Home Newsroom 2005 Speeches (archive) McLellan: 2005-07-11

15th World conference on Disaster Management

Speaking notes for
The Honourable Anne McLellan

Toronto, Ontario
July 11, 2005

It is indeed a great pleasure for me to be here this morning on behalf of the Government of Canada to welcome all of you to this 15 th World Conference on Disaster Management. I would like to thank everyone at the Canadian Centre for Emergency Preparedness for organizing this conference and I’m very pleased, it goes without saying that I’m very pleased that my department, the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness was able to support what is obviously such an important and timely conference.

The importance of emergency management was brought into sharp focus last Thursday. As we all know, on that day a series of terrorist bombs in London, England killed more than 50 people and injured hundreds more. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families. As I have said before, while there is no specific threat against Canada at this time, we need to remain vigilant against terrorist threats.

Canada is not immune to the kinds of things we see happening in other parts of the world such as New York, Madrid, Bali and now London. These events have put into sharp focus the importance of the work that we all do in emergency management.

When such emergencies affect our citizens - whether caused by floods, blackouts or acts of terrorism - we must be prepared to act. What I have found, when visiting the people struck by these events, is that they aren’t worried about which level of government helps them. They just want to be sure that someone is doing the job and doing it as well as possible.

Many of you know this from firsthand experience. You and the people you work with are the first line in emergencies: the first responders, the specialists in urban search and rescue, the emergency planners and businesses who supply equipment and services. When it comes to emergency response, collaboration and vigilance are key factors. We have been mindful of this, as we have readjusted our approach within the Government of Canada to focus on the four pillars of emergency management.

The first of these is mitigation - developing strategies to avoid emergency situations in the first place and then to reduce their harmful effects. Then there’s preparedness - being ready for possible emergencies and having the appropriate training and tools in place. There is response - providing resources and support for the response efforts of governments and the private sector and, dare I say individual citizens. And, finally, there is recovery - helping communities struck by disaster adjust and rebuild as quickly and efficiently as possible.

What is new about our approach is how we are acting to move beyond efforts focused on recovery and to invest in efforts that reduce the threat of all types of emergencies. This means ensuring that coordination between all levels of government is the norm, not the exception. It means integrating security management with emergency management and it does mean having the laws in place that are necessary to deal with the threat that terrorism can pose to public security and safety.

Whether because of September the 11 th, SARS, the 2003 blackout or the bombings last week in London, first responders understand that there is a “new normal” and the federal government has adjusted its approach to reflect that reality. Since the tragic events of 9/11 the Government of Canada has increased funding by over $9 billion for public safety initiatives such as emergency management, border security, policing and intelligence. And the systems that we have implemented since 2001 did kick into high gear following the London bombings.

An example of this approach is the intelligence sharing network put in place after the Madrid bombings because of course, as you know better than anyone, from each of these horrible tragedies, be it a man made tragedy or a natural disaster, we do have to learn and there are always lessons to be learned.

I was the Minister of Health and many of you in this room lived through the experience of SARS here in Toronto and across our country. What we have to do is learn lessons from each one of these events and we build for the future. And I know I’m preaching to the converted here - you know this better than anyone - but it is so important. And what we saw on Thursday morning within the Government of Canada and across the country were some of the lessons that we learned from 9/11 and from Madrid.

And that’s why within the Department of Transport put in place an intelligence-sharing network, which includes all the major mass transit systems in our country including VIA Rail, CN, CP and obviously the Toronto Transit Commission, but all major urban mass transit systems. They share information about potential threats, so that last Thursday, by 5:30 a.m. Ottawa time that network had kicked in and information and intelligence we had from all relevant sources was being shared from the very earliest moment with rail and mass transit across the country, which is why you saw here in Toronto, for example, the increase in security within the Toronto transit system and more officers both from the system itself, more Metropolitan Toronto Police within the system, more sniffer dogs, more alerting for the public in terms of our responsibility as individuals using the system to report anything suspicious.

And therefore, we do learn lessons from each of these tragic events and I see it as an obligation and a responsibility on behalf of government but all of us in emergency management to learn the lessons and sometimes I can assure you within government the lessons point to some failings on our part and but one cannot shy away from that and one has to take up those lessons and try and do better in the future.

And I was also heartened to see that coming out of the G-8, leaders of the G-8 spoke to the fact that it was going to be important that there was greater cooperation between nations and among countries as it related to protecting railways and subways from terrorist attacks. And obviously we need to share best practices and other things in terms of ensuring that our rail and mass transit systems are as safe as possible.

The Government of Canada has learned from past events, as we all must. The way we dealt with emergency management in the past is not good enough for the present or the future.

So what does this mean practically for us in terms of policy and action if you’re the Government of Canada? It has meant the creation of new government bodies to implement a national all-hazards approach, integrating emergency management with security management. And I think the all-hazards approach is something that is second nature to everyone in this room.

