Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 9 - Evidence, February 1, 2007 - Morning meeting
CALGARY, Thursday, February 1, 2007
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 9 a.m. to examine and report on the national security policy of Canada.
Senator Colin Kenny (Chairman) in the chair.
[English]
The Chairman: Good morning. Welcome to the Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence. My name is Colin Kenny, and I chair the committee. Before we begin, I want to introduce briefly the members of the committee.
On my immediate right is Senator Michael Meighen, deputy chair of the committee. He is a lawyer, and a member of the bars of Quebec and Ontario. He is Chancellor of the University of King's College and Past Chair of the Stratford Festival. Currently, he is Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs and is also a member of Standing Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce and the Standing Senate Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
Beside him 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 then as a senator. He has chaired 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 and Regulations.
Beside him is Senator Wilfred Moore from Halifax. Senator Moore is a lawyer with an extensive record of community involvement. He has also served for 10 years on the board of governors of Saint Mary's University. He also sits on the Senate Committee on Banking and on the Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations.
On my left is Senator Tommy Banks from Alberta. He was called to the Senate following a 50-year career in the entertainment industry. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources.
To his left is Senator Norman Atkins from Ontario. Senator Atkins came to the Senate with 27 years of experience in the field of communications. He has served as senior advisor to former federal conservative leader Robert Stanfield, to Premier William Davis of Ontario and to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
At the end of table is Senator Joseph Day from New Brunswick. He is Chair of the Standing Senate Committee on National Finance. He is a member of the bars of New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec, and a fellow of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada. He was also former President and CEO of the New Brunswick Forest Products Association.
Colleagues, today's hearing is on first responders; more specifically, our hearing from the municipal government of the City of Calgary.
We have as the principal presenter, Fire Chief William Bruce Burrell, Director of Disaster Services.
Bruce Burrell became Calgary's twenty-third fire chief on August 2nd, 2005. He joined the Calgary Fire Department after 21 years with the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Service, two years of which he served as deputy chief director.
His career has encompassed extensive experience in the areas of fire service, operations, provincial and federal government relations, budgeting, business planning, human resources and disaster planning and management.
He is accompanied by Tom Sampson, Chief of Emergency Medical Services; Jack Beaton, Chief of Police; and Steve Dongworth, Deputy Chief of Emergency Management in the Calgary Fire Department.
We are pleased to have you here before us, gentlemen, and the floor is yours.
Fire Chief (William) Bruce Burrell, Director of Disaster Services, City of Calgary: Good morning, honourable senators. First and foremost, I want to welcome you to the City of Calgary, and I am glad to hear that you made it here from Edmonton last evening.
The Chairman: Cold Lake.
Mr. Burrell: I am the city's director of disaster services, and under the local bylaw, that role is held by the fire chief.
I am also the First Vice-president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, and my role there is to liaise in federal issues in regards to urban search and rescue and chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive incidents, CBRNE.
We are pleased to have you here, and I want to thank you for visiting municipalities on a continual basis, to obtain our input into the critical issues of security.
With me here today are representatives of the City of Calgary's key first responder agencies.
I want to reintroduce and note that we have the Chief of Police, Jack Beaton. We have the Chief of Emergency Medical Services, Tom Sampson; Deputy Fire Chief Steve Dongworth, who is responsible for the emergency management portfolio when we have not activated due to a disaster.
Behind us is Inspector Brooke Bishop, who is the Commander of the Major Event and Emergency Management Section of the Calgary Police Service.
Tony Messer is the Coordinator of Disaster Services.
Don Wilson, who is our Hazardous Materials Coordinator for the City of Calgary and has the mandate for ensuring that we have CBRNE effectiveness in the city. Bruce Gray is the Canada Task Force 2 Leader for the Urban Search and Rescue, USAR, initiative.
Regarding the City of Calgary's state of preparedness on emergency management, we have previously produced a report which has been circulated to the committee. I want to talk about the challenges in the time that I have.
One challenge around emergency management and disaster services agency membership is obtaining adequate training. We still have the challenge of receiving sufficient training courses from the Canadian Emergency Management College, CEMC, because there is an imbalance between the seats and courses allocated to smaller centres and to large urban centres.
Large urban centres require significantly more trained members to back up and operate their emergency operations centres, EOCs, and there is an imbalance in the seating.
