Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 9 - Evidence, January 29, 2007
VANCOUVER, Monday, January 29, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:30 p.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: I would like to call the meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence to order. My name is Colin Kenny, and I chair the committee.
Before we begin, I would like to briefly introduce the members of the committee. On my immediate right is Senator Michael Meighen who is the Deputy Chair of the committee. Senator Meighen has had a distinguished career as a lawyer and a member of the bar of Quebec and Ontario. He is Chancellor of the University of King's College and the Past Chair of the Stratford Festival. Currently, he is the Chair of our Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and is also a member of the Senate Committee on Banking as well as the Senate Committee on Fisheries.
To his immediate right is Senator Gerry St. Germain from British Columbia. Senator St. Germain has served in Parliament since 1983, first as a member of the House of Commons and now as a senator. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Aboriginal Peoples and sits on the Standing Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
At the end of the table is Senator Wilfred Moore from Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is a lawyer with an extensive record of community involvement and has served for 10 years on the Board of Governors of Saint Mary's University. He also sits on the Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trading, and Commerce and on the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
On my left is Senator Norm Atkins from Ontario. Senator Atkins came to the Senate with 27 years of experience in the field of communications and served as a senior advisor to former federal Conservative leader Robert Stanfield, Premier William Davis of Ontario, and Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Beside Senator Atkins at the end of the table is Senator Joseph Day from New Brunswick. He is the Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. He is a member of the bar of New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec and a fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He is also a former President and CEO of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
Colleagues, we have appearing before us Rear-Admiral Roger Girouard, Commander, Maritime Forces Pacific, MARPAC. The admiral is commander of Maritime Forces Pacific, and he began his naval career as a reserve boatswain with HMCS Carlton in Ottawa before joining the regular force in 1974. Throughout his career, he has served in a number of operational and staff positions. He served in the first Gulf War and was deployed during the initial stages of the War on Terrorism in Operation Apollo. Staff positions include working with the naval reserves in Quebec City and senior naval positions in Halifax and Ottawa. Prior to becoming commander of MARPAC in 2005, the admiral served as commander of the Canadian Pacific Fleet. The committee last met with the admiral on February 28, 2005 at CFB Esquimalt where he was commander of the Canadian Pacific Fleet. Captain (Navy) James Heath and Colonel John Crosman accompany him today.
Admiral, welcome to the committee. We understand you have a short statement, and the floor is yours.
[Translation]
Rear-Admiral Roger Girouard, OMM, CD, Commander, Maritime Forces Pacific (MAPPAC), National Defence: Mr. Chairman, I want to welcome you back to British Columbia.
I thank you for the opportunity to offer some discussion on defence matters in general, with particular attention to how these issues pertain to my area of responsibility at Canada's western gateway.
[English]
Honourable senators, I sit before you wearing three hats. As Commander Maritime Forces Pacific, I serve as a naval practitioner and force generator on behalf of the chief of maritime staff. As Commander Joint Task Force Pacific, I am potentially an operational commander, responsible for domestic security and disaster management issues in British Columbia on behalf of Commander Canada Command. Beholden again, to Canada Command, but in a different vein, I am also the search and rescue commander for B.C. and Yukon, and as such, I have responsibility for Canadian Forces, air and naval assets as well as applicable employment of Canadian Coast Guard capabilities in support of search and rescue.
[Translation]
In all, the Canadian Forces enterprise in British Columbia represents some 5,700 regular force, 3,000 militia and reserve personnel, along with roughly 2,300 civilian employees ranging from scientific staff, engineers, managers and blue collar workers in naval shipyards and air force hangars.
Mr. Chairman, you have asked me to touch on four specific areas during my preamble and I hope to do so in a way that serves to both inform and stimulate our discussion.
[English]
Let me start with Maritime Forces Pacific, the more traditional and publicly recognized role that my offices represent. Here we undertake a blend of force generation and direct support to operations, the latter in generating maritime domain awareness for the Pacific Coast and to a degree for the Arctic. This is also where we offer support to deployed operations in support of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command, most notably through HMCS Ottawa's current deployment to the Middle East as she is about to finish her tour and start the journey home.
Recent major force generation activities have included our own exercise, Trident Fury, conducted in May of last year, conducted off Vancouver Island with a spectrum of international players and joint warfare capabilities brought to the fore. It includes as well last year's U.S. Navy-hosted RIMPAC, or rim of the Pacific, off Hawaii, drawing on navies from South Korea to Australia to Chile. This is where my fleet commander Commodore Bruce Donaldson served a significant leadership role and is where we grow individual, section, and unit capabilities to tackle any scenario the people of Canada may ask us to undertake. This is where we grow the staff in the intellectual and leadership capabilities required to lead forces in these scenarios, as well as influence their outcomes.
MARPAC is in the process of introducing eight of the new Orca Class harbour craft, a small but flexible vessel ideal for the West Coast environment, and though she is destined to be a training vessel, she has much more capability available to her, and we plan to use these ships to the full. As well, we are still on the path of introducing our first West Coast submarine to full service, and the recent announcement regarding the location of work associated with the Victoria class in-service support contract, which is destined for Victoria, this will generate some energetic dialogue over the end-state distribution of these four boats.
Let me touch briefly on the capability of port security, a force generated largely by units and skill sets resident within Fleet Pacific, specifically within the Maritime Operations Group Four, MOG4. It specializes in coastal warfare including diving and mine warfare. This port security capability has also been stood up for 24/7 force employment at the base in Esquimalt. This section provides harbour security to the billions of dollars worth of unique infrastructure and sea-going assets resident in that port. With adaptable equipment, tactics, and training, which have evolved for the past two decades, they served to deliver results during the Winnipeg flood, Vancouver's APEC summit, and as well as during the Swissair recovery operations. These teams represent a world-class defence capability for operations at home and if required abroad.
Let me turn now to Joint Task Force Pacific and our place within Canadian Forces transformation. February 1 will the one-year anniversary date of the stand-up of JTFP, and I can honestly state that I am very proud of what my team has accomplished in establishing this new entity during this year. We have taken the very solid relationships that existed under the MARPAC banner and renewed and invigorated our associations as a result of this new mandate. These new associations have resulted in strengthened linkages with other federal agencies here in B.C. such as Public Security and Emergency Preparedness Canada, provincial authorities including the Solicitor General and his staff as well as B.C.'s emergency preparedness organization. This effort reaches down to the community level, including through Northern B.C. and our ``presence operations'' whereby ships and units show the flag in isolated communities. Liaison officers enhance it, some two dozen of whom we have in our inventory, and through what I hope to see is an improved relationship with the province's 460 Rangers.
At the same time as we have moved the yardsticks, I can state that we are not finished yet, that issues of process, legal authority, resources, and organizational and force structure either remain or have in some form arisen during these past 12 months. This significant change to the Canadian Forces should deliver no shock in terms of the things that we have yet to do. Because of the reality of the force mix in this province, my headquarters is necessarily a hybrid, essentially double-hatting a measurable element of staff while receiving roughly two dozen new billets, PYs in the business jargon, to augment our domestic activities and deal with what I believe are significant new responsibilities.
National Defence Headquarters is quite aware that we remain in the midst of change. More importantly and despite the ambiguities of change management, my headquarters understands this province much better today than when we were exclusively maritime in focus. A long-standing awareness of the Indo-Pacific has strengthened our appreciation of the global issues unfolding along this province's shores, and we have quickly come to include the inland within our sphere of interest and put floods, fire, earthquakes and avalanches at the forefront of our realm of understanding.
[Translation]
Turning to the Olympics, it is of course important to understand the context of Canadian Forces support to this world class event.
We have developed the concept of a Joint Task Force Games, which is being formed as the Canadian Forces unit in direct support to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics effort. It is and will always be a supporting element to organizations such as Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, the RCMP and provincial authorities as lead agencies.
Though we remain in the early days of forming the detailed calculations which will in turn determine the force mix and localized deployment of forces, in my opinion the relationships with the key agencies are trustful and profoundly productive. The discussions are fruitful and moving at a pace sufficient to meet the timeline before us.
[English]
In fact, no formal request for assistance has arrived in the department. This is because the assessments and calculations are ongoing. Though we remain in the early days of CF forming the detailed calculations which will in turn determine the force mix and localization of forces, in my opinion the relationships with key agencies are superb, trustful, and profoundly productive. I believe that we are moving at a pace sufficient to meet the timeline before us. I should also note that in these early days and as we advance toward the actual date of the event, much of what we are discussing and calculating relates to operational security. Certainly at this point, I am not at a position where the numbers are available to me. I am not in a place where I can comment on specifics of what those numbers may look like. These capabilities are in the process of being requested in support with the Canadian Forces and the 2010 Integrated Security Unit. All of the current planning efforts around 2010 are very solid.
[Translation]
Mr. Chairman, that concludes my opening remarks, which I hope set the scene for our discussions. Thank you again for the opportunity to appear before the committee. I am prepared to address the questions that may remain.
[English]
The Chairman: Admiral, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you for the assistance you have provided to us, not only with arrangements relating to some of the witnesses that we dealt with on Saturday, but also for your cooperation and assistance with the search and rescue demonstration, which I can say, on behalf of the committee, was smashing. It was a very worthwhile demonstration, from an excellent group of individuals, of an important function in the Pacific.
[Translation]
Senator Meighen: Rear-Admiral, allow me to welcome you here before the committee and thank you for everything you did for us over the weekend. I would like to reiterate the chairman's comments by saying that what we saw in the Port of Vancouver was spectacular. You must be very proud of your forces. I would ask you to send them our most sincere thanks.
[English]
The Canadian Forces has undergone a radical transformation in terms or organizational structure. How has that new organizational command structure changed your responsibilities and the activities of MARPAC? What functional reporting changes have occurred in your command since the stand-up of CFCOM and Canada Command and how do those two commands task your forces?
RAdm. Girouard: Thank you for that, senator, and for both of you I will indeed pass on your very sincere compliments. I am very proud of my team and I am always happy to bring home kind words on your behalf.