In addition to implementing that new approach, I don’t think we can ignore the importance of the creation of my department, Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada in December 2003, because it has brought together the former Department of the Solicitor General with the Government of Canada’s Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness. And it has also placed several public agencies such as the RCMP, CSIS, and the Canada Border Services Agency into a portfolio all of which report to me.

Drawing in part on the events of SARS, the government has also created the Public Health Agency of Canada to better manage national public health emergencies and we have developed specific initiatives such as the Canadian Pandemic Influenza Plan.

To address the integration of all public safety agencies and activities, including emergency management, last year I introduced the government’s National Security Policy, Canada’s first comprehensive policy statement on security.

Finally, the government developed the Cabinet Committee on Security, Public Health and Emergencies, which is responsible for coordinating cabinet level decisions in emergencies. I chaired a meeting of the committee in the hours immediately following the events in London last Thursday.

Let me say again that while each one of these things may seem small in and of itself, it’s absolutely key that all of these things kick in, in a timely fashion, that everybody knows what they should be doing and that everybody knows where the information needs to be disseminated and where the action needs to take place. I want to congratulate my colleagues last Thursday, all of whom very quickly were available for us to meet together via phone, some people in other parts of the world. Everybody was there, everybody was front and center and I think even at the political level, we learned lessons. We learned how important it is that we have to always be ready, be available to advise the prime minister, be there to take the actions that are required and, as politicians, be able to reassure our citizens that the things that should be happening are happening.

One of the ways the federal government prepares for emergencies is through exercises. Many of you in this room will have participated in exercises and we are committing some $4 million over the next two years to further our participation at all levels in exercises. Many of you would say that that’s not nearly enough. I think I would agree with you on that but it is an important beginning and I think we all see the benefit of exercises, at whatever level of government or whatever size of community. Recently, officials in more than a dozen federal agencies participated in a simulated response effort along with officials in the United States and the United Kingdom, as did members of the Cabinet Committee on Security.

As we saw last week in London, a crucial part of emergency response is coordination. That is why we have established the Government Operations Centre. Located in Ottawa, it is a key component of the new Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Department. The Centre provides strategic coordination on behalf of the Government of Canada when events take place that affect the national interest. Twenty-fours a day, seven days a week it is connected to and shares information with federal departments and agencies involved in emergencies as well as with provincial and territorial governments, key private sector stakeholders and international partners.

The Centre’s work is enhanced by the National Emergency Response System, which was activated last Thursday. It was implemented last year to ensure that federal departments and agencies deliver a harmonized response to emergency events and that federal actions complement those of the provinces and territories. To further these actions, we are co-locating our regional emergency management offices with those of the provinces and municipalities. This has already happened in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and the Northwest Territories and we hope to be able to complete our co-location with the province of Ontario very soon.

We also have launched final consultations on the Critical Infrastructure Protection Strategy through town hall sessions across the country to develop a major initiative in infrastructure protection. So far we have had valuable dialogue on actions and timetables to protect our infrastructure. For example, the government has allocated in the ‘05 budget $12 million over two years to continue work on the Canada-U.S. Action Plan for assessing the vulnerability of critical cross-border energy facilities and to implement the recommendations of the Canada-U.S. Task Force on the ‘03 power outage. Dr. James Young, who has joined my department as a special advisor, and who many of you know in his former role as Ontario’s Commissioner of Emergency Management, has participated in these consultations with the private sector and other orders of government. And we are looking forward to their report and recommendations in the fall.

In our Operations Centre, we also recently opened the Canadian Cyber Incident Response Centre. It works with public and private partners to assess and reduce the impact of cyber threats and serve as an on-call coordinating centre in the event of a significant cyber attack. We also plan to strike a national task force on cyber security to review the nature and scope of threats to Canada’s cyber infrastructure and how best to protect it. And I would like to see that up and very much at work this fall.

These are some of the things that we have done since the creation of the new Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness and in response to the lessons that we have learned in recent years. But, as you know and I know, there is more that must be done.

Last January Canadian ministers responsible for emergency management held their first meeting in over a decade. Now that’s interesting. Don’t you think that’s rather shocking that federal, provincial, and territorial ministers responsible for emergency management had not met for I believe 11 years? It surprised me when my deputy came and said you know we really need to have a meeting of relevant ministers in relation to emergency preparedness and I thought well, yes, it’s an annual meeting. And the deputy told me that, you know, there hasn’t been a meeting in 11 years. So we were able to come together and in fact we all agreed that these meetings were absolutely key in terms of ensuring that level of coordination and collaboration we all need if we’re going to deliver a seamless response to any kind of an emergency or disaster situation.