In Calgary, our current EOC is too small and lacks the latest technology. This means that all the information needed for effective decision-making is not always immediately available in an emergency. The City of Calgary therefore is funding a next generation EOC and hopes to break ground on that structure in 2007.
The City of Calgary requires more fully trained responders for CBRNE. Once again, we have a training issue with the Canadian Emergency Management College, which provides limited spots in the provinces in an attempt to train everyone in the country to the same level, regardless of whether they have the equipment, resources or commitment to field a response-ready team.
The provinces, in turn, dictate which municipalities receive the spots for training, which makes it difficult for the municipalities to build the capacity they need to have an effective team.
A level of training is missing in the federal program to allow smaller municipalities to be trained for levels of response that are within their capacity.
The CBRNE intermediate course at the Canadian Emergency Management College could be delivered potentially within the provinces or major cities, maximizing the number of students that could be trained.
To train municipal first responders to the standards proposed by the CEMC would cost the City of Calgary approximately $1 million.
Since CBRNE is an element of national security, which is a federal responsibility, it is appropriate that the cost associated with the continual development of CBRNE response capability be covered by the federal government. The federal government has provided initial funding to create a CBRNE response capability in Canada. The City of Calgary first responders who attended the intermediate courses identified a significant shortfall of equipment needed to manage a significant event. No federal funds have been committed to the program since the initial funding was received in 2002.
Development of new training modules is needed to allow municipalities with limited resources to identify a CBRNE event even, initiate rescue, and provide emergency decontamination with limited resources and equipment.
Some of the personal protective equipment that we purchased for this program is expensive, has a shelf life and must be replaced over time, resulting in operating and maintenance costs.
Currently, the City of Calgary has built the ability to manage a significant CBRNE event for six to 18 hours. After that, outside resources and equipment would be required to mitigate the event.
The national target indicates that a large municipality should have the capacity to manage such an event for 72 hours, prior to federal assistance arriving.
I want to talk about a few challenges faced by the Calgary Police Service. Once again, the challenges come down mainly to cost. It is cost prohibitive for municipalities to continue to absorb, in their budgets, expenses associated with sustaining CBRNE training, research and development, and equipment. Funding is required to support additional training equipment and the sustainability of the program.
In the report, Emergency: Municipalities missing from disaster planning, delivered by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities to Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, PSEPC, in 2006, it was recommended that municipalities be given, and that they accept, a leading role in national security, critical infrastructure strategies, and other emergency incident preparedness.
Municipal frontline responders are the backbone of the national emergency response system.
Emergency Medical Services in Calgary have some challenges. Historically, EMS have been excluded from the federal funding sources and, as a result, require probably the most or one of the more substantive investments for both CBRNE and USAR equipment and supplies, to reach an appropriate level of preparedness and protection for these citizens.
The operating costs for CBRNE and USAR to cover training and annual deployment exercises for Calgary EMS amounts to about $120,000 a year.
We have challenges in our urban search and rescue initiative as well. From a provincial perspective, we have provincial support for the team, but that support, as of this date, has not resulted in provincial funding.
We have received federal funding for the team, which is fair enough, through a grant from the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, JEPP. This federal grant program requires matching funds from the municipality, which, again, poses budgetary challenges to municipalities.
JEPP funding for the USAR program has been designed to cover equipment costs, but not such items as training, operations, maintenance, and program development.
Currently, the city fire department funds operation and maintenance of the equipment, offices and warehouse space. There is no federal operational funding for any of those issues.
Currently, negotiations are ongoing with the federal government to set up a federal funding program to cover operation and maintenance for the five teams, but nothing concrete has resulted to date.
In comparison, a U.S. Department of Homeland Security audit report found that American urban search and rescue teams were underfunded. Those teams, over a four-year period, received approximately $7.4 million U.S. per team. The Canadian teams, over a five-year period, have received approximately $2.4 million Canadian per team. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said, at $7.4 million U.S., the teams in the U.S. that are constructed to the same standard are underfunded.
Current federal funding is inconsistent. JEPP funding is not only spread out among the five heavy urban search and rescue, HUSAR, teams but also many medium and light teams throughout Canada have taken advantage of this funding.
Once teams are well established, the funding needs to be switched to a program that allows for ongoing sustainability of the equipment, as well as operating and maintenance.
Honourable senators, I hope this submission will provide solid groundwork on disaster planning and on some of the challenges we face in the City of Calgary. Once again, I want to thank you and commend you for taking the time to receive input from the frontline emergency responders who are seldom heard across Canada.