Senator, Canadian Forces Transformation was set into motion by a new chief of defence staff. In large measure, we began that in B.C. by the standing up of Joint Task Force Pacific. That stand-up did not take away the navy presence or the navy role here. The transformation is related on one level to a change in the command and control structure, the wiring diagram of who reports to whom. Secondly, it relates to new responsibilities here in B.C. under Joint Task Force Pacific. The command and control piece means I now have chief of maritime staff to whom I am responsible, but I have a new domestic security, domestic disaster management boss, who is the head of Canada Command. I have these two conduits, one for force generation, the navy role, and the other one in the situation where domestic operations emerge through to Canada Command. I am a potential force employer. Day-to-day we do not work at high levels of force employment; we do not deal with disasters. February 1 last year when we stood up, the sun rose the same colour, and so we in B.C., whether it is my friends in Comox 39 Brigade Group working for the army or in Esquimalt, essentially carried on many of our activities as we did in the past. What has been different is how we built the relationships not only with the staffs in Ottawa and Canada Command, which is still emerging and growing and learning, but how we grew our linkages here in British Columbia in a stronger fashion than what we had in place before. To the average individual, whether it is a blue-collar worker on the shop floor or a sailor on a mess deck or a fellow who works the runways in Comox, they do not see a big change day-to-day. They have their own local boss, and they do what they have done as tradesmen and operators and flyers and sailors, and in fact I have tried to insulate them from much of this organizational change. In my headquarters, that is where the significant transition has occurred. We have essentially taken the navy headquarters, made it joint, or the jargon is ``purple,'' and we have double-headed some individuals and given them some domestic security tasks and oversight that they did not have in the past. We have also grown our headquarters somewhat, but in many ways, certainly on the maritime side, the tasks are not new. The navy always did maritime domain awareness. It is just that we did not necessarily do it in the context of doing it for Canada Command or purely with the idea of national defence being a part of it.
The reporting chain is still evolving. Indeed transformation at large is only really about half-way done. It is a significantly major emphasis, and I think even the vice-admiral has indicated we are only into spiral one and we have more to do down the road. The relationships are solid. My navy relationship is historic. The relationship with Canada Command and General Dumais is very effective, very productive.
What we have learned in the last year is how to take the potential for an emerging event, such as a fire or a flood, and sort out who it is we have to make aware inside Canada Command and the staff and how to get concurrence for expenditure of resources and indeed for the assignment of forces. It was tough the first time, a year ago, when we had flooding situations in British Columbia. We are still learning, and I think we will for a little while yet.
Senator Meighen: It sounds to me as though you have added at least one hat to your head and, therefore you must have added responsibilities and added expenditures. Are you doing more with the same?
RAdm. Girouard: Yes, I have more responsibilities and the prioritized responsibility has been to get to know the province. We have been busy with situational awareness. We were experts on the waterside. We inherited that from the previous construct, which were units and elements in Edmonton who would look at British Columbia. So we have taken that back including some members that were on their establishment but served here as a detachment. We have grown that out, and that is where I speak of liaison officers, so that has been the first slice, and for that we have received additional billets and additional resources.
Some of the other parts that we are doing for Canada Command, such as domain awareness, we are still doing the same, maybe a bit more. In fact what we are doing now is a better job of multi-tasking. When a vessel is in the northern waters doing training, it is also doing surveillance; it is also doing domain awareness.
You will see that my force generator side of brain and my force employer side of brain are in fact much more intricately intertwined, and at my level it is sometimes hard to separate the two. What I do understand, though, is who gets what part of information and over time we will sort out who has responsibility for what part of funding.
One aspect that remains here in British Columbia, of course, is the forces in place on the 1st of February had certain limitations. Specifically, we are dependent outside of the province for regular force army capability, whether that is engineering or just the strong backs that land forces troops bring to a domestic scenario. That was the case before, so I do not see it as a negative. Indeed, the relationship we have with Canada Command is such that when an event reaches a certain threshold of pain we have been told we will get the supporting elements.
Over time, we have looked at British Columbia and we have looked at where we have certain vulnerabilities. I am personally concerned about our presence in the North. We have made some observations and some recommendations regarding the right units, the right size, and the right potential assets that should be in the province. This falls into the force development equation, so as Canadian Forces grows overall, we must ask, does some of that growth become assigned to B.C? I am trying to be pragmatic on this. In fact I would like to see first and foremost a couple of reserve units. I think a naval reserve unit in Prince Rupert, a militia unit in Prince George, would be the right kind of initial approach while we sort some of the rest of this out. We have made those comments; we have sent that advice up, and in the larger mix of assigning assets, that will play out over time.
Senator Meighen: That sets my mind at ease, if not at rest, in terms of you trying to do too much with too little. The fact remains that all of us have seen press reports in the last little while about the navy being broke and that ships are tied up and unable to complete operational responsibilities until the end of this fiscal year. We read that the Minister of National Defence had to authorize a special $3.5 million so that fisheries patrols could be continued on the East Coast. When we were here last time, I do not know what the naval term is, but Peter was robbing Paul, taking crew members from one ship so that you could make a full complement of ship crew on a vessel that has been ordered, let us say, to the gulf. There was even the robbing of equipment from one ship to another so that the ship that was to sail could do so with the proper equipment. Is the situation in those regards getting worse or better? Can you give us your take on the financial situation of the navy in general?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, I will keep it to my neighbourhood, and I will start with what might sound a little glib, but it is the fact. The navy is not broke. We are just a tad resource-challenged at the moment. We necessarily in the Canadian Forces at large but certainly here in the West and MARPAC historically, start the year with a dollar allocation that is less than what we would have hoped for. That comes about because the defence budget is finite. I look with my staff at the things that we have to do from sea days, to hiring new apprentices, to repairing buildings, to all manner of things sometimes pedantic but deeply important and we start the year identifying all these things that we want to achieve and we set a costing estimate to that envelope. We get less. Every department in government has that reality except for perhaps very protected special projects. We get less than what we originally hope for and we over- program.
We find ourselves in the fourth quarter of this year dealing with having to shed some of our over-programming because we have not seen the kind of relief that we have in previous years, and with a number of things going on departmentally, that is not a shock. As we loadshed, we prioritize again. So here in the West, we have decided to sustain some sea days. We have shed some less valuable sea days. However, this morning we launched two ships to Hawaii for a major anti-submarine warfare training event because I deemed it an important investment that would serve us for the next five years in terms of the skill sets that are going to grow.
The other things I have protected are some of the employment issues. We could have let a group of young apprentices go because they were on term employment and that would have been easy, but such an action would hurt the next 10 years of our knowledge base. Our approach has been to protect the long-term investment and take some short-term pain. That is the best resource management approach that I can come to.
[Translation]
Senator Meighen: Thank you, Rear-Admiral Girouard. My time is up. I would perhaps have another question regarding the state of your submarines.
Senator St. Germain: Rear-Admiral Girouard, welcome to British Columbia, although you do live here. It is truly important that work be done here in beautiful British Columbia.
You answered questions concerning the 2010 Olympic Games. The Games are very important to British Columbians and Canadians in general.
[English]
You mentioned that you were working with the RCMP and other organizations that will combine to take control of the security situation. Are you in an emergency deployed and emergency situation or what is the actual role that the Joint Task Force will be playing coordinated with the RCMP, Vancouver City Police Department, and other municipal departments?
RAdm. Girouard: That the Canadian Forces will come to Vancouver in support of the games is a given. The model that will be utilized is being formed as we speak. What is clear is that we will be supportive to Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada and specifically the RCMP who are doing the detailed work. At this exact point in time, certain members of my staff and I are supporting the early planning process. Specifically I have a colonel on staff who is my senior staffer for 2010. We have a full-time member in the integrated security unit. We are in the process of augmenting that army officer with a navy officer to look at the maritime domain. So the engagement has been based on the fact that this is Joint Task Force (Pacific) and I have a regional, neighbourly interest. What has yet to play out is a definition and an announcement relating to the actual command and control construct for the Canadian Forces. That is imminent, and I expect that the minister will be making an announcement regarding that very soon. What that will describe is which flag officer will have responsibility as Joint Task Force Games and how that will fit under the Canada Command umbrella.
The Chairman: Do you mean you are not doing that as part of Canada Command? That is not your job?
RAdm. Girouard: I cannot tell you yet.
The Chairman: We are being coy not to scoop the minister?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, I am being a little coy as well. The construct will be one that is related to Canada Command because it concerns domestic security. The actual wiring diagram and the identification of the team has yet to be made.
Senator St. Germain: This morning we met with some of the colleagues with whom you will be working. The discussion is always money, which is the thrust of the success of most projects. Money is important but much of our success is due to the high quality of the Canadian military that at one time I was a proud member of. We talk about $176 million, and I believe it was in 2002 the Salt Lake City games cost $340 million, and the venue in Kananaskis was about $140 million. How will you budget for this event?
This committee has not been able to establish on what you will base your budget. Will it be based on low- medium- or high-risk? This is a small budget given the size of the venue. I do not have to remind you that the venue is large, extends from Whistler to the Lower Mainland, and covers the vast water expanse of the Strait of Georgia.
You know a lot of this better than I do, and strategically you can out-think us, but it is a concern. Money is always a concern and British Columbians are concerned about cost overruns. The people of British Columbia understand the history of the games and remember that the debt that la belle province du Québec incurred years back is just being retired today. Calgary was a success, and hopefully we can repeat that success or even do better. How you see your budgetary requirements being satisfied to fulfill the obligations that you may be asked to meet.
RAdm. Girouard: As I look at the potential of these particular games, I have heard a number of models. One is the Montreal Olympics, which I quickly reject because Canadian Forces went there to do everything from cook meals to drive trucks, and we do not have that manpower today. We will not do that kind of thing this time. Our approach is very much about augmenting the security side, cooperating with the general public safety piece and bringing the specialist skills whether equipment or individual skill sets. We can bring special forces, haz-mat specialists, et cetera. If we look at the specialized piece, that may be reasonably inexpensive.
The Calgary model is interesting because the Canadian Forces bill for that was not exorbitant. I also hear about the Kananaskis model. Of course, I remind folks that Kananaskis was about an executive event where you kept the world out. This is a sporting event where we are inviting the world in, and so to me Kananaskis does not equate.
What I look at is the domain that we have at play. It is a very intricate, very complicated, mountain, domestic, urban domain, and our part of that, whether it is the Joint Task Force (Pacific) side or the CF at large, will be about delivering specific skill sets, not the all-up, basic, fundamental, open-the-gate kind of roles. That is the kind of conversation we have already had with the RCMP.
This is certainly within the envelope that the CF will have in 2010. As it pertains to costing, three years out, we are in such a grosso modo, big-hand and small-map assessment, that any kind of number that I come up with for costing would be just an aberrant guess, and I would not put it before the committee because the accuracy of it would be so questionable. Certainly going into this we know that the costing issue is at play, and we will seek to limit to the required elements, the kind of thing that we bring to the business. Suffice to say that the footprint in the sport sites will be finite. We may have a way to avoid some costing, or to mitigate costing to have things in the neighbourhood that are in fact doing other roles but can respond, and that is how we will go about this. Between now and the Olympics in 2010 we have, for instance, a fairly significant exercise plan. That exercise plan would in many cases be what we are doing anyway. The fact that we will toss in a 2010 scenario does not mean that it is a 2010 expense.