So I think all of us -- provincial, territorial, and federal ministers -- were more than willing to agree on an action plan and it’s an eight-point action plan that will see governments collaborate on such things as improved training, public alerting, harmonizing emergency response frameworks and reviewing our disaster financial assistance arrangements.

In terms of training, this is something my department has been involved in through the Canadian Emergency Preparedness College. As part of a five-year action plan for emergency management training, the college is exploring creative ways to complement provincial and territorial training with new programs. For example, the college is expanding its chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear training for first responders partly through the launch this fall of a web-based CBRN course and also by increasing CBRN training for intermediate and advanced level responders. Preparedness training must also obviously involve adequate funding. The federal government’s Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, or JEPP, will continue to fund regional training, equipment purchases and emergency planning programs for municipalities and other governments to improve response capacity in communities across the country.

When it comes to public alerting, recently we provided funding for tsunami warning systems on the Pacific coast in partnership with the province of British Columbia and we are looking to do much more in terms of a national public alerting system, which will be developed with a number of partners. We hope to implement systems that can reach Canadians wherever they may live by a variety of media.

As for mitigation, while we can’t control the weather or nature we can influence how people address the forces of nature through disaster mitigation and improve the actions we take to reduce the risks of disasters. That is why the Government of Canada agreed with provincial and territorial ministers to pursue a national disaster mitigation strategy to support emergency management efforts to avoid disasters or to minimize their impacts if they occur. The Manitoba floodway is a prime example of such mitigation in practice. And in fact the Prime Minister and I were in southern Alberta after the floods there and one of the things we were talking about with the mayor of High River was mitigation strategies - a diversion project or other things - that we may need to put in place to mitigate the effects of flooding such as we saw a few weeks ago.

Finally, I do want to mention our efforts to enhance public safety through partnership with the United States and Mexico. In March leaders from the three countries established the Security and Prosperity Partnership to enhance the economic competitiveness of the three countries and enhance the security of our citizens. Just last month, my counterparts from the U.S. and Mexico and I unveiled over 300 milestones and initiatives to achieve the goals of this partnership. The need for cooperation between our countries and the benefits that flow from coordination between neighbours are obvious. Under the security side of the partnership we will work to prevent threats from reaching North America, to mitigate threats within our three countries regardless of the nature of these threats and to prevent threats from crossing our respective borders.

Canada has committed, among other things, to implement common bio-protection strategies, to enhance critical infrastructure protection and to implement a common approach to emergency response in ways that will improve the flow of legitimate people and cargo at our shared borders.

I have talked a lot this morning about cooperation between governments, between first responders and public safety agencies. Something that all of us must do is to engage Canadians in discussions about disaster management and emergency preparedness. It is important for Canadians to know that disasters can strike at any time. A lot of effort has gone into sensitizing Canadians to public health measures that they can take to help mitigate the threats of infectious disease. We have to take every opportunity - whether it is me, through the media, or you in your communities - to remind individuals of the steps they can take to protect themselves, their families and their communities from disasters and emergencies.

Just before I conclude, I don’t know whether the rest of you have been struck by the amount of discussion that there has been in papers here and around the world about the psychological impact of London on the people of London and the United Kingdom more generally. And I think it’s something that when we look at our ability to be prepared and our managing of emergencies that we need to spend more time looking at the psychological preparedness of our people. One of the things that I came to realize during SARS was the importance of the psychological preparedness of people, in relation to the fact that an emergency or disaster, be it man-made or natural, can strike at any time and the necessity for psychological preparedness, but at the same time, getting the balance right so you don’t scare people unnecessarily so they are not panicked or living a life of fear, always looking over their shoulder.

I really do think it is something for us politicians and for all of us who work in the emergency preparedness area to probably spend more time on. I was struck by the conclusion, as it related to the people of London, that their first responders had prepared them psychologically for what happened last Thursday - as much as anyone can be prepared for that horror. I think we need to again analyze what happened there last week, if in fact the people were psychologically prepared how that happened and what we need to do here. How we go about striking that right balance but making sure that each one of us, as an individual in our families and in our communities, is prepared when disaster strikes. And that’s one of the things that I’m going to be very interested in terms of the discussions at this conference around that aspect of preparedness.

In closing, I think it’s fair to say that our approach to emergency management has come a long way in this past half decade. But at the same time we must always remember that it isn’t policy alone that responds following hurricanes in Nova Scotia, floods in Alberta or bombs in London. It is people such as you and your colleagues in emergency response.

I thank you for your attention this morning. I wish you the very best for this conference. I think the importance of emergency preparedness has seized not only government at all levels, but is starting to take hold in the consciousness of our citizens. What you are doing here is so important, in terms of working and collaborating with all of us and through the actions I have noted today and our efforts in the future. I assure you we want to work with you to ensure that we discharge the most important responsibility of any government -- the collective security and safety of its people.

Thank you all very much.