After we have answered your questions, we have a prepared CBRNE demonstration for you in the atrium of the municipal building.
The Chairman: Thank you very much, chief. We are the lucky ones to have you coming before us. We appreciate receiving expert advice, and we think that small investments now have big payoffs in the future. We are delighted to hear from you and we look forward to this morning's hearing.
Senator Banks: Chief, it is nice to see you again. I welcome you to Alberta because the last time we met was in your previous job in Halifax. I am delighted to see you here.
You have raised a question that we have heard about before, which will not surprise you. My understanding, and it may be naive, is that the idea of ongoing operational funding from the federal government for municipal programs or whatever they are, is a rare, if not unheard of, thing.
You referred to the fact that negotiations are ongoing now with the federal government about providing operational funding, and I presume that is in respect of both CBRNE and HUSAR. Tell us what you know about the state of those negotiations and with whom they are being negotiated.
Mr. Burrell: In December of 2006, representatives from the five heavy urban search and rescue initiative municipalities in Canada were invited to attend a meeting in Vancouver with representatives of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada.
The discussions at that meeting circulated around the need for ongoing operating maintenance funding for the HUSAR program, as we transition out of the equipment purchase stage into the operational stage.
A pot of money, essentially, has been put aside with the inception of the program, in preparation for paying for ongoing replacement of equipment. The discussions we held with the federal government were about having that money converted to an operating and maintenance fund that would have strings and criteria around it, but would allow the teams to ensure their sustainability through an operating and maintenance perspective. They were only discussions. It was a preliminary meeting.
I am pleased to say that we did not receive the typical answer, which is: ``We do not do operating and maintenance funding''; we received, I would say, encouraging support that indicated they would be willing to at least take a look at the request and explore whether it was an avenue they would be willing to go down. The discussions did not impact CBRNE. There was no discussion around the CBRNE program.
Senator Banks: Discussions related to HUSAR in particular?
Mr. Burrell: It was particular to the five HUSAR teams that are currently being established nationally.
Senator Banks: We understood that the program mainly involved equipment, and that there was a thought of replacing and maintaining the equipment later, but the idea of paying for people's time is a new wrinkle. However, nobody has said no to you yet?
Mr. Burrell: We did not receive the answer ``no.'' We received assurances that they will take the issue back to Ottawa, and they will discuss it with their assistant deputy minister and see if there is a methodology between their ADM and Treasury Board, where they can set up a fund that we can draw from for operating and maintenance purposes.
We are probably more reasonably assured than we ever have been that there is some hope for sustainability for the national HUSAR program.
Senator Banks: You referred twice, chief, to competition, if that is the word, between larger municipalities and smaller municipalities, or between more concentrated municipalities and less concentrated municipalities: big cities versus smaller cities or towns.
You said at one point that you thought a part of the training program under JEPP and otherwise should speak to and deal with the kinds of events that are, I think you meant, more likely to occur in a smaller city than in a big one. Describe what those events are.
Some small cities and small towns have some heavy-duty things that might happen there. I am thinking of Fort Saskatchewan or the County of Strathcona, for example, which is contiguous to Edmonton and which has some heavy- duty stuff. How would you break that down?
Mr. Burrell: In particular, senator, I was referring to the CBRNE program specifically, in which there seems to be lack of continued direction. Initially, it was proposed that there would be certain geographic centres such as Calgary, or Halifax, where I came from in the past, where a core response team would be set up and trained to a specific level — the membership of the team is significant. We need 32, 38 or 40 people to run one of these teams effectively. Training would be provided to those centres to ensure that they had a sufficient number of trained personnel always to be able to muster the right numbers.
What has happened over the last number of years is, in fact, that training has been left wide open. If I apply from a small municipality that cannot build that capacity, I am still eligible to go to Ottawa and take the training if the province signs off on my application form.
These specific federal programs are designated and earmarked for the large municipalities. In the initial conception plans, for example, responsibility for CBRNE in the province was to be split between Edmonton and Calgary. The role is that these teams are supposed to be more highly trained, more specialized and better equipped.
Senator Banks: And regional.
Mr. Burrell: And regional in nature.
They have never been carried through fully to that initial intent, and part of carrying them through to that intent is ensuring that a larger segment of training dollars and training availability goes for the specialized training.
Senator Banks: Understood.