B.C. was looking at hosting a nuclear biological exercise, an inter-agency event, not just a Canadian Forces event. Well, oddly enough that was already on the books, and it just makes sense if we are going to do that in Canada in the next little while that it would be out here. I think, too, one of the things we need to appreciate is, yes, this security element will have a cost, but at the end of the day, you will also leave a legacy. It is an opportunity for Canada Command and for us in B.C. to prove our worth early in our existence. It is something that in British Columbia will serve to deliver inter-agency understanding, cooperation, and trust that will last. Yes, there are costs, but this is not a bad investment either. That is how I approach it. I cannot give you a number at this stage, and I would say once we get some of our more detailed work done, the RCMP may be in a place to offer that up before the end of the year.
Senator St. Germain: I hear what you are saying and like you, I would like the legacy to be one of real success, and I can see the integration and this aspect of it.
Were you consulted as part of the monetary process? It is obvious that you are expected to do something, the expectation on you people has been horrendous, and the financial commitment has not always been there. I think it is fair to ask you now, sir, and I am not browbeating or anything, but were the Armed Forces consulted and said, well, can you give us a figure of what you expect, this is what we expect of you possibly, and this is how they arrived at the $176 million, sir?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, neither I nor my staff here in the West were consulted on arriving at the figure. That is not to say that RCMP at national level did not consult with some of their partners there, and if that occurred, I do not know.
In terms of the rough numbers that we are playing with now, we have based some of this on what we think we will be asked to do. As I said in my opening remarks, we have yet to receive the request from the RCMP with the list of things to do. That is why we are engaging with the integrated security unit to help them ask the right things, and so I am not in a place right now to offer a figure that is anything other than a blind guess, and I do not think that would serve you or Canadians.
[Translation]
Senator Day: Admiral, we received a map, does it come from your organization?
RAdm Girouard: Yes, the map describes our region of responsibilities, the province, the approaches and our area of interest, and as you see it extends almost all the way to Hawaii.
Senator Day: I am interested in the areas of interest.
[English]
I see that it goes into the United States and USNORTHCOM presumably in conjunction with them. Is the Western Arctic part of Joint Task Force Pacific Arctic area of Responsibility? Is that part of your area of responsibility as well?
RAdm. Girouard: As you know, one of the regions that stood up is Joint Task Force North. They, too, have a state of the forces in being issue at play in their early days. They are going to see some significant investment and enhancement to their headquarters, which will allow them to grow a capability to do domain awareness in the Arctic. They are not there yet, so the head of Canada Command has accepted the construct that we in the West and my colleagues in the East will contribute as we have historically to Arctic domain awareness. We will do that until they are able to stand up the staff and until over the next few years some enhanced resources arrive to help them do the Arctic surveillance piece. What does that translate to in a given year? From here, maritime patrol aircraft will conduct patrols on a not regular but intermediate basis. We are building into next year's calendar the potential for an at-sea patrol ship from Victoria around Alaska, which is of course subject to the vagaries of weather and ice, but we are looking at that kind of contribution.
Senator Day: That is helpful, thank you. Your presentation was very helpful in outlining the different areas of responsibility. You said you are a man of three hats and I would like to talk about one of those hats. Maritime Forces Pacific is the traditional role that those of us that have been following the Armed Forces for a number of years would recognize as being the role of the navy on the West Coast. I assume that at this stage because the transformation is just underway that they majority of your budget comes from them; is that correct?
RAdm. Girouard: That is correct. The lion's share of my cash flow comes from the chief of maritime staff.
Senator Day: Can you estimate a percentage?
RAdm. Girouard: At this stage, it is in the order of 95 per cent. The agreement as we have stood up these new structures is that we would articulate expenditures and categorize them and over a number of years and see about some transferral of monies perhaps to Canada Command.
Senator Day: Now, wearing the hat for Joint Task Force Pacific, could you describe to me a bit in more detail the work with respect to emergency preparedness and disaster relief. I am interested whether you have the resources and the assets that you feel you need. Do you have the resources for planning and joint planning with the other agencies? I would like to get a bit more of a feeling for the military's role. Do you have to be invited in or are you just a last resort that you come in or are you part of the first responding team?
RAdm. Girouard: The concept that we have put into place is that the regional commander is supportive to the province because a province has prime responsibility for disaster management and the like. Understand that in that rubric oddly enough the search and rescue hat falls in there to a degree for various incidents, and that kind of life saving, life and limb thing is automatic. That has not changed. The other thing that has not changed, of course, is the fact that the naval elements plying the waters will respond by law when they hear a distress but also respond to our direction. Where we have significant new responsibilities is in the inland portion. We have inherited that responsibility from what is Land Forces Western Area, so as we stood up Joint Task Force Pacific, we took British Columbia in that set of responsibilities. The first thing we did as we looked at that was grow the knowledge that we need about British Columbia, and that has included bringing in liaison officers and getting to know folks at the community level, and that includes going to Kitimat, finding out who runs the hospital, who runs the fire hall and who does emergency management.
At the higher level is about developing a very strong relationship with emergency preparedness in British Columbia, a relationship that we already had but is enhanced now because they understand our responsibility very well and they recognize that we are a new partner organization. The one fundamental value added is folks get to make a local phone call rather than calling Edmonton, which was the previous situation.
The question is with what forces do I have the ability to respond. Certainly on the land side there are no new forces yet. If you look at the history of the province, it has generally been able to deal with the odd flooding occasion, the odd medium-level event. We had to increase our presence in the large-event fire fields around the interior three years ago. In that case, significant presence came from Edmonton, but the navy contributed upwards of 200 strong backs and boots to that event as well. We have a habit of taking care of ourselves. What we do not have is an immediate response unit, other than the ready duty ship, which does not do much good up in the mountains of B.C. The nearest immediate response unit, regular force army, is in Edmonton, and depending on the circumstances, Canada Command may for an event assign anything from around the country along with the transport to get it here. Our job is to have that liaison, the eyes and ears in the community, get the alarm translated into a crisis situation, and deal with it appropriately with the forces that we have available.
I am not willing to wait for growth in British Columbia, so what we are in the process of doing, early days yet, is forming an ad hoc, immediate response unit out of base and ship assets. This would take them away from the traditional grade ship role, and if we had to, we have them pre-identified, if we had to, we could take them inland to an event. What kind of responsiveness would that mean and what kind of training must these individuals undertake to be prepared for such an event? Understand that in the mix of forces in the province we do have HUSAR, haz-mat and other specialized teams. They exist so we can serve our own needs, but at the right threshold of pain, myself and the base commanders would be willing to send them outside the gate to assist civil authorities. We are doing risk management as we speak. This set of calculations has allowed us to come to grips with what we call gap analysis. I look at the preponderance of issues at play in British Columbia and determine what else we might need. I deliver that information to Ottawa for consideration in the upcoming force development calculations.
Senator Day: Does the reserve unit, the Seaforth Highlanders, play a role in the planning process? Is that unit in training?
RAdm. Girouard: It is unquestionable that 39 Brigade Group, the militia element in British Columbia, and indeed the reserve units at Discovery and at Malahat play into my overall force fix. They train at a very high level. Last year, Cougar Salvo focused on Afghanistan because a fair number of their fellows and women deployed to that area. This year it will take on a different approach. Cougar Salvo brings those folks up to a solid teamwork level that is transferable to emergency management. Last year in Kelowna, one of the elements of Cougar Salvo was a major disaster scenario with an overturned bus. In that scenario, they were not only training their own medical assistants and triage teams, but they had built was a relationship with the local hospital.
Everything we do has this thread of community involvement and interrelationship and growing the trust, understanding, knowledge, and 39 Brigade Group is very much on the hook to support events, with restraints on notice to move. I have to know how many I can have on a short string, as it were, but we are reactive. We take a look at what is going on and we adapt. For instance, last spring when we were having some flooding, we decided that while we did not want 100 soldiers' just twiddling thumbs, but what we might want is 10 trucks with gear and we might pre- position them, so we did some hires, we stood up a team, and they were ready to move on very short notice. We ended up standing them down, but that is the kind of adaptive risk management and resource utilization that we are in the business of doing.
Senator Day: We had the opportunity to meet with the reserve unit of the Seaforth Highlanders. Our chair reminded us that many of the reservists are policemen, firemen et cetera. Do you count on these reservists to be available as a military component when they would be called out for their primary job beforehand?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, you have touched on one of my great conundrums, whether the reservists, the militia, or even my own regular force personnel would be the first responders in the event of the big one. If the big one happens, can I be sure that they will leave their homes to attend to a specific emergency? As you suggest, if they have a loyalty to their militia unit and a loyalty to their hospital, which way do they turn?
I recognize that there are certain limitations that relate to what I can expect of the folks that I have in-house. Day by day, the fact that a particular militiaman has this relationship is a wonderful bridging tool for me. That individual brings skills and talent, shares it with his mates at the armoury, and gives knowledge, trust, and linkages to the other workplace. There has been at times a bit of mythology around what the military individual is and folks like that generate ``I never knew you were that good'' in terms of their impression of people in uniform. I have to accept that during a major or localized event I might not get that person out the door. It also causes me to look for more options, and that is what we are in the process of proposing in B.C. If the big, big one occurs, we will need an awful lot of help from outside this province to deal with it, and not just the military. We will need ambulances and hospitals and police to hold things together. I have got a lot of faith in folks' ability to do that, and even if Corporal Bloggins does not leave his neighbourhood, he will be a pretty good contributor right in his neighbourhood, which means I do not necessarily have to put a truck down that street today anyway. There is a balance at play.
Senator Day: My final question focuses on what has happened here in B.C. in the last little while, and it is designed to allow you to demonstrate at what level of readiness you are now in relation to first responder emergency preparedness. In one incident, a couple of railcars with hazardous chemicals went off the rails and rolled down into a ravine, and I guess we were lucky that the chemicals did not spill into the river and the waterway system. The other incident was the major blow-down that happened here and the loss of electricity during the Christmas period. That could have been a lot worse because there were mudslides as well.
Were you at a high-readiness during that time? Did you get a call? Did you take steps for military participation?
RAdm. Girouard: Our conduit for awareness and understanding regarding those emergencies is B.C. Emergency Preparedness. We have a superb relationship with that organization. We have a daily link, and when events such as you describe occur, we check in on the as-required basis. Most importantly they know our phone number.
Were we watching those scenarios closely? Yes. Were we called? No. We were asked to think about one event, and we went to the back of the cigarette pack planning stage of this may emerge, it may require this, but at no stage during the snows or the rains or the blow-down were we asked to engage. We were not asked to engage probably because none of it really turned out to be life and limb of a moderate duration, not to suggest that there was not loss of life, but we were not going to get there in time. We were not going to be able to fulfill a first responder role anyway even if we were asked to turn to, and none of the medium term problems seemed to be beyond what the province had assets to deal with. Certainly had they asked, we would have been there.
