Home Newsroom 2005 Speeches (archive) Bloodworth: 2005-10-05

Speaking notes for the 2005 Emergency Preparedness Conference

Margaret Bloodworth, Deputy Minister

Vancouver, B.C.
5 October 2005

Check Against Delivery

Good morning, bonjour.

Thank you for the kind welcome from Elaine and the rest of you in the room. It is certainly a very sincere pleasure for me to be here with you today, and to take part in this important conference. It has been an important conference for quite some time. And I think the fact that it has become so successful is proof that it is obviously meeting the needs of those of you involved in emergency management.

I recognize that all of you who work on the front line, whether you are preparing community or health emergency plans or responding to emergencies, have much to teach all of us about managing emergencies. Whether you are involved in evacuation planning or shelter provision, firefighting or communications, your experiences are extremely valuable.

Every story you share adds to our overall understanding of how to deal with emergencies, and what works and what doesn’t. And I would argue it is every bit as important that we find out what doesn’t work as what does.

There can be no more important role for any level of government than to safeguard the lives and way of life of its citizens.

That is as true for the Government of Canada as it is for any of the other levels of government represented within this room.

Now that said, we recognize that it is a huge challenge. We have a big country, facing lots of threats from many quarters. And I’m using “threat” globally, whether it is referring to terrorism, natural disasters, health disasters or the like, and I certainly don’t pretend we have all the answers. But we have come a long way in recent years and we certainly are more ready than we ever have been. That is my first message.

My second message, which is every bit as important, is that we still have a long way to go and a lot of work to do. My remarks are aimed at filling in the details regarding what the federal government has done in recent years and is in the process of doing; because while we have done a lot -- and we are a lot better off than we were -- we still have things to do.

Context

Now, the public focus since 9/11, at least pre-Katrina and Rita, may well have been more focused on human-caused threats like terrorism. Certainly the bombings in Bali -- both the original ones and the ones this weekend -- as well as the Madrid and the London bombings, underscore the importance of heightened vigilance in this area.

But I don’t need to tell people from this part of the country who have suffered from the forest fires of 2003 and the ongoing threat of a serious earthquake, that natural disasters are just as menacing, and can have even more widespread consequences than terrorism. SARS, avian flu, the Asian tsunami, the mud slides of last winter, and, more recently, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, have brought into sharp focus the full scope of the consequences that can occur across broad sectors of our economy and our society.

With the scope and magnitude of today’s threats, governments have their work cut out for them. We cannot afford to duplicate efforts, nor can we risk getting in each other’s way. But we all have a role to play, and it is important that we all understand each other’s role.

We have a shared responsibility to prepare for and respond to every type of threat. People must be protected as well as the infrastructure on which they depend.

The most sensible course, then, is to create effective partnerships that enable us to better coordinate our overall resources, and to build overall capacity, while respecting clear areas of jurisdiction and accountability, as well as the various types of expertise that we all bring to the table.

Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada

The Government of Canada, for many years, has had emergency management as a major component of the federal framework. Among other things, it has monitored and responded to seismic activity, weather events, and public health matters.

But when Prime Minister Martin came into office in December 2003, there was an important change: a number of the federal government’s vital public safety functions were united in a single portfolio under a single very senior minister, the deputy prime minister. The idea was a simple one: that integration of related functions increases our reach and effectiveness, and the cohesiveness with which we interact with others.

Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is a portfolio of organizations. Within the department we have crime prevention, policing and corrections policy, aboriginal policing programs, and probably most significantly for those in the room, emergency response.

In the wider portfolio, we have: the RCMP, not just nationally but provincially, in eight of the ten provinces; CSIS, our internal security organization; Corrections, which manages our federal prisons; and a new agency, the Canada Border Services Agency, which facilitates traffic across our borders while paying close attention, in cooperation with the United States, to the high-risk people and goods that may cross those borders.

As a result of the increasing globalization of many of our threats, there was another change that occurred at the federal level: the creation of the Public Health Agency, led by the Chief Public Health Officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones. I won’t say a lot about pandemic flu and health-related issues today because I know you heard about those from David yesterday. I’ll just say that those issues are ones in which my department is also very keenly interested, because, as you will have heard from David, those health issues are not just the problems of doctors and patients. These issues will become the problems of many of us in government, in the private sector, and in some of our response organizations like the Red Cross, should we have a pandemic flu. And the combined wisdom seems to be that it is not a question of “if,” but of “when.”