The Chairman: Frankly, it is more than regional, is it not, chief, because the HUSAR teams will be called on to go all sorts of places. We have only a limited number of these teams. While the province is split at Red Deer, I understand, what is the likelihood of the city that has the disaster being able to get their team up and fully functioning, or able to sustain that team, after a certain number of hours?
Surely the argument would be that, while the teams are located in certain regions, at the end of the day, they will probably do some heavy lifting someplace else, other than the region they are in.
Mr. Burrell: That is correct, Mr. Chairman. In fact, the original intent under the HUSAR initiative was that the teams would be nationally deployable.
In essence, the jurisdiction that suffered the disaster, in all likelihood, would not be able to mount much of a defence because they would be tied up taking care of personal needs and their own issues.
The Chairman: Your own team could sustain its operations for 48 hours, maybe, or 72, tops?
Mr. Burrell: Our HUSAR team currently is not field-deployable at this point. We are still building it.
Our intent is to have a field deployable HUSAR initiative within 18 months that is able to sustain itself on the ground for 14 days.
The Chairman: How many people does it take to keep a team working for 14 days, because it strikes me as tough work?
Mr. Burrell: Sixty members will be the deployment.
The Chairman: It is a big, big team.
Mr. Burrell: It is a big, big team.
Senator Meighen: If my understanding is correct, Vancouver's HUSAR is UN designated, which means it can go outside Canada.
Is that the only advantage or the only characteristic of the UN designation? Should all HUSAR teams in Canada, in your view, aspire to that designation?
Mr. Burrell: It is my view that all teams in Canada could aspire to that designation.
If you want more detail on the International Search and Rescue Advisory Group, INSARAG, designation through the United Nations, I can ask Bruce Gray to speak.
Senator Meighen: Are you aspiring to it?
Mr. Burrell: We want to aspire to it, although we have been informed that the federal government probably will not support another INSARAG-certified team in Canada.
Senator Day: Gentlemen, thank you for the presentation and the way you outlined the challenges and suggestions. That is helpful to us.
We have had a number of meetings on this issue, Chief Burrell. In fact, this trip is a return to Calgary to see how things are developing since the last time we were here, but in all these meetings, we keep coming back to the issue of jurisdiction: Whose responsibility is it, federal, provincial or municipal, and who will pay for it?
It is clear that the work must be done at the municipal level. I congratulate you on all the work you have done, and on how well prepared you are.
I understand the frustrations. You talk about a chemical-biological event, for example. That event is part of national security, but the federal government does not seem to be stepping up to the extent it should. All the first responder work and all the preparatory work must be done at the municipal level by you and your teams.
Do you participate in planning at a national level, because you are the ones that are actually doing this work, or do you only take the programs that the federal government decides to make available from time to time? If it is the latter, how do we change that so everybody can work together and solve these jurisdictional and funding problems?
Mr. Burrell: I would like to speak to that from a fire perspective. Maybe my colleagues could speak to it from their agency perspectives.
From a fire perspective, we have been fortunate in Calgary, in particular with the CBRNE program, to have had significant input into the development of the program.
When the program was originally developed a number of years ago, it was developed in the face of us not really knowing what that response needed to look like at the end of the day.
The training initiative has been in operation now for five years. It is time for a review and time for further consultation with the agencies that have started to build some teams: to talk about whether there is another or better way to build and deliver the training. That is my answer from a fire perspective.
On the HUSAR initiative, I have been fortunate to have been involved in both iterations: the previous attempt in the mid-nineties that did not get off the ground and the more recent attempt.
We have been consulted and have put a lot of development into the training initiatives. The training programs around HUSAR have been first-responder driven.
We have the opportunity for input but typically not the kind of opportunity we want on the funding issues.
These initiatives are expensive and, in reality, they are built on the backs of municipalities that cannot necessarily afford to build them to the extent they need to be built. We deal with the economic challenges on an ongoing basis of making these programs work. We are what I call key components of the federal government.
In CBRNE, the federal government has been good about providing a certain amount of training. In HUSAR, they have been good about cost sharing on equipment purchases, but neither of those initiatives builds the final result. A lot is left to do at a municipal level.
I ask that you allow others to speak to that.
Senator Day: Certainly.
Jack Beaton, Chief of Police, City of Calgary: Senator Day, that is a good question. I will take your question out of the purview of security and defence, and into the policing world, because we in the policing world have had the same challenge: the three levels of government coming together to decide their roles and responsibilities.