I spoke to the flooding situation we had last spring. This past summer because of forest fires we were leaning quite far forward, were fairly well along the line of contingency plans and getting some folks kitted out, and ready to get on the bus when the weather turned that tide for us. We are not the first responder in many of these affairs, but we do quite seriously lean forward. The attitude I have taken with my commanders across the province is pretty simple; we live here, they are our neighbours too, it is our problem as well. If the need is there, we will turn to with all that we can bring there to put things back inside the box.
Senator Day: Do you anticipate that your planning for the Olympics in 2010 will help drive the preparedness in a general sense for emergency preparedness?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, it already has. It has certainly given us visibility inside the emergency responder's community in British Columbia. It has given us a very solid excuse to be at many events. Although I uses the stand-up of Joint Task Force Pacific this time last year as an excuse to go out and meet my neighbours, my use of 2010 as the first real scheduled test resonated, and so we use it as a good excuse to get our act together, but we are not waiting for it to occur. The plan shop has generic response plans put together, has a ferry response, avian flu support et cetera.
All of these things are on our agenda and very rapidly being either refreshed or started anew because it is ours to do, not the army of the West. With the finite staff that we have I think we are pretty well along in terms of putting those documents together, and just as importantly we are pretty well along in terms of actually getting together for conduct of exercises. We did a ferry disaster exercise back in December. Just the other night last week we did on air crash scenario at Albert Head.
All of these things have inter-agency approaches and in the back of my mind, there is a 2010 link. It is about very much growing and enhancing these relationships. Some of them have existed a very long time. I mentioned that we have a HUSAR team on base and their relationship to the Vancouver HUSAR team is long standing. They come to our training site and we go to theirs. They share knowledge and experience; there are significant symbiotic relationships already in place.
The policemen, ambulance drivers and my reserve unit bring special knowledge and understanding back to their units, and we send it back to the civilian element from their time at sea and their time doing other things. We have plenty of work yet to do, but I am very, very satisfied that the understanding and the intent is recognized right across the spectrum of people that I have working for me.
The Chairman: I would like to clarify that the militia is not under any obligation to show-up if there is an emergency. These people do have other jobs.
RAdm. Girouard: Call-out is a legal, precisely defined set of rules, and we have not done national call-out in many, many years. I started as a reservist, and I understand the reserves. I have worked with the militia on many occasions. I was deputy commander at the naval reserve and deployed them during the Swissair disaster. The one thing I know about the reserves and the militia is if it is worth it, they will come. They do not like to have their time wasted and they do not like to be booked for an exercise that somebody cancels at the last minute, and frankly I understand their frustration at times in terms of how we employ. No, we do not have guaranteed turnout.
The Chairman: That was my point. And the other point of clarification is when we were being briefed on CANCOM or Canada Command, we were advised that it simplified things. It meant that for example, would not have to go to the commander of the army and ask him for assistance. In an event where you needed assistance from outside of your area, you in fact do have to go to somebody else and negotiate with them if you need folks out of Edmonton, and so in some respects you still have those problems; is that correct?
RAdm. Girouard: Mr. Chairman, we have talked about the resource issue at large. The truth is that not one region has everything they want in their neighbourhood, so you could describe us as supported and supporting elements in a dynamic kind of way.
The Chairman: My point is that the great virtue was it was a one-stop shop, and therefore the admiral here could call on people from all three elements and be fairly simple, and having said that, if you want to go beyond your geographic border, you in fact end up in a request situation. You do not have the capacity to call upon people from Edmonton without dealing with your counterpart in the prairie region. Is that not so?
RAdm. Girouard: Mr. Chairman, the way it works is within the forces inside British Columbia, at the right threshold I get to grab. If there are forces outside the province, and if I need assets that I am not able to provide myself, I go to Canada Command, and they will do the shopping and the liaising. There is an element of simplicity associated with the Canada Command construct. I do not have to call Winnipeg myself for air assets and then call Edmonton or maybe there is something over in Ontario that I need. I call Canada Command staff, I what I am after, we come to grips with what those represent in terms of assets and units and they tap in across the country on my behalf.
Senator Moore: Admiral, please tell us about the embarrassing incident where and East Coast ship did not participate in a function because of shortage of funds for fuel. After a period of time the funds were found, but in another incident the ship did not participate.
I am a native of Halifax and we are very proud of the navy. A couple weeks after that incident it came out that, our navy could not participate in a NATO exercise because we were $25 million short. I am not asking you to answer on behalf of your East Coast counterpart.
For the record, I would like to know the thought process. It is a very sensitive subject given that the money was found for the first shortfall and shortly after there was a similar situation but that shortfall was not covered. It is embarrassing that such an event would be publicized.
On the other side of that we are saying NATO has to step up in Afghanistan, but we did not step up with regard to that particular NATO exercise. How do you make that decision, and again, I am not asking you to answer for your counterpart on the East Coast.
Can you give this committee and the people watching an answer to that question?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, the issue we find ourselves coping with is the arrival at the fourth quarter in the year where both coasts have had some elements of what we call over-programming. During this period, because there was no expectation of new monies or transfer of monies to come to us, we were forced to load shed to take some things off our expenditure list. That procedure has been followed on both coasts based on a set of priorities. Each coast is different and has different dynamics; we have come up with different solutions. The goal is simply to arrive on budget, which is what we are supposed to do in law, and it is founded in prioritized expenditure and letting go of what you feel you can.
In the case of the sovereignty patrol, that was an event that the East Coast was looking to defer to the first quarter of next year, so the impact was not going to be great. I cannot speak to the NATO exercise, but on behalf of my colleague because we exchanged some of this information. You will certainly recognize that February is not the grandest time off of Halifax. The exercise was built around the fact that the squadron was in Halifax for change of command; Canada just relinquished command of the NATO squadron. The idea was that, the group of ships would go out together as they were leaving port. It was never going to be a sophisticated exercise. There were no significant assets to turn it into something that was a multi-threat or so on because the weather was so risky. Essentially, it was at the level that we would describe as a passage exercise, very simple, and so my counterpart decided dollar for gas in terms of what our sailors are going to learn, it was not worth doing, and that is why he chose to let that one go. They protected some other sea days, as we have on this coast. We just completed a sovereignty patrol. As I said earlier, we are sending two ships out to a very important submarine warfare exercise. In our case, we still have some over- programming. We have chosen to take that off-loading, that level of pain in base and infrastructure, and it is simply a different approach. We, too, took sea days off the table but not what I viewed were the important ones.
Senator Moore: I thank you for that answer. As you can appreciate, that was an embarrassing couple of weeks for the senior service on the East Coast.
There has been some discussion that the navy is considering developing a naval commando capability based somewhere here in B.C. I think Comox is a possibility. Can you tell us what that concept entails and the status and if it is something you look forward to doing? Is it in the budget, and if so, what will it cost.
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, the concept is still in the formative stages.
One issue I have been pondering is the potential that cruise ships and tankers represent as a target to the nefarious in this world. Though we have a very solid boarding party capability, we have special forces, an event such as the seizure of a tanker would have be very difficult to deal with. We have some contingencies that we have looked at and put into place in the West. We might consider what the British call the special boat service. At the same time, the Canadian Special Operations Regiment, CSOR, is being built, grown, and trying to come to grips with some new concepts. We are trying to see if there is a natural match between the two. How might that work? Well, we would take some of our brightest, strongest, and fastest from the boarding parties and get them into the special operations world. We would build a cell. Where it would be based is a matter of conjecture, but my idea is to have them on hand and available as a domestic capability. We could use this West Coast cell for deployment in our area. As I say, it is still in the formative stage. I know that the chief himself has some interest in this, and I think we will see how that plays out over the next few months in terms of whether we put some meat to the bones of the thought process.
Senator Moore: There was an exercise off the East Coast the last month or two involving commandos and a submarine exercise. Were those army personnel?
RAdm. Girouard: They were, sir. Pathfinders were matching special forces with the stealthy capability that our submarine's represent. The idea is to be able to deliver special forces to a beach for reconnaissance or demolitions or any range of things that you can imagine.
Senator Moore: Could that unit fulfill the conceptual naval commando capability? They are working in the sea environment and it follows that they should fall into your operation.
RAdm. Girouard: The concept of the Pathfinders is that the boat delivers what is essentially a land capability via that approach. They arrive stealthily, quick boat into the beach, and the effect is land based. We are considering the special capability of boarding and anti-terrorism. We have been working, experimenting, trying to develop this capability with special forces, but it has been very, very ad hoc, and you will understand that the water side skill set can erode over a period of time if you are not at it all the time. We have learned with our boarding parties that it is something that is comparatively specialized, and as I do my threat assessments, it strikes me as something that we probably ought to grow in the next course of time.
Senator Atkins: Can you describe the Standing Contingency Task Force concept and how it is applied to MARCOM?
RAdm. Girouard: The Standing Contingency Task Force is the navy's contribution to deployable operations. Notionally that contribution is one ship, the ready duty ship, a vanguard ship; the best example is HMCS Ottawa who as a lone wolf went overseas. The more powerful, adaptable, the capability that has more options is a multi-ship deployment. That is where the Standing Contingency Task Force comes in, and the idea there is a coast or in tandem, the two coasts together form up a task group. The group includes a destroyer flagship with a commodore in command and with helicopters in support. It is built around an oiler, a destroyer, one or two frigates, and it is deployable for offshore operations such as we saw in both Gulf Wars. It may include a submarine and coastal warfare, mine warfare vessels if required to make a tailor-made capability.
Our new joint support ship would add to the capabilities and possibilities of that task group because it would have the ability to take more aircraft and has the ability to bring troops to employ in a littoral concept.
Other aspects are under consideration, and certainly the concept of growing amphibious capability for the Canadian Forces is also being looked at, but that is further out there. The SCTF is a force to give the people of Canada some options regarding an international solid-force package.
Senator Atkins: What are the three or four issues that concern you the most?
RAdm. Girouard: Senator, you ask an intriguing question. The good news is I do use a line about such and such keeping me awake at night. First are the people, the manpower, the HR issue in MARPAC and I think in the Canadian Forces as a whole. At one time, the budget and dollars were the most important subjects that we discussed. My concern is personnel. We have the issue of the generational outflow that we are seeing as the boomers retire. We have a need for very demanding skill sets, technical skill sets that we ask of our people. By the way, when these people are trained to our standards they become solid leaders and very popular in industry outside of the forces; this is a problem. To recruit, train and retain is probably what keeps me up the most.
I am a naval officer, and navies are supposed to be about hardware. Hardware is not worth much if you do not have the intellect and the heart to make that capable. That is my number one concern.
