Home Newsroom 2005 Speeches (archive) Bloodworth: 2005-05-25

Panel discussion on security threats to Canadians and the Canadian economy at the first Public-Private Sector Summit on National Security

Notes for remarks by
Margaret Bloodworth

Ottawa, Ontario
May 25, 2005

Introduction

Thank you Jim (Jim Judd, CSIS), and good morning.

I'd like to thank the Conference Board of Canada for inviting me, and also for its leadership in assembling this summit.

I'd also like to thank all of you for making the effort to be here. For people like me, in the business of public safety and emergency preparedness, your attendance at this summit is encouraging.

Governments, business sectors and individual enterprises each face a variety of threats - threats that can impact Canadians in many and sometimes unexpected ways.

Each of us has a responsibility, whether it is to citizens or to shareholders, to work to understand those threats, and to enhance our resilience to them. Our discussions here are part of the process of exercising that responsibility.

This morning, I'd like to speak briefly about:

• the threats we face;
  
• the part my department is playing in the Government of Canada's responsibility to respond response to those threats; and
  
• some of the challenges involved in increasing our collective resiliency.

Threats

The threats we face today are numerous.

What we might call “traditional” threats - floods, tornadoes, ice storms, blizzards, and so on - will always be with us.

In fact, climate scientists warn these events could become more frequent and more severe in the future, increasing the risk to public safety, and further threatening critical physical and cyber infrastructure.

Many of you will be all too aware that our information infrastructure is regularly probed for weaknesses countless times every day by hackers. Worms and viruses that can cripple vital systems propagate with frightening speed.

These cyber incidents can cause billions of dollars in economic damages, and can pose a real physical risk when they disrupt vital infrastructure.

That's just the beginning: I understand the Conference Board estimates that SARS cost the city of Toronto's economy a billion dollars, including $350 million in lost tourism revenue alone.

The August 2003 blackout cost Ontario some 26 million hours of work time.¹

The cost of cows with BSE and closure of the border to our cattle industry? Two billion and counting.

And we must add to on top of all of this, of course, is the terrorist threat. Al-Qaeda has identified Canada as a potential target, and terrorists may be looking at Canada for other reasons.

As we consider these threats, we must remember that others are judging our response. If people don't see Canada is not perceived as a secure place to put their money and assets, or as a safe place to visit , - they will simply go elsewhere.

Government of Canada response

The Government of Canada's response to this complex environment is based on a recognition of two key elements:

First, that we are a connected country. We have seen how the impacts of a disruption in one area can affect another - from electricity, to telecommunications, to the financial sector, to transportation and so on.

And second, that these impacts can stem from any number of causes - natural or human - and can happen by accident or intent.

As our parliamentary secretary outlined, the National Security Policy is an integrated strategy. Canada's approach is less focused on the source of potential threats than on the impact they could have, and on the tools we need ed to prevent, mitigate and manage them.

This rationale was key to the creation of the department and portfolio of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness - otherwise known as PSEP - in December of 2003.

Now, not everyone would see all government reorganizations as worth the time, effort and cost involved, but the creation of PSEP has already proven its worth.

The PSEP My department is part of a broad portfolio that includes CSIS, the RCMP, Corrections, the Canada Firearms Centre, the National Parole Board, and the new Canada Border Services Agency - the last of which brings together customs officials, food inspection agents and immigration enforcement officers.

In other words, it has brought The portfolio brings together the core functions of security and intelligence, policing and enforcement, corrections and crime prevention, border services and border integrity, immigration enforcement and emergency management together under the leadership of a single, senior cabinet minister.

The result is that we are able to exploit the natural existing synergies among these different agencies, and discover new ones. We can be more effective in identifying and closing security gaps, communicating with one another and operating more strategically to protect Canadians.

And, because we can do a better job within the federal government, we can also do a better job working with our partners : - the provinces and territories, municipalities, the private sector, first responders, and our colleagues in the United States and around the world.

Progress

And that is what we are doing I'd like to take a few minutes to outline some key priorities for PSEP. I'll touch on three areas in which we are making important progress: emergency management and response, interoperability, and critical infrastructure protection.

Emergency Management and Response

Under the National Security Policy, we have established a new Government Operations Centre, and have recently launched the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre. Together, these provide 24-7 monitoring and strategic level coordination and direction on behalf of the Government of Canada in response to an emerging or occurring event affecting the national interest.

The information we gather is made available, as appropriate, to governments at all levels, as well as to key private sector stakeholders, and to our international partners.