Now, we know at the federal level that 90 to 95 per cent of all emergencies are dealt with -- very often right through to recovery -- by the municipal level of government, sometimes supported by provincial responders. But that doesn’t mean that the federal government doesn’t have an important role to play. The federal government is there to provide support when required.

In general, I would categorize those times that are most important for us to be involved as:

• when resources are needed beyond what is available at the local and provincial level
• when communities and provinces are recovering from major events, and require financial or technical assistance under the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (DFAA)
• when certain specialized resources are required that only exist at the federal level (a lot of it in the military, from whom you will hear next) and
• when dealing with some cross-border issues.

Let me give you a simple example. Sometimes -- and certainly it was the case with Hurricane Juan in Nova Scotia, and with the ice storm in Ontario and Quebec -- you need hydro crews to come from more than just the rest of the country. You want them from the United States. Well, guess what? There are some issues involved in having workers cross the border, and one of the jobs of our department is to facilitate that in emergencies. I must say that is something in which we have had considerable success.

Clearly, the best way for us to become more effective in dealing with emergencies is to work together now so that we can not only mitigate against disasters and prepare for them, but respond more effectively when they do occur.

National Security Policy

In April 2004, the Government of Canada issued for the first time a document entitled the National Security Policy. The National Security Policy serves as a guiding document, and underlines what the single most important role of government is: ensuring the safety and security of Canadians.

I would pause here to say that we use national security policy in a different way than the Americans use national security policy, and in a different way than do some other countries. In the United States national security policy is in essence their foreign policy. Our national security policy, by contrast, is closer to what Americans would call, “homeland security policy.”

For the purposes of this audience, one of the main tenets of the National Security Policy is that seamless coordination among all players in the national emergency management and national security system is essential. No one organization or level of government can do it alone. We have to draw on the capabilities of all partners.

In other words, emergency management is a key component of our national security system and our national security policy, and that is no accident. The policy recognizes that, whatever happens, with anything that happens, we have to be ready for it, and that we also have to do our best to prevent or ‘mitigate’ against it.

The National Emergency Response System

The National Security Policy is a policy framework; it gives direction, but we have to give it substance. And to do that, we are now in the process of implementing the National Emergency Response System, or NERS. This system defines the common structure used by the Government of Canada to coordinate federal response to national emergencies, including support to provinces and territories. The NERS is challenging in scope but pretty simple in its aims. Its aim is to make sure the right people and the right organizations are working together at the right time during an emergency.

That may be easy to say, but it is no small task, considering that a single emergency could involve a number of federal departments, more than one province, many local first responders, as well as volunteer organizations. And it doesn’t take much to imagine something that may also involve the United States government, several state governments and several American city governments, if you had, for example, an earthquake on the West Coast. So having a structure with which to respond is very important.

I know I don’t need to tell that to this audience, because I think many municipalities are probably ahead of us in having unified response structures.

The Government Operations Centre

Despite the scope, a number of elements in the National Emergency Response System are already in place. At the heart is our Government Operations Centre. It runs around the clock, monitoring threats and emergencies, issuing alerts and advisories. It doesn’t wait for an emergency to occur; it is watching what is coming. In the event of an impending or a real emergency, it can quickly increase its resources to reinforce its capacity with officials from relevant departments to ensure coordination among the many players who have to be engaged in major events.

Hurricane Katrina

Let me use the example of Hurricane Katrina to illustrate. The Government Operations Centre monitored the storm as it was developing, as it does with all hurricanes during the hurricane season. They all start as tropical depressions, then they are tropical storms and then some of them become hurricanes. The Government Operations Center watches them closely, as it was monitoring Katrina as it developed.

When the size of the storm and its potential timing and impact became clear, the Operations Centre alerted people in the federal government -- and indeed in this case, the various provincial operations centers -- so that everyone became ready, watching.

As the scope of the calamity became apparent, the Centre became the focal point for the Government of Canada’s response. Officials were in regular contact with our counterparts in the U.S. government, starting right with the deputy prime minister, who spoke several times to her U.S. counterpart, Secretary of Homeland Security Chertoff, and at several levels throughout the department, but particularly in the Operations Centre.