Number two resides inside my MARPAC hat and relates to the fact that I gaze at the Indo-Pacific a lot. I look at a region that is very fragile, with tremendous areas of risk, whether it is terrorism or strident nationalism. Even though we have had a period of comparative sanity in what looks like a pretty insane world, we have not had a regional conflagration in a good long while. I worry about the potential of North Korea and other parts of Asia, and I wonder if we are ready to deal with those things in terms of our relationships in the region as well as our skill sets in terms of being able to turn out and do what Canadians would expect of us. That one keeps me awake, and that is a very big complex issue.
I suppose number three, and I will bring you back to the home shores again, relates to my new responsibility at Joint Task Force Pacific, and the new expectations, the new — I will use the term ``liabilities'' that I have to this province and this region. These are measurable. Although it may be a good long while before the big one comes there are many other things going on in this province that I really want to make sure we are able to cope with. It is for that reason that the plans cells and the training cells are doing as much work as they are to try to get out ahead of these curves. We are in communication with Health Canada about avian flu outbreaks to understand the potential risks and how to be prepared. I need to know these risks to have all the forces available in the event of a crisis. Of course I do not, and that will take some time to sort out. However, knowing the potential risks threats generated the conversation that I had with Canada Command about letting us pre-form the support package that you will give me, and when I call you, you will already know what some of this looks like.
Senator Atkins: If you had two wishes, what would they be?
RAdm. Girouard: I would hit the personnel, HR side first. Give me access to every high school and college in this province, and I will fix my own problem. We are working on that, and that is why we have partnering relationships with industry and that is why we are talking with the provincial department of education and Camosun College and the like, but if you can enhance that access, I will be beholden.
I think the other aspect is an understanding of those fiscal pressures. We view our fiscal responsibilities with some seriousness. That we prioritize in this climate of finite funding is a given. I would appreciate an understanding of what the last 20 years of pressures have brought us and an understanding of what might be useful to address these new demands. I think we have covered some of that ground already today, senator.
Senator Atkins: You would wish for people and money.
The Chairman: Admiral, you were talking about the new JSS. My understanding is it is not going to come online until about 2016. We are going to have a risk or a gap of four to six years. Can you tell us how you anticipate dealing with that gap?
RAdm. Girouard: You are quite right senator. Joint support ship is still in its formative stage, and it will be awhile before we see steel cut and a vessel delivered. You may be aware that we have just completed a refit for HMSC Protecteur, our West Coast oiler.
The Chairman: Yes admiral, but in 10 or 12 years, it is no longer of any use.
RAdm. Girouard: Well, the goal then is to spread that peanut butter just a little thinner. Frankly the navy has gotten very good at that. Our DDH 280 destroyers are aging out, yet they are still pretty magnificent. The fact of the matter is ships do not suddenly fall off; they degrade. We are considering the option of running a degraded ship for a while longer. We are looking at the options. Is that the ideal approach? Well, no, it is not. Will we lean on our friends and allies? Will we endure port costs as we go into harbour to gas up? I do not know the perfect answer. I do know that we will sort it out the best that the situation allows us at the time.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. On behalf of the committee I would like to also thank you. It has been a very instructive hour and a half. We also enjoyed very much having the opportunity to meet with you earlier. As with your last appearance before this committee, we have come away wiser and with a better understanding of the challenges that you face. We wish you and those that serve with you success. We would like you to convey a message to those in your command that we are extraordinarily proud of the work that you do. Your work is hugely important to Canada, and we are very grateful for all that you accomplish.
We now have before us, senators, a panel of first responders from the City of Vancouver. Mr. David Stevens, Emergency Management Coordinator, Risk and Emergency Management, is the principal spokesperson for the group.
Mr. Stevens joined the City of Vancouver as an emergency planning coordinator in May of 2006. He is responsible for the city's Emergency Operations Centre, including its emergency geographical information systems, mapping and communication systems. Until the end of 2006 Mr. Stevens also coordinated Vancouver's Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program.
Mr. Stevens is accompanied by Ms. Patricia Doge, Director of Risk and Emergency Management; Mr. Brian Inglis, General Manager/Task Force Leader, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services, USAR/Special Operations; Mr. Tim Armstrong, Assistant Chief, Special Operations, Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services; Superintendent Steve Sweeney, Vancouver Police Department; and Ms. Jackie Kloosterboer, Emergency Management Coordinator, Risk and Emergency Management.
Daniel Stevens, Emergency Management Coordinator, Risk & Emergency Management, City of Vancouver: Senators, you have a copy of my short presentation, which will give you a little bit of background on emergency management and first response in the City of Vancouver. We will touch on four areas: the role of local governments in managing disasters, the capacity to respond, the relationships between the levels of government, and some of the concerns and challenges that we face.
The role of the local government in British Columbia in responding to a disaster is to provide overall policy direction and response coordination within its jurisdictional boundaries. When the scope of a disaster exceeds the cities' capability to respond effectively, then we seek assistance from other levels of government. Our first step, in such a circumstance is to contact the Provincial Emergency Program here in British Columbia.
The Greater Vancouver Regional District includes many municipalities and these local governments have joined in integrated emergency management led by the Joint Emergency Liaison Committee, JELC.
Vancouver's city council has approved a number of emergency preparedness initiatives and we are in our eighth year of a 10-year plan. I have included details of the various initiatives on the facts sheet that we distributed with the presentations.
The Joint Emergency Liaison Committee's governance model increases the capacity of the city to respond by strengthening linkages between local governments. When the city requires assistance from local governments and vice versa, that whole response can be coordinated much more efficiently.
The city is also home to the only UN-certified urban search and rescue team USAR, otherwise known as Canada Task Force 1, which is a local team but is deployable provincially, nationally and internationally. Although it is housed in Vancouver, we do have an international reach.
When it comes to responding to a disaster, there are strictly defined interactions between the different levels of government. The local government will interact with other local governments or the provincial government and we will deal with the Provincial Emergency Program here in British Columbia. The province will deal directly with other provincial governments and the federal government and, of course, the local governments. The federal government will deal with the provinces and the international community. There is a strict hierarchy of how resource requests and assistance requests funnel up.
The Joint Emergency Liaison committee developed here in the Lower Mainland provides a cooperative model for local governments and the provincial government to tackle regional issues through a number of task focused working groups. This is a way for all communities in the Lower Mainland to get together and tackle issues that relate to emergency or disaster preparedness that cross jurisdictions. JELC is chaired by the City Manager of the City of Vancouver, the Deputy Minister, the Minister of Public Safety and Solicitor General of British Columbia.
We have excellent working relationships between the cities, the local governments and the province through the Provincial Emergency Program, PEP. That relationship includes ongoing exchange, discussions and assistance in both directions. Some examples are the Emergency Social Services Program that operates throughout British Columbia, which is funded partially by the provincial government but also by staff positions in the municipalities. They look after the humanitarian side of disasters. We can request support at the local government level through our Provincial Regional Operation Centre, which is the Provincial Emergency Program's local emergency operations centre for the Lower Mainland.
An example of going in the other direction is the city providing assistance to the province and other municipalities in events such as the 2003 Okanagan Mountain Park fire that was part of the larger firestorm. Further, we can get financial assistance from the province and through the federal government through a funding program such as the Joint Emergency Preparedness Programs, JEEP and other funding opportunities. One recent example of a successful cost-sharing approach is a purchase of an infrared spectrophotometer, which was used at a number of white powder incidents. We were able to identify very quickly the nature of the substance and it has significantly reduced staff down time. The spectrophotometer has paid for itself in reduced staff time. Financial assistance was provided by the provincial government along with the city.
At the federal level, the relationship between the local and federal government is generally facilitated through the Provincial Emergency Program. However, we have many federal resources in Vancouver and there are natural linkages that form with the local representatives of the federal government such as Transport Canada, the National Exercises Division of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Canada Post, et cetera.
I am going to touch on three concerns or challenges that we face and some recommendations. The first challenge rests on first responder training. Broad-based first responder training exceeds the financial capabilities of the city. There is also a very high cost associated with the training centres for first responder training located in Eastern Canada or Central Canada, especially CBRN, chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear training.
We also have increased capabilities to meet the requirements of the 2010 Winter Olympics. As an example, an additional haz-mat team, hazardous materials response team, costs approximately $2.2 million.
We recommend local training. We recommend that the government commit to the funding and to the ongoing support for first responder training. This is at all higher levels of government. The CBRN police training costs approximately $750,000 per year and CBRN training for the fire department costs approximately 1.1 million per year.
Our second challenge is that the city has limited means to maintain our Urban Search and Rescue Team at a national or internationally deployable standard. USAR is a federal and provincial resource but is currently funded solely by the city for ongoing maintenance, management and training. One recommendation is a commitment to annual funding for USAR at a cost of approximately $564,000 per year. We also recommend that the city's contribution be recognized in the form of significant staff resources that it contributes toward the USAR team.
We are challenged by the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, JEPP, grant process. Our challenge is that the current process is quite cumbersome and requires a financial investment of 50 per cent from local governments. Our recommendation is to streamline the process of acquiring the funds, place fewer restrictions on the funding, how it can be used, and recognize the significant contribution the local governments provide in the form of staff resources.
The Chairman: Thank you very much. We have been talking about the HUSAR team, heavy urban search and rescue and that is why we are confused when you refer to USAR, which is perhaps more inclusive.
Senator Meighen: Is it more inclusive?
Brian Inglis, General Manager/Task Force Leader, Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services: Yes, they are the same. Originally we named it USAR to stay consistent with the American and international community. Somewhere along the line somebody decided to call it heavy urban search and rescue in Canada.
Senator St. Germain: Thank you, Mr. Stevens, for your presentation. We are from the government and we are here to help. The line of questioning that I want to pursue concerns the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, JEPP. What course of action do you pursue in order to place a request for funds? Do you approach Ottawa or the province?
Mr. Inglis: All requests from the City of Vancouver regarding JEPP are funnelled through the province. All applications, whether from police, fire or emergency management, are submitted to the province. The province determines whether the application meets the JEPP criteria and if it does it is sent to the regional PSEPC and then to PSEPC in Ottawa.
Senator St. Germain: You do not send the request directly to Ottawa.
Mr. Inglis: No.
Senator St. Germain: You are restricted from direct access. Do you feel that this process is satisfactory in meeting the needs of the people in the Vancouver Regional District?
Mr. Inglis: We have had success with the process in the province. They are quite good. They have supported most of the requests, in fact all the requests I have submitted. Again, there is a chain of command within the government, so it seems appropriate. The challenges are not necessarily whose hands it passes but the criteria for applying and what you can apply for and what you cannot.
Senator St. Germain: Do you think the guidelines are too rigid and not flexible enough to meet up with the changing times of terrorism?