Years ago, at our annual general meeting of chiefs of police across Canada, we put a resolution on the floor. It might benefit your committee to have a look at the resolution, because its intent was to bring the three levels of government together, particularly around the issue of policing, to decide the exact roles and responsibilities, which then lead into who is responsible for funding and operations.
What we are trying to do, and I think the same concept could be applied to what you are trying to do here, is to have those three levels of government come to the table.
We have a full document called A New Deal for Policing. I think the document will help you towards a direction in the report that I know will come as a result of your trip across Canada. It would be helpful to you.
Senator Day: Can you make that available to us?
Mr. Beaton: Certainly: I am Vice-President of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, so I will make sure a copy is sent to you.
The Chairman: Please address it to our clerk at the Senate, and they will give you the address.
Senator Day: She will make sure we each receive a copy.
Tom Sampson, Chief of Emergency Medical Services, City of Calgary: I also want to respond to your question, senator.
From an emergency medical services perspective, I think we have lagged behind with respect to interest from a federal and provincial level, as Chief Burrell mentioned earlier.
Most recently there has been new interest on both the federal and provincial levels in the associated risk from biological events resulting from terrorists activities or, as you are well aware, the potential of an N5H1 mutation, pandemic-type problem.
That interest is yet to translate to any hard dollars to municipalities, yet we recognize that fire, police and EMS will be the frontline responders and the first to identify those circumstances occurring in Canada.
Senator Day: We read a lot and hear a lot about fiscal imbalance these days, and this situation seems to be one of those perfect examples where, traditionally, it was federal government responsibility: Federal government would create an agency or a group of people to handle that area of responsibility.
In this instance, we have mixed the responsibility, and responsibility has not been fully sorted out. We must be ready at the municipal level, irrespective of whose responsibility it is, so the municipalities and the taxpayers in the municipality are asked to, and required to, build a team, do all the planning and make everything ready. We do not know whose jurisdiction it is. It does not matter: people in our municipality will be impacted, so we must be ready for that.
That is the difficulty we are having in getting our minds around this responsibility and doing the planning, but in the end, we need the facilities to be in place, and you are the people that must make the arrangements.
Mr. Sampson: When we met recently with the federal government around pandemic preparation, their response was, ``YOYO 24.'' I do not know whether you have heard that one before, but it means: ``You're on your own for the first 24 hours.''
We have looked at the federal government preparedness capacity, and we think it is YOYO 7 days.
Our concern right now is that the municipal authority must deal with the first five to seven days of any major event, at which time additional assistance will be available.
Steve Dongworth, Deputy Chief of Emergency Management (Fire Department), City of Calgary: I want to reiterate, senator, one thing you said there. We are talking about the public expectation here that someone will be responsible, and probably they do not care too much who responds, but ultimately the municipality had better be ready to respond.
That is where we are caught in that place where we need to move ahead and develop these programs that are operable, sometimes ahead of what the levels of government are able to support.
You are absolutely right. I wanted to echo that thought.
Mr. Beaton: Senator, one more thing: A while ago, I wrote a letter to the Prime Minister, asking him for funding, as a result of G8, for specific equipment and training necessary to bring us up to the standard where we needed to be.
We were not successful, but it told us as a police service that we could not wait for federal discussions to take place, and we needed to allocate resources out of our municipal budget to take care of what we call critical stuff that needed to be in place.
As an example, I read a report before I came over here. We took $396,000 for critical equipment, and put it through our municipal budgeting process because, as you heard here, we could not wait for the discussions to occur between the feds, the provincial levels and municipal levels of government. We realized there is an expectation from the citizens of Calgary that we are prepared to respond.
We are waiting for those discussions to take place, and we are going to the municipal taxpayer to fund some of this work and put it in place, because to sit back and say, ``I am sorry we did not do anything because we were waiting for the discussions to take place'' places pressure on all services.
The Chairman: Briefly, on the YOYO 70, 24 and 7 days, you would expect some YOYO, would you not? There must be a period of time when neither the province nor the feds can assist a first responder. The figure we have heard generally is 72 hours. Is that what one should expect?
I was wondering if the stand-up of Canada Command has given you any confidence that support will come sooner, or better?
Mr. Burrell: That question is an interesting one that I have two perspectives on: one from my former municipality and one from the current municipality.
I was blessed in my former municipality to be in a municipality where we had —
The Chairman: Lots of sailors.