We had also recently implemented a new measure, placing a liaison person in the operations centre at Homeland Security. He arrived about two or three weeks before Katrina, so he had a baptism of fire so to speak. But I must say it proved to be invaluable. Sometimes in the course of an emergency, when you are trying to respond, it is not always easy to respond to those who might ask what they can do for you. Having someone from Canada directly in the Homeland Security operations centre helped greatly in that regard.

Our Government Operations Center also coordinated key federal departments and agencies that were ready to provide assistance, and canvassed provinces to see how Canada could fill any U.S. government official request for aid.

All of that happened before the Americans made any request of us. Because it is important when there is a request that we be ready, and that we not start to look at what we can do only after we are asked.

In the end, Canada sent three Canadian Forces ships and one Coast Guard vessel to the stricken area. It also sent some Department of National Defence divers, some of whom are still in the area, or at least were still there as of the end of last week.

As you know, 45 members of the Vancouver Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team were among the first trained rescue squads to reach St. Bernard Parish (an area around New Orleans), and they rescued over 100 people and provided medical assistance to over an additional 100 people.

Medical supplies were delivered from our National Emergency Stockpile, which is managed by the Public Health Agency, and the Government Operations Centre provided support to the Canadian Red Cross in the movement of some of its volunteers and emergency supplies.

Incidents such as this, as well as the London bombings early in the summer, have helped the Operations Centre to improve and perfect its processes, as well as demonstrate to our various partners the value added of having one focal point at the federal level for coordination and information dissemination.

These incidents are helping to demonstrate that there is more than enough for others to do without worrying about coordination and information dissemination.

This ongoing improvement through responding to real world incidents, in conjunction with regular training through exercises, is essential to making sure that we are ready to respond in all instances.

Working Together

Keeping track of many activities in the pressure-cooker of an emergency situation demands strong and effective relationships. Last January for example, the deputy prime minister called the first meeting with provincial and territorial emergency management ministers in eleven years. The degree to which provinces have responded -- as well as the federal government, I think -- reflects that this is an issue that requires renewed and reinforced attention at the most senior levels of government in this country.

From that meeting emerged an eight-point action plan -- a plan I can assure you has kept many of us busy. But ministers also agreed to establish a permanent forum for future collaboration, and in fact a second ministerial meeting is planned for January.

But it is not just ministers. Deputy ministers are also meeting regularly, as are senior officials. I co-chaired a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial deputy ministers responsible for emergency management last month in Fredericton, New Brunswick. We didn’t just take stock of where we were on the action plan. We also heard from Transport Canada on the issue of transportation security, and particularly mass transit security.

We heard from the Chief Public Health Officer on the planning for a pandemic, and we heard from Vice-Admiral Forcier on the Canadian Forces and their new Canada Command. This new organization I believe is an important step for all of us in emergency management, and I’m pleased that you will have the deputy commander of the Land Forces Atlantic Area (LFAA) to talk to you about this. I think it is an important step forward in reinforcing the capacity of the military to help us in emergencies. We know they have done a wonderful job to date in this country, but I think they will be even better positioned to do that in the future.

There are also other important collaborations taking place across the country, for example, as a result of the terrorist attacks in the Madrid mass transit system. Following those attacks, Transport Canada set up a network of intelligence sharing and best practice sharing among all the rail operators, city bus lines and urban transit authorities, including the Sky Train here in Vancouver. The idea was to quickly and effectively report incidents and to share information on best practices to enhance passenger safety.

Their foresight in setting this up meant that within just over an hour of the London bombings, in a conference call of all those parties, Transport Canada was able to tell them what we knew of the bombings at that stage first hand -- not through several levels of people. And they were able to discuss directly with one another what their response was going to be -- an important step forward for all of us in this country.

And at the international level, obviously, we are building and reinforcing our partnership with the United States. The North American Security and Prosperity Partnership has an important cross-border action plan, of which emergency management is an important component. And that includes things like looking after our joint critical infrastructure, providing assistance to one another, and so on.

In short, collaboration and coordination are the essence of our approach. No single group can or should cope with emergencies alone. In a crisis, we need to be able to capitalize on the skills and capabilities of all relevant government and non-governmental organizations.

We have improved our capacity to deal with a major emergency.

Have we done everything we need to do? Obviously not.

If I was to stand here and say that, you wouldn’t believe me. We still have lots to do.