Mr. Inglis: I think JEPP works very well within its design. It was designed to help support emergency plans and emergency operation centres. The police, fire department and search and rescue are looking for not only bricks and mortar but vehicles, communication equipment, and those requests are beyond the scope of JEPPs original design. I think it works very well for the things they had in mind when they designed it, but we have accelerated past them.
Senator St. Germain: We had an incident not too long ago in Burnaby where smoke was coming out of the manholes, which really could have been a major disaster. Would the JEPP criteria allow you to source whatever you require to combat this type of crime?
This is a major problem right across the Lower Mainland. I do not think it is only consistent with British Columbia either or Vancouver or the Greater Vancouver Regional District.
Tim Armstrong, Assistant Chief, Special Operations, Vancouver Fire & Rescue Services: Yes, senator. I am familiar with the incident in Burnaby and that turned out to be a methamphetamine lab. First responders seem to be the sacrificial lambs going to these situations, possibly not at a high enough awareness level, whether it be terrorist related or simply, like I say, a methamphetamine lab or a grow operation. These people need better educational training to be able to recognize these situations to keep out of harm's way.
One of the things I would like to add about the JEPP process is that the city's physical year-end and the federal government physical year-end are at different times. From a planning point of view, to take on a project we have to plan well in advance and in JEPP we never know whether we are going to get that or not. We have a very small window and sometimes we cannot exercise the use of those funds because we cannot make those time commitments. Often our suppliers cannot supply in such short notice, we lose that funding, and it goes back into the general revenue. That is one of the restrictions with the JEPP process.
Senator St. Germain: The 2010 Winter Olympics are going to be big for all of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, as you well know. I am not telling you something you do not know.
Mr. Stevens, you pointed out that this operation is not adequately funded. Is the stumbling block the province or is it JEPP or is it a combination of both?
As we ramp up, I think it is critical that we pay attention to these things so that we can provide the safe, beautiful city that we have always advertised. Vancouver is likely the most beautiful city in the world.
Mr. Armstrong: Senator, I am a member of the Fire Advisory Committee for the 2010 Olympic Games. All the surrounding municipalities discussed their resources and what additional resources are needed for the Games. At that meeting, we discussed hazardous materials. It was determined that there is not so much a deficiency in the City of Vancouver as some of the other areas, which do not have adequate capabilities. The Sea to Sky corridor, Whistler and the North Shore are in need of increased capabilities.
We are currently in discussions with the other fire chiefs on the North Shore and along the Sea to Sky corridor to see what we can do to augment our existing service while working with the other municipalities to enhance their hazardous materials and special operations response capabilities.
Senator St. Germain: I am going to ask for a bit of a clarification on the USAR. I understand that the Vancouver team was in New Orleans assisting the Katrina survivors.
Mr. Armstrong: Yes.
Senator St. Germain: In the city and on the ground you are the first responders. Are you receiving adequate funds form the province and the federal government? I do not want to speak for or against the province, but obviously, the province has a role to play in accessing these funds. Can you tell me where we are because I think we gained a lot of credibility in sending people to New Orleans?
I am very proud of all the services in Vancouver, and I was really moved by the fact that we had that USAR in New Orleans. Now, could you give us a little bit on the funding that you require and whether it is adequate?
Mr. Inglis: The biggest obstacle is our ongoing operating and maintenance costs. JEPP funded us for some of our initial equipment purchases and even some of our initial training back in the 1990s. We dip into the pot, so to speak, every year as much as we can, but it actually costs the City of Vancouver about $560,000 a year to keep the team going and that amount does not include all the team members' costs to come for drill or practice or deployment. It is very difficult for the city to maintain this expense.
We are working with PSEPC in Ottawa to try to come to a solution because there are four other Canadian teams under development. They are at various stages in Calgary, Manitoba, Toronto and Halifax, and we want to ensure that we are consistent in our training, equipment cache and our ability to respond. We have had success but we do have difficulty maintaining this team on our small budget. We need the federal funds, to be quite honest with you.
The province has come a long way in the last few years. We would have never gone to Louisiana had it not been for the province. That deployment was unique because we left Canadian soil. It was the result of an agreement between the Province of British Columbia and the State of Louisiana. Our relationship with the province has increased considerably.
Senator St. Germain: We should have good relations. He is the former mayor, the premier of the province, and Premier Harcourt before him. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
Senator Atkins: Can you describe how our emergency communication system works? How do you communicate within your own system during a disaster? Can everyone tie into the system? Do you have a specific relationship with the media in order to keep the public informed?
Mr. Stevens: Are you interested in the first responders talking to other first responders?
Senator Atkins: Yes, and I am interested in the liaison with the public.
Patricia Doge, Director, Risk & Emergency Management, City of Vancouver: The City has a computer system that records everything that is going on and our emergency operations centre is housed in the, emergency communication, E-Comm facility. Some senators came a few years ago and saw the facility. We have a wide area radio system that covers communications all the way to Boston Bar and quite a distance over to the east. This system enables us to communicate with other first responders and we are very proud of it. We put this system in place after the Stanley Cup riots where the different policing entities were unable to communicate to one another.
Our corporate communications department is constantly in touch with the different press organizations. We have a way to go to strengthen those relationships, but we have had some preliminary discussions with different press organizations and we are moving along in that direction to establish some protocols.
Senator Atkins: Was your city consulted with regards to the CANALERT system considered by the CRTC?
Ms. Doge: I am not aware of any consultation.
Senator Atkins: In terms of training, how many responders do you send to the East for training on an annual basis?
Mr. Armstrong: The new CBRN program is only two years old. We originally wanted to send fire department personnel, police and ambulance attendants as sort of a joint task force to train together and come back to work as a team. Since then that has fallen apart in the sense that enrolment is happening in bits and pieces in a number of different communities. Our original concept of an operational team on completion of the training has fallen through the cracks. We have a large number of people that need to be trained and possibly it would be more cost effective to do the training here rather than in Ottawa. A number of our members have trained up to instructor level at the Emergency Preparedness College in Ottawa. We would prefer that the college bring that training to the local areas as opposed to sending manpower out of our area.
Senator Atkins: That is why I am asking about the numbers and whether the training is restricted by budget.
Mr. Armstrong: To a degree it is restricted by budget, although they will pay for a portion of the costs. Again, we have back-filling needs for staff.
Senator Atkins: Who is ``they''?
Mr. Armstrong: The federal government. We are looking at training about 124 members.
Senator Atkins: Do you mean you are training 124 members annually
Mr. Armstrong: We train 124 people in the initial stage and the 40 to 50 people each year. We need to train all first responders to an awareness level that prepares them for these types of events.
Senator Atkins: If you had a training school here, you could write against the amount of money that you are spending towards a training facility.
Mr. Armstrong: Exactly, any type of training that regards travel and being away for long periods of time increases the cost.
Steve Sweeney, Superintendent, Vancouver Police Department: Initially, the selection criteria for training police was very limited. It only included bomb technicians and forensic identification people. It did not include a security component for the team, like an emergency response team, so they were not eligible for training. We have only had in the 12 members trained in that program, which is nowhere near the number that we need. We have recently been successful in lobbying for inclusion of the Emergency Response Team component for that training; however, the spots had been filled, so we are looking at 2008 before we can even begin to get some of our people the required training.
Senator Atkins: In your presentation you talk about the amount of preparedness that you are doing in the event of anything that could happen in the Olympics. What kind of planning or thinking has gone towards, as the admiral described, the big one?
Ms. Doge: Are you talking about earthquakes?
Senator Atkins: Yes, I am referring to earthquakes.
Ms. Doge: The City of Vancouver trains to an all hazards level. We have retrofitted older bridges to bring them up to current standards of resiliency. We have strategic locations of large supply containers throughout the city holding emergency supplies to quick-start a response in the event of that type of disaster. In that way in the early hours following the earthquake and before other levels of government or other assistance could come in, we have resources ready to put to that use. We do ongoing training of that type at our E-Comm Centre.
We have put in a dedicated fire protection system at significant cost to meet fires in the downtown core or Kitsilano, because if there is an earthquake, there will be gas fires and other problems. You can find these and other initiatives in our fact sheet.
Senator Atkins: Do you have any input to the municipality in terms of the regulations for new buildings in Vancouver?
Ms. Doge: The chief building inspector is a member of our emergency planning committee. Vancouver is quite proactive and the standard in Vancouver exceeds the national standard.
Senator Atkins: It exceeds the national standard?
Ms. Doge: In many areas, yes.
The Chairman: The committee is very concerned about direct communications with individuals, and in the event a tsunami, for example — and this city may not be that vulnerable because of the islands that protect it, but in the event of an earthquake, the ability to communicate with people when the regular systems break down. When power goes out and when cell phone towers malfunction, the best system we have is the police car loud hailer systems. How have you addressed the communications problem with or for individuals in the event you have a power failure? Is there a program for everyone to have transistor radios? Is there a system of communications that will withstand a power failure?
We are conscious of the problems the people in inter-coastal Florida experience during hurricanes. They have a series of solar powered towers and have their own battery that provides at least a siren warning, which is of some value. We are also conscious of the reverse 9-1-1 system that while the phones are functioning, you can tell different people to stay indoors or close their windows in the event of a gas leak et cetera.
Can you tell this committee about when things get bad and you have lost electricity? How will you talk to the citizens and give them advice and information on which bridges are still functional or where citizens can go for water or those sorts of things?
Mr. Armstrong: Senator, I can speak briefly on my experience having deployed to Katrina with USAR. Communications became a huge factor, as you well know, communications not only within the state but also within a rear link. We learned from that experience that having all your eggs in one basket with one communication system does not work. You need to have multiple systems and some redundancy built into it. Technology, such as interconnecting switches is available now, where first responders can come together from all areas and be linked together for a common communication network on a common platform in one area. Satellite communications increased the ability to communicate that way through satellite links. Their system failed and they we without communications throughout the state and that created a huge risk to not only the communities but the first responders as well because they could not communicate with each other. They were working independently in many different areas, which made the commanding control of the event very difficult.
The Chairman: It seems to us that the first responders' communications amongst themselves is a challenge, but it is a solvable challenge. The communications with the population is a much greater challenge and that is what I was asking you to address. When you have been considering this problem, what conclusions have you come to about how you are going to tell John and Jane Doe who are living in Kitsilano how they should deal with the emergency?
Mr. Stevens: Currently the city will go to the media in partnership with them.
The Chairman: I am assuming there is no media.
Mr. Stevens: Assuming there is no media at all?
The Chairman: The media have gone. The Sun is not publishing and the TV station is not functioning. The tower went down.
Mr. Stevens: Even the Lower Mainland media including CBC have recently started a process of getting a portable radio transmitter that can be taken anywhere. These transmitters can be driven up to a hill, put up the tower and broadcast from that site on independent gasoline-powered generators.