Mr. Burrell: We had a strong military presence, and part of my role as a federal liaison person for the fire service was to deal exclusively with the base operations people in forging deals and talking about how to work collaboratively when something happened.
In particular, those talks escalated significantly after the announcement about Canada Command.
Upon my entering into this municipality, the amount of military here, as you are probably well aware, is small. It is made up of reserve units. There is not the same capacity or the same ability. Until I read the article this morning in the paper, I was not really sure what the intent of Canada Command was. After I read the article, I cannot say I am clear yet because we have not spoken to or consulted with the federal government yet about how that would work.
The Chairman: You have not met with or talked to anybody in the prairie region of Canada Command?
Mr. Burrell: Neither in my role as a Director of Disaster Services or as the Fire Chief for the City of Calgary, have I had any of those discussions.
The Chairman: That is intriguing because they have in British Columbia. They could name the name, and the connection had been made, and so we have absolutely taken note of that.
The other point I wanted to hear from you on was — as I am sure you are familiar with, chief — in our last report, we said, Look, we know there is a constitution there, but we also know there is one taxpayer and we think it makes a whole lot of sense if the three orders of government sit down and hash it through.
We receive a long of pushback from the feds saying, ``No, no, no, that will not work — the provinces will cause us no end of grief, as the municipalities are their creatures.''
What reaction do you receive from the provincial government in Edmonton when you say you want to be at the table the next time they talk to the feds because a two-way push is needed to solve this problem?
Collectively, have you made initiatives to the provincial government saying, ``Look, a report out there says that all three orders should sit down and talk. We want to be part of it. The feds are saying no because they think that the province will be unhappy if there is a tripartite talk.''
Can you tell us whether you have had any progress in that regard?
Mr. Burrell: Significant progress, I would say absolutely not.
This viewpoint is a personal one based on my experiences, but it still seems to be a matter of convenience as to when we are included and when we are not, as a municipal player.
When it is convenient to have us at the table because we have the resources that the other orders of government potentially need to tap into to say they have a state of readiness, they absolutely want us sitting there beside them and saying, ``Yes, rah, rah, rah, we are all ready to go. We are all together.''
When it comes to other discussions that could benefit the municipality, where the issue may not align perfectly with the provincial intent or whatever, we are clearly reminded that we are creatures of the Municipal Government Act and that the BNA Act prohibits us from dealing directly with the federal government. We get it, therefore, from the other two orders of government. It is situational.
At the end of the day, probably partly because of my involvement with the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, I am more involved in programs and initiatives with the federal government now than I ever have been. I am not sure if that is because of my affiliation with that agency, or whether things are changing a little bit. I am not positive at this point in time.
Senator Banks: While we are on the subject of the orders of government, I want to make sure that we have a clear understanding.
I think you said, chief, that you had significant input from the federal government with respect to both CBRNE and HUSAR in terms of equipment.
Has the other order of government, the Province of Alberta, made significant contributions in those respects?
Mr. Burrell: They have not, at this point in time. However, as of the meeting in Vancouver in December where we talked about the funding for the HUSAR initiative with the federal government, a representative from Emergency Management Alberta has participated in an ongoing dialogue with us in regards to provincial support from a financial perspective to the HUSAR and CBRNE initiatives. I would say therefore that we are optimistic at this point in time.
Senator St. Germain: Alberta is experiencing tremendous economic growth. In the same line of questioning as Senator Banks and the chair, as first responders, has the provincial government escalated their involvement with you in regards to the movement of hazardous materials because there is so much more activity in Alberta?
I gather they have not, from what Chief Burrell said. I know this issue is political, but if there is more activity, there is more chance of an emergency situation occurring. Is there a direct relationship between increased activity, increased danger and the involvement of the provincial government as far as assisting you in fulfilling your duties of protecting the population?
Mr. Burrell: I see that Chief Beaton has his finger on the button and probably wants to answer first.
As well, I can request a follow-up answer from our coordinator in our hazardous materials program for the fire department, if that would please you.
Senator St. Germain: We do not need to be re-elected. We can make recommendations.
Mr. Burrell: I will let Chief Beaton go first, and I will step out of my chair and let Don Wilson sit down.
Mr. Beaton: I am sure Chief Burrell is letting me speak because I have a seven-year rank and he is a junior chief with the City of Calgary.
We have had discussions with Emergency Management Alberta and their heart is in the right place. We entered into discussions around protocols for some of the substances that move through our province and what we could do. The discussions seemed to have stalled, though. We can do much better in that area.