We can never anticipate every single possibility, but we can put in place the right structures, processes and relationships to be able to coordinate and lead the response, and to adapt to anything that might happen.

I will just use the single example of Transport Canada in 9/11. I was the deputy minister of that department when that happened. I can assure you we did not have a contingency plan for closing the air space in North America and landing every plane that was in Canada or on its way to Canada. What we did have is a very practiced emergency plan, structures, operations centres and so on, and strong relationships with all of those in the aviation sector that allowed us to adapt those structures quickly to the unexpected.

That is the goal of all of us in emergency management. The unexpected will happen at an unexpected time, but that doesn’t mean we should just say, “Well we can’t predict everything. We can’t do anything about it.” We can and should develop the structures, the relationships and the procedures that allow us to respond and adapt quickly and effectively to what happens.

Looking ahead

Looking ahead, there are areas we are still working on. Some of the things I have talked about, we are still working on. For example, we are working on the modernization of the Emergency Preparedness Act -- this is an act at the federal level that was written during the Cold War. It is basically about getting the federal house in order, making sure we have the right business continuity plans, processes, and overall coordination in a legal sense.

In August, we launched public consultations on amending that legislation. Responses to date have certainly indicated support for a more comprehensive approach to emergency management and an enhanced role for the minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness at the federal level. We are moving quickly towards bringing that act to Parliament in the next couple of months.

The Critical Infrastructure Protection Strategy

Late last year, we released a position paper that contained what we believe to be the main elements required to protect the infrastructure we all rely on. We have just completed a round of national consultations. Some of you in the room may well have been part of some of those consultations, based on which we are moving forward to develop a national strategy -- and even more importantly, a work plan -- to ensure we have more resilient infrastructure in Canada.

Mitigation

This is an area in which I personally think as a country we have not done enough. We are developing a National Disaster Mitigation Strategy, which we will present to ministers sometime in the coming weeks, and part of it is amendments to the Disaster Financial Administration Arrangements Act. We have already proposed amendments that would allow, for example, up to 15 per cent more in replacement for mitigation purposes. We are just awaiting confirmation of the finances involved for that to come into place, but the disaster mitigation strategy writ large is something that we will be presenting to government in the coming months.

I must say that the province of British Columbia has been a leader in this regard, and you should be proud of what your provincial government has done. I’m sure they would say it is not enough, but they have led the way in establishing programs.

The final point I will mention about the future is about individuals. We all know in this room that individuals have an important role in responding to emergencies.

Government is never going to have somebody on every block to help every individual. We all need to ensure we are prepared to take care of ourselves in the first hours following an emergency. And I think we need to ask ourselves if Canadians are prepared, and what we can do to help them prepare.

I think the answer is they are not as prepared as they should be. I don’t think I’m saying anything that any of you wouldn’t agree with. The issue really is how we can help them to be more prepared. I think the recent articles on personal preparedness in the Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province are a good example of how the media can be of help in that, and I commend those organizations for doing that.

Conclusions

In conclusion, emergency management is not a static process. Every crisis teaches us new lessons, and we must learn from them. We must be willing to listen, to learn from each other, from those with extensive experience on the ground as well as with extensive experience in managing at all levels.

At the federal level, I can assure you we are taking our responsibilities seriously. We are building on existing initiatives and structures and resources, and restructuring and reorienting them in a way that will further enhance the safety and security of Canadians.

We certainly recognize the necessity of collaboration. We are not the experts in responding to emergencies at all levels, nor should we be. We all need to work together and know what we bring to it. We need to link up with that rich network of expertise that is already out there -- and as part of that we certainly will be enhancing our regional resources to help make that happen.

The challenges we face are vast and ever changing. That means our roles and responsibilities must evolve to keep pace.

But I suggest that, 15 to 20 years from now, our successors will probably say the same thing. It is not a business in which we can ever declare we have learned what we need to know and it is all done. In fact, the day we do that, I suggest we are in deep trouble.

We have to continue to further enhance, protect and perfect our structures and our ability to respond at all levels. And none of us can do that alone. We need to work together to do that.

Certainly our goal at Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is to be ever ready and better prepared to respond in the best interests of the safety and security of Canadians. And I know that is a common goal which we all share, and I’m pleased to be here today to talk to you about some of the ways in which we are trying to do that. I look forward to working with all of you in the future as we do an even better job.

Thanks very much.