The Chairman: What would they broadcast to?
Mr. Stevens: In our public education campaigns, like our Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program, we encourage all our citizens to have battery-powered or crank-powered, solar-powered radios with a supply of batteries. We tell them to go to any radio station because we will be going to any station that is broadcasting. We have word from CBC and CKNW that they have hardened facilities for disaster communications.
The Chairman: As in any plan of this sort, you really only start to see the reality when you start doing drills and shut down a few things and see how you manage.
Do you have a schedule of drills with the neighbourhoods? Do you actually practise to get a better grip on just how difficult these situations can be?
Ms. Doge: We have a very robust amateur radio portion in our emergency plans. Individuals attend all of the reception centres and they broadcast in and we broadcast out to them from E-Comm. It is not ideal, but that is where we are. We have also done some testing in the past on some of these telephone systems that send messages out across the telephone system, but they were prohibitively expensive.
The Chairman: Have you done a survey of the community to determine who, in fact, has transistor radios or crank or battery-operated radios? Do you know how many citizens have them?
Mr. Stevens: I am not aware of the numbers.
The Chairman: That seems to be an important question to answer.
Mr. Sweeney: Senator, we learned about cataclysmic communications breakdowns from Katrina and we have a plan underway. It is not finished yet, but we have identified muster locations in all of our policing districts where our officers would be directed to attend in the event of a breakdown like that. They would all gather at a predetermined location. An amateur radio operator from the Vancouver Emergency Communications Telecommunications Organization, VECTOR, would also attend at that location. We would also have the amateur radio presence at our headquarters and at the operations centre. Everyone would know in advance where to attend to establish a line of communication. It may break down to runners. It may come to the point where we need to send runners to our headquarters and our emergency operations centre. We also realize that within our jurisdiction there are people who do not have radios. Some of those people will not have access to the media. We would be in a position to rely on the police vehicles' system. We would be prepared to attend to the east side of the city where we would have to ensure the message was received and be prepared to launch into searches of the area. We understand that communications is a huge component of a disaster.
The Chairman: Do you have an inventory of shut-ins or a place where they can register? Is there a place where they can tell you that in the event of an emergency they will need assistance?
Ms. Doge: Through the Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program, NEPP, we are creating neighbourhood teams that can identify special needs people. These teams set up collaborative and cooperative groups that identify the people who need assistance.
Senator St. Germain: Are amateur radio operators becoming a thing of the past?
Ms. Doge: Our membership is extremely robust and expanding in size. Several inspectors with the Vancouver Police Department started up the group. They are very professional, focused and dedicated. We are very lucky.
Senator Meighen: Mr. Inglis, I will start with you about the ubiquitous USAR/HUSAR. Vancouver has the only UN-certified USAR unit; is that correct?
Mr. Inglis: That is correct.
The Chairman: I think I heard you say there were four more units being planned or in existence?
Mr. Inglis: Within the country they are at various stages of the development.
Senator Meighen: You identified Calgary, Manitoba, Toronto and Halifax. Will those units be UN certified as well?
Mr. Inglis: I doubt they will be UN certified, but they will certainly have the same level of training as the Vancouver team. I am not sure if any group other than the Toronto team is interested in deploying internationally. The chances of that are fairly slim to begin with and there is a lot more work once you start thinking outside of North America. I am not sure there is really a need for any more than two teams in Canada to take on that role.
Senator Meighen: You made the point to the federal government that if there is to be an international role, it would be logical for the federal government to assist in the financial responsibility.
Mr. Inglis: Absolutely.
Senator Meighen: You are in the middle of negotiations in that respect?
Mr. Inglis: Yes senator, we are in negotiations.
Senator Meighen: It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
The next question is about the involvement or lack thereof of the Canadian Forces in your planning. Are the forces involved in your planning? Have they been historically involved in your planning and to what degree has the integration been achieved?
Mr. Armstrong: Senator, I have met with Admiral Girouard and USAR on a number of occasions. We have a very good relationship with Admiral Girouard and his base and the members of the base Naval Construction Troop. We have ongoing exercises on base and they come to Vancouver and do training as well. Working with them has been a good experience.
Mr. Sweeney: On the police side, we exercise regularly with the Canadian Forces. The 39 Brigade Group has an annual exercise at Cougar Salvo and we send about 20 of our members to participate in that exercise. For the last three years, it has been in Kamloops; this year it is going to be in the Comox region. That experience gives us an opportunity to develop intra-operability, communications, and an understanding of their capabilities. It also develops personal relationships, so that when the time comes, we know who to contact. I know the official process, but we also know the unofficial process, which sometimes is even more expeditious. We have worked with the forces to develop these relationships.
Senator Meighen: Are these regulars?
Mr. Sweeney: No, the participants are from the militia.
Senator Meighen: To what degree has there been cooperation and planning undertaken with the Public Health Agency of Canada to meet the threat of a pandemic?
Mr. Armstrong: The police, fire department, B.C. ambulance service and local health authorities have all worked together on this subject. We have had a number of pandemic planning meetings to address the many problems that could accompany such a disaster. In other words, would first responders be diminished to the point where public safety was at risk? We are involved in ongoing planning but we do not have any definitive answers, as is probably the case across the country.
Senator Meighen: Around the community and around the province are there caches of blankets, beds, equipment and medical supplies?
Jackie Kloosterboer, Emergency Management Coordinator, Risk & Emergency Management, City of Vancouver: We have 27 shelters strategically placed throughout the city that contain cots, blankets, first aid kits et cetera. They would be available in the event they were needed. Generally, they are used in setting up reception centres, which our emergency social services teams, ESS, would open during an emergency or disaster.
Senator Meighen: Do those caches belong to the City of Vancouver or are they government property?
Ms. Doge: They belong to the City of Vancouver.
Senator Meighen: Well, that is a good thing because in Ontario we discovered that there were some federal government caches, but there was only one problem; nobody knew where they were.
Ms. Doge: There were some caches of medical supplies and blankets that had been housed in some of the fire stations and they were so obsolete as to be deteriorated beyond a usable state.
The Vancouver Coastal Health Authority has representatives on both our emergency planning and emergency management committees. We work very closely with Vancouver Coastal Health.
Senator Meighen: Well, I certainly remember our visit to the E-Comm building.
It is obvious that Vancouver has taken this matter very seriously and you must be one of the most advanced and well-prepared communities in the country. I suppose there is reason to be well prepared. As my friend Senator St. Germain keeps telling us, there is reason for Vancouver to be so admired. Thank you very much and congratulations on your many accomplishments.
Mr. Armstrong: Through our USAR program, we have also been talking with Health Canada, and that department is in the process of trying to make health emergency response teams, and one of the locations they are talking about is Vancouver. Health Canada has purchased a large cache of medical equipment and, unfortunately, does not have the staff to manage that equipment. We talked about partnering up and possibly cohabitating in a warehouse here in Vancouver and supporting them logistically through our USAR program.
Senator Meighen: Do you have an agreement with Seattle?
Mr. Armstrong: There is the I-5 corridor agreement that gives us the ability to go into Washington State if there is an emergency.
Senator Meighen: And vice versa?
Mr. Armstrong: And vice versa.
Senator Moore: I have two quick questions regarding ham radio operators. You said they have a very ``robust group.'' How many are in the group?
Mr. Stevens: There are approximately 500 ham operators in the City of Vancouver. There are likely more people with ham radio licences. Approximately 120 active members of VECTOR who would respond to the community centres, who would respond to the emergency operation centre to provide the linkages and provide coordination.
Senator Moore: How many people are in a haz-mat team?
Mr. Armstrong: Senator, we have two task forces that are 24/7 operational. That includes three fire halls, one out of the UBC Endowment Land area, one on either side of Vancouver General Hospital, one at 10th and Granville Street, the other one at 12th and Quebec Street. A task force includes approximately 12 members and four pieces of apparatus.
Senator Moore: Does that include the technicians and the drivers?
Mr. Armstrong: An operational technician is in that group.
Senator Day: I just want to get a clear picture of the planning and how it is coordinated. And as I understand it, the City of Vancouver has a 10-year plan and almost eight years of that plan are completed. Will the City of Vancouver then hand over and move to the Greater Vancouver Regional Municipality all of this planning or will the City of Vancouver continue to do its own planning?
Ms. Doge: The 10-year plan includes specific initiatives of which the sheltering of the containers is one initiative. We will share with any municipality any planning, any research, anything that we have. We will always share with other municipalities. This new governance model that has just been developed by the Joint Emergency Liaison Committee was approved by the GVRD and looks at issues like a regional emergency planning office that would coordinate within the region and would bring information, similar systems or across-the-board systems so that we could all talk to one another. As it is, we have varying different systems for dealing with our emergency response, and it would be all about integrating all these systems into one functional system and bringing everybody within the region up to a minimum standard of planning and resources.
Senator Day: This is the Joint Emergency Liaison Committee that is doing this for the Greater Vancouver Region?
Ms. Doge: Yes. It was a group that was put together to deal with cross-jurisdictional issues. In the list, you see things like communication, distribution of water and disaster response routes. It is impossible to have these issues end at the jurisdictional boundary; it does not make any sense. It has to continue through the whole region until you can get it to a place to deal with it. So these are the kinds of issues that get started out as a group dealing with work groups from the different municipalities and sharing what was developed in these plans among the district.
Senator Day: Is planning still going on in each of the municipalities? Does Langley have its own plan? They have their own teams and they do their own thing. And West Vancouver, they are doing their own things. And then there is other umbrella group that shares ideas.
Ms. Doge: Yes. Every municipality would have their own plan, but we share a lot of things among the region. Say, for instance, the Neighbourhood Emergency Preparedness Program. We would share our binders, our resources. Anything that we had we would be willing to share with any of the other municipalities if they were trying to start it up. For instance, we have just started on a program of doing television clips. We have one done and we are going to do a series of them that we can show, trying to get to a bigger audience with the message that for the first 72 hours to the extent possible you need to be able to look after yourself. Those are the sorts of things that we would always share with our sister municipalities.
Senator Day: In terms of actually dealing with the emergency and, therefore, planning to deal with the emergency, if it is a cross-boundary type emergency or disaster, who takes control?
Ms. Doge: Generally, it would be the province unless we are talking just a couple of municipalities and it was just a limited cross-jurisdictional issue. We have plans to deal with the cross-jurisdictional issues.
Senator Day: What do you do if you need police, fire personnel and ambulances and the province has taken control but it does not have those resources?
Mr. Armstrong: An event like that occurred with the mudslide in North Vancouver. The fire chief who was managing the incident in the North Vancouver District requested a mutual agreement for both fire response and urban search and rescue. I believe that police officers from Vancouver came over to assist as well as RCMP. The fire chief made a simple a mutual request.