I was encouraged by those discussions, but I think they have lost momentum. We need to return to the table with the provincial government to talk about that issue and other issues around emergency preparedness. I think we can do better.
Don Wilson, Hazardous Materials Coordinator (Fire Department), City of Calgary: To answer the question, we asked the province to give us an indication as to the amount of increase of dangerous goods being transported through the City of Calgary specifically, but in Alberta, generally. They have not been able to give us an indication of any volumes whatsoever.
I do not know whether they have had meetings with the critical infrastructure group, but they have not included the city or me in any of those discussions.
Mr. Sampson: I will venture being a little bit political, but I think one of the things that we need to say is that we have recently had an election for a new premier in Alberta. Without going into too many details, our mayor and the premier are working together and collaboratively to create a new deal for municipalities.
It is my understanding that the City of Calgary is extremely optimistic about where that new deal for municipalities is going, and subsequent funding that may flow from the provincial government to municipalities to deal with some of the challenges that, specifically, some of the large municipal centres in Alberta are handling.
It needs to be said that we feel optimistic about the new deal and look forward to further announcements by our provincial government.
Senator St. Germain: I know there is a new premier in Alberta. If there were problems, hopefully they will be rectified.
I see the Calgary Police Service is constructing an updated police operations command centre, and you mentioned helicopters and ground resources. How many helicopters do you have, and are you building a fleet of them for the city, chief?
Mr. Beaton: We are not building Air Calgary, no. We have purchased only our second helicopter and it will be operational in April of 2007.
Please remember that this purchase was a community endeavour where a community came together and fundraised for both those helicopters. We look after the yearly operational cost, but I will call them presents from our community to make our community safer.
We have two EC120s. They are equipped with video cameras and such, so that they can download when we need them. They assist both fire and EMS when they require them as well, so the helicopters are a great public safety tool in our community.
Senator St. Germain: That was my next question, but that is excellent.
Is the Shock, Trauma, Air Rescue Society, STARS, program for emergency medical services still in operation?
Mr. Sampson: Yes, it is, senator. It flies approximately 350 missions a year out of the Calgary area.
Senator St. Germain: Is this program well coordinated with all the various departments of emergency services here in Calgary?
Mr. Sampson: All emergency services have access to STARS in the event that they need it, and we have a cross- patching capability and partnerships in place to ensure that Calgarians and, indeed, Southern Albertans are well cared for.
Senator St. Germain: That program is tremendous, from what I have heard, and the envy of other areas.
Mr. Burrell: One thing that may interest the committee is that, under the auspices of the Disaster Services portfolio and dealing with urban search and rescue, in 2006, we formed a strategic alliance with STARS. The director of STARS and I act as co-coordinators for the urban search and rescue initiative that is being built in Calgary, which will see us, when we are operational in 18 months, as the only self-supported, air-deployable urban search and rescue team in Canada. When we finish building our team over the next 18 months, that strategic allowance will allow us to be air deployable.
Senator St. Germain: I am sure you have all been exposed to the Canadian Emergency Management College. From a training aspect, do you think it is practical for them to devise a mobile method of coming to the municipality and the communities, or to certain regions of the country to provide the training? Sending people to the college does not seem to work for smaller communities.
Mr. Burrell: I will state my bias. I have worked as an instructor on behalf of the Canadian Emergency Management College, on both the CBRNE program and for their emergency operations centre emergency site management courses.
Do I believe they need to look at alternatives? I believe a cost benefit analysis must be conducted. In particular, the CBRNE program may benefit from distance delivery, but given the amount of resources, transport and instructors required, and so on and so forth, I think they need to step back and say, you know, we have some challenges with the current delivery system.
It may be the best delivery system at the end of the day, but then again, it may not be, and my challenge would be that it may be time — it is five years into the CBRNE program now — to step back and say, Is this the best delivery method? Are there alternatives? Can this program be put on the road?
If the answer is yes, that is a wonderful thing, if it is cost effective and it will give more first responders exposure to the program.
If the answer is no, it is too cost prohibitive, then the model that is utilized is probably the best model, but I believe the idea deserves exploration.
Mr. Beaton: Senator, I take you out of this arena, back into the policing arena again. We have a Canadian Police College that has the same problems around capacity and logistics, so we have been studying that for some time. We are about to open a college in Western Canada because we, too, have a problem sending our officers there.
