity of the Canadian Red Cross and other NGOs in Canada in order to respond to COVID initially, but clearly people have learned the lesson that this is an importan

National Defence committee  Yes, I think that's an interesting question. The SARVAC group, for instance, is federally funded and they are located in the provinces. There is that partnership aspect to it. It's not really about downloading, in my view. There is a partnership in these shared accountabilities.

National Defence committee  I think that is an excellent idea. I do think the federal government—Public Safety and other departments—has been considering exactly that kind of work. We sometimes refer to that as the core Canadian capability list or perhaps initially a federal capability list. There is a nee

National Defence committee  I would answer exactly the same as Mr. Fadden. As I said before, this is a shared responsibility in Canada. It's very Canadian. We have 13 provinces and territories, and then the federal government. The capabilities are very asymmetrical, as you can imagine. It really depends o

National Defence committee  That is an interesting idea. I'm not an expert on the flow of social transfers to the provinces for these aspects. I'm not aware that there is a significant or a targeted emergency management fund or transfer to the provinces and territories every year. I assume that Finance Can

National Defence committee  Sure. The emergency management strategy does exist. That's a Public Safety-led strategy, and it works with the FPTs and ministers of the FPTs in terms of principles and the commitments we've made in Canada to advance the cause of preparedness and response—and mitigation, frankly.

National Defence committee  I think the Red Cross has a really important role to play. As I alluded to, this humanitarian workforce program that was set up in 2020 has taken a big step forward in terms of their capacity to help Canadians. They have always played an important role in Canada, with St. John Am

National Defence committee  We all know about the provincial and territorial challenges in the health care system, which we won't get into here.