We have developed a National Emergency Response System to provide the framework and policies to put this all into practice, and We are working with provincial and territorial governments to enhance this the National Emergency Response System, which provides the framework and policies to put all this into practice. System The System was recently put to a test during a major counter-terrorism exercise with the United States and the United Kingdom.

We are engaged, of course, with the provinces and territories in other areas as well. In January of this year - at their first meeting in 11 years - the federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible for emergency management agreed to create a permanent federal-provincial-territorial forum on emergency management.

Interoperability

We are addressing interoperability, which Interoperability will remain an other important priority and significant challenge for years to come. The Interoperability Project is developing a blueprint for tackling information sharing and interoperability challenges among federal departments and agencies engaged in protecting public safety and security. The project will produce a long-term strategic vision, and an initial five-year work plan.

I'll give you a couple of concrete examples of interoperability initiatives.

First, the Real Time Identification Project is a five-year initiative to re-engineer the current manual processes for fingerprint records to allow the RCMP to provide instant fingerprint and criminal record information to authorized users. This project will enable the successful deployment of LIVESCAN, the actual technology that supports electronic fingerprinting. The end result will be a seamless, on time and on demand system.

Second, we are laying the foundation for a national strategy for radio communications, with a target of a fully interoperable radio communications environment within the next 10 years. We are working in partnership with provinces, territories, national key organizations of first responders as well as key several federal depar tments and agencies, including the Coast Guard, the Department of National Defence, and Industry Canada.

As you can imagine, with hundreds of agencies involved in Canada, multiplied by hundreds more jurisdictions - not to mention our connections with the United States - this is an exceptionally complex undertaking. Other challenges include aging radio communication equipment and The lack of agreed upon communication equipment standards only adds to our challenge.

And improving interoperability is not just about ensuring people have information at their fingertips - it is also a matter of ensuring that the appropriate gates and filters are in place to protect information that should not be shared.

Critical Infrastructure Protection

A third priority for PSEP is critical infrastructure protection. We are currently in the midst of a cross-Canada series of town hall meetings to develop a National Critical Infrastructure Protection Strategy. We have completed town halls in Calgary, Vancouver and Toronto, and will be holding similar meetings in Winnipeg, Halifax, St. John's and in the Yukon. The town halls have highlighted the important work the private sector and provinces and territories have underway to protect Canada's critical infrastructure and have also underlined the work that is still to be done to make all of our critical infrastructures more robust and resilient .

PSEP is also leading development of a related National Cyber Security Strategy, and I already mentioned the Cyber Incident Response Centre, which participates in a weekly risk briefing with representatives from critical infrastructure sector associations from industry, and which is building operational relationships with key IT industry players such as Microsoft.

If there is one thing we learned we have learned in all of this is that, while we're making solid progress, we've got a long way to go. Critical infrastructure and cyber security are two good examples of areas in which Canada, like the US - indeed, like the rest of the world - have much to do.

The road ahead

So where do we go from here?

Our greatest challenge has been, and I believe will continue to be, developing and maintaining an effective and appropriate means of coordinating and sharing information - and I don't mean for my department alone.

For any enterprise, private or public, having a business continuity plan in place - and testing, reviewing and updating it regularly - is not a luxury, it's just good management common sense.

But, in today's environment, it is virtually impossible to carry out effective strategic continuity planning in isolation. Because how one organization prepares for or responds to an incident will frequently depend on the preparations and responses of others.

I'm not saying everyone should be doing exactly the same thing, nor that there isn't such a thing as too much information sharing and coordination between the public and private sectors. But we do need to recognize the fundamental importance of ensuring that our efforts are complementary.

The collaborative relationship established by the Canadian Bankers Association, the Canadian Electricity Association and the Information Technology Association of Canada is an example of good progress. But it is also a reminder that if much has been accomplished in some areas, there is much room to grow in others.

If we can better understand where and how our interests intersect, we can enhance the resilience of our individual enterprises and, at the same time, add to the security of Canadians.

I'll end here with a couple of questions.

First, how can we as the government better communicate what it does and doesn’t do? What it can and can’t do? The government has broad public safety and national security responsibilities, but businesses and individuals need to know that , in the first stages of a crisis, they may have to take care of themselves. And they need to know that they have a very important role to play in preventing crises from happening in the first place.

The government must clearly do its part to improve our common understanding of responsibilities. But I would argue that an equally important question for forums like this symposium is “Could and should the private sector do more? Where could it take the lead?”

1 The Daily, October 30, 2003, Statistics Canada