Senator Day: Are you saying that when the municipality says the incident is bigger than it can handle, the surrounding municipalities come in with their additional help?
Mr. Armstrong: Yes, and from that we received a tasking number from the Provincial Emergency Program and the costs were reimbursed to the municipality.
Senator Day: Is the Provincial Emergency Program encouraging broader than municipality-type responses and training?
Mr. Armstrong: I think the province has been proactive since the wildfires up in the interior and the mudslides in North Vancouver. They have been proactive in encouraging mutual aid and helping coordinate a multi-jurisdictional event.
Senator Day: The normal rule is each municipality develops its own plan, but there is some planning that goes on inter-municipality to help coordinate a region when it would be greater than that municipality? That is generally how it is organized in the province?
Could you explain to be how the emergency response team mobilized when you had the most recent crisis? There were mudslides on Sea to Sky Highway and a lot of rain. Power was out for a period of time. Water was contaminated.
Mr. Armstrong: I just returned from a call from Stanley Park where a person was trapped. Our incident command structure, which is proactive initiated a unified command structure. VPD, the Vancouver Police Department, took the lead role in the park for the search and we brought in North Shore Search and Rescue as well as Vancouver fire. Our ongoing training has proven that we work very well together under a unified command structure.
Senator Day: Did you get any calls to help out Tofino, further on up the highway beyond West Vancouver?
Mr. Armstrong: No.
Senator Day: In your planning process, do you deal with man-made disasters? Do you deal with terrorist acts? The federal government has jurisdiction over such acts. Does your municipality practice with the federal teams for situations like that?
Mr. Armstrong: Yes, we do through Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada. Last year, we did a joint exercise in Calgary, which was a national USAR response, where we brought in all the cities into Calgary and had a simulated terrorist event. We went through the logistics of notification through the Government Operation Centre, through the provinces, bringing in all the provincial regional managers from PSEPC. We mobilized and did a two-day exercise in Calgary, which proved to be a very good overall success overall. We learned many lessons from that exercise and our biggest shortfall was the movement of personnel in a timely manner.
Mr. Stevens: I was just in Ottawa at a meeting with PSEPC on just that issue. We discussed exercising integrated regional exercising for urban transit systems with both neighbouring municipalities, the transit operators and between the various levels of government.
Senator Day: Are you saying that Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness is taking the lead in helping to coordinate a bigger response in this kind of situation?
Mr. Stevens: In this case for urban transit security, they are currently going in that route and it seems that they are encouraging it.
Senator Day: Were all Canadian cities included in the Calgary meeting?
Mr. Armstrong: The cities initiating HUSAR teams were in attendance: Calgary, the province of Manitoba, Toronto and Halifax region. Manitoba is structured a little bit different in that it is the province that runs their organization. We all mobilized there for the exercise. We are working on another exercise slated for February 2008. The exercise will be here in Vancouver and deals with a nuclear radiation event. It will be held in collaboration with PSEPC.
Senator Day: I did not realize that the Heavy Urban Search and Rescue teams are limited to four or five cities. What is happening in the rest of the urban areas that do not have these teams?
Mr. Armstrong: Initially PSEPC accepted three teams: light- medium- and heavy- teams. The five teams have eaten up most of the funding, which has left the smaller municipalities out of luck. I believe smaller regional teams are necessary.
The Chairman: Could you tell the committee if you have an audit system and if you have a way of evaluating your capacity for continuity of government in the event of a disaster?
Ms. Doge: We do not have a formal audit system, but we would see our weak areas through the exercises. We have two large fully functional exercises every year and each time, we find a new area that needs our attention.
The Chairman: Are the results made public, where you did well and where you did not do as well?
Ms. Doge: I do not believe they are made public. We do have outside evaluators who come in from other levels of government or from private enterprise companies and offer input as well.
The Chairman: You do not make those results available to the media so they have an understanding of your needs or deficiencies.
Ms. Doge: No, senator we do not.
The Chairman: Could each of you tell the committee where you feel the federal government could be of most assistance to you?
Ms. Kloosterboer: We could use more funds. My key focus is on personal preparedness.
Mr. Sweeney: The city has the largest initial responsibility to respond and the least financial capability to do so. The JEPP process is contingent upon 50 per cent of the funding coming from the city. Our budgeting cycle does not allow us to plan in a timely fashion and then if we do not get the JEPP funding, the entire thing falls apart. It does not allow for ongoing funding. It allows us to buy equipment and materials, but it does not allow us to sustain any sort of a program. We do not have the capability of getting our people trained and equipped for the big-ticket items that we need for some of these calamitous events which, God help us, never occur, but if they do occur, we have to deal with them and yet we do not have the equipment and the training to do so. I understand that if the calamity involves terrorism, the RCMP would take over jurisdiction, but we would still have to hold the fort for the first 48 hours or so and it presupposes a terrorist act. It could be a criminal act, for which we would retain jurisdiction.
The Chairman: Inasmuch as there are a great many municipalities — and this is a problem we have heard in a number of places — the federal government cannot adjust its fiscal year to meet every municipality. What constraints are there on the municipality in adjusting its fiscal year to match the federal government?
Mr. Sweeney: I am sorry. I could not answer that one for you.
The Chairman: Has that has been put to city council?
Mr. Armstrong: I could not answer that either.
The Chairman: Well, it is a thought.
Superintendent, clearly there must be some form of co-financing in order to provide some level of discipline. What would you propose other than the 50/50 model? Would you have someone looking after a larger proportion of capital and a smaller proportion of operating costs? How would you go about it so that all of the orders of government — I wince when I hear ``levels of government'' because we really think of them as just different orders of government — participate so that one order does not become a cash cow? How do we manage the system so that there is an equitable share?
Mr. Sweeney: I understand what you are saying and I think part of what has to occur is that the human resource element has to be factored into it. The fact that the city is funding the salaries of all of those people that are there, but that cost is not included in the formula. The city has stepped up to the plate by providing the trained professionals in one discipline, but the supplementary training of those people is not factored into the budget. The funds only include the dollar value to buy the equipment. I suggest that should be recognized and a diminished dollar percentage for the city would certainly help.
Mr. Armstrong: Obviously money is a key factor for equipment and training, but one of the things I found is the best resource we have is the people, the first responders that we have trained. I learned a very valuable lesson in responding to 9/11 in New York as well as Katrina that first responders will go 24 hours a day if you let them and the psychological effects to these first responders by going on for days and days and days. So bringing in fresh resources is critical to a large-scale event. The other thing is support for family members. If a first responder knows that his family is being taken care of, you are going to get 100 per cent performance out of that first responder.
The Chairman: I would presume that if you are lucky, you could get 72 hours out of a first responder.
Mr. Armstrong: If they were involved in the initial event, I would say that after 72 hours you have to get them out of there.
The Chairman: What plans do you have in place to provide for sustainment?
Mr. Armstrong: This is hopefully where we have callback and rotator staff out as quickly as possible, but that is easier said than done. Depending on the size and the magnitude of the event, are we going to be able to recall them? What is going to be the recall? Are people not going to show up for work because they are too busy looking after their families?
The Chairman: Is there enough interoperability amongst fire departments in the province that fire personnel from another municipality could operate the equipment that you have here? Are they sufficiently familiar with it that they could come and provide the sustainment for the shifts that are necessary to generate?
Mr. Armstrong: JEPP is looking into mustering stations for first responders and the different ways we can move personnel into the crisis areas. Vancouver, for instance, is surrounded by water on three sides, as are many other municipalities. We are looking at water access and mustering points that are close to multiple transportation routes. We plan to muster our personnel and bring them into the area as a unit, rather than individually.
The Chairman: Does a firefighter from Kelowna know how to operate a pumper in Vancouver?
Mr. Armstrong: Other than the equipment, they may have a small learning curve, but generally, the principles and the training are similar. It is like driving someone else's car. There would be a little bit of an adaptation but I am sure they would be able to adapt to a different piece of equipment.
Mr. Stevens: Senator Atkins asked a question about CANALERT and our involvement in it. I have been keeping up with what has been happening or has not been happening and it seems like something that has been a long time in the making. I am sure there is positive movement for it but nothing operationally active in the federal government through various departments has things like the weather radio service through Environment Canada, which with the all hazards based alerting system technology that is used south of the border. It will be great to see an integration of these multiple forms put into something operational even if it is just at a basic level not using everything together, but it would be really nice to see the public alerting system.
The Chairman: We are on record as wanting it and we also want to have it as a condition of licensing. If you want to have a licence to broadcast, then you have got to be part of the system and there has to be a central capacity to interrupt. We want the municipality or the region or in the section of the city to have the authority to use the system to speak to the public.
Mr. Stevens: That system is still in the working stages.
Ms. Doge: My wish would be that we have very broad spectrum first responder training. My concern is that we have to go down to the level of dispatchers because it is about asking the right questions and not leading. We use the term ``blue canary'' because they used to use canaries down in the mines and now we send our uniformed officers into situations because people are not even asking the right questions. People are not thinking about the problems in a self- protective manner that they should and training would make a big difference in this area.
The Chairman: How would you have the federal government become involved?
Ms. Doge: We need funding for first responder training. I think all first responders should have a basic level of CBRN training and even people like dispatchers or call takers, because really it makes a huge difference if they ask the right questions.
Mr. Inglis: Utilization is important, particularly for my group, the Urban Search and Rescue team. We put in over 6,500 man-hours of training every year for this team. If the teams are not recognized and utilized, they will lose interest and go away. If we are a provincial and federal resource, we need to be recognized for our skills and our abilities and utilized as often as possible. In order to be used, we do need that funding to be able to be deployable on a 24-hour basis, but, you know, we have held it together with binder twine and bubble gum for 10 years now. We will keep going if we are being used, but we need to be utilized.
The Chairman: You do not need to do it now, but could you provide a list to us of places where you might have been useful but could not get there?
Mr. Inglis: Absolutely.
The Chairman: Please include what privations people endured. That information would be helpful in terms of a concrete example that we could use in a subsequent report.
Mr. Inglis: Absolutely.
The Chairman: On behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you all very much for taking time out of your afternoon to come and chat with us. We learn a great deal from these meetings. We intend to continue with our surveys where we collect information in a more standard, aggregate way, but they never are a good substitute for actually sitting down, and talking to people. Our witnesses put flesh around the bones of the surveys that we send out.
We are very grateful to you for describing the challenges that you face. Frankly, we are grateful to you for the work that you do; it is hugely important. It is something that most citizens do not realize until they really need it, and it is good to know that there are folks like you who are working day to day to help get ready for that big bad day. I want you to know that the committee very much appreciates the work you are doing.
The committee adjourned.