A good best practices is about to take place. The college joined with an academic institution for the facilities and such and, therefore, there will be a Western Canadian police college, as well as one in Eastern Canada.
I think this example would benefit that kind of strategy discussion around best delivery. That is a good time to do it.
Senator Meighen: I have one question for you, and maybe it comes from experience as a resident of Toronto with the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, SARS. I want to talk a little bit more about the threat and the ability to deal with pandemics. Do you have agreements in place now to handle pandemics, and have the discussions with the provincial authorities, in the main, resulted in a situation where you feel ready for such an event?
Mr. Burrell: I will pass this question to Chief Sampson, but I want to make one comment.
The City of Calgary has a Disaster Services Agency, which is all the emergency response agencies that assist myself as the director.
Chief Samson was gracious enough to chair what was then the pandemic planning committee. We are about to take our final report to council, which will have the infectious outbreak plan because we did not plan only for pandemic: we planned for any type of infectious outbreak that may hit the municipality. The plan is, in my experience — and I have been working in the emergency management field for the last ten years — one of the most robust plans that I have seen developed in my life.
I wanted to give credit for that particular plan and the fact that we are two weeks away from putting it in front of our city council for final approval. I think we have done a tremendous job here with substantive planning and all that.
Chief Sampson will talk more about the details.
Mr. Sampson: The interesting part about pandemic or even outbreak management is that the more we learn, the more we have a healthy respect for what happened to those folks in 1918 and 1919 and the subsequent problems they had. One wonders often how that would translate to today's environment. As Chief Burrell has said, we have done substantial work in terms of preparedness.
Where we do not feel as comfortable is a good linkage between the federal, province and municipal coordination around that first and initial response to an event. For example, a situation will be highlighted with five people sick and noted in one day, 25 or 30 the next day and 500 or 600 the next day.
Our concern is that we do not have clarity yet on things such as antivirals and whether they will be made available to our police force and our firefighters. We know that paramedics are considered front-line with respect to that issue.
As you know, the number one issue in a pandemic is security. It is the first thing to fail.
Subsequently, we do not worry about all the things that people think we worry about. Things we are concerned about are, can we assure that there is good water, shelter, heat and cold for our residents.
It is a challenge and, from a medical perspective, we feel comfortable that we have some good processes in place.
We are concerned, though, about the spread, how we deliver the antivirals and those sort of things.
Senator Meighen: That is encouraging: thank you.
You touched on your concern with respect to coordination. A recurring theme in this morning's discussion seems to be coordination among various levels of government.
Are you aware of the location or the existence of any caches of beds, blankets, medicines and whatnot provided by the federal government or whatever level of government?
Mr. Sampson: We still have caches at the Calgary International Airport, but to be frank, we are preparing our own work here. We are currently in the process, through a provincial government grant, of creating what we call an emergency medical assistance, EMAT, team that would have a cache.
Our municipal government last year gave us $1.5 million to buy pandemic supplies, so that would include predominantly gloves, gowns and masks to equip all our emergency services and other providers that would need it. At this point in time, we are doing our own work in that area because we do not have all the confidence that someone will be there to take care of the frontline responders.
Senator Meighen: The cache you mentioned at the airport, is that yours or is the province's?
Mr. Sampson: That is the federal government's.
Senator Meighen: If it is any comfort to you, you are one up on Toronto, who knew caches were established by the federal government, but did not know where they were. When they were discovered and examined, it turned out that the equipment had been there for many, many years.
Obviously, you are wise to create your own cache and have it up-to-date, rather than rely on one that is unknown and out of date.
The Chairman: I think it is fair to say they are one up on most areas that found theirs and then had the feds move it to another location.
One comment, though, about police and them having access early on: That was clearly a problem in Toronto because quarantine issues come up and, in some cases, individuals are not interested in being quarantined, or refuse to quarantine themselves. That burden falls heavily on the police, and police officers will not be willing to do it if we do not provide them with the protection they need to enforce the law.
Mr. Sampson: Your point is good, senator. In fact, one major aspect of our plan is to understand how to deal with critical responders who come to work — what support we provide their family — because I will do incredible things for people if I know that my family is safe and well cared for.
We are breaking the mold because, in our current environment, we focus predominantly on our employee and ensuring that our employee is safe. With this pandemic plan, our need is to ensure not only that the employee is safe when the employee comes to work, but that the family member is also safe in terms of one family member leaving on a daily basis to take care of others.
That is a huge piece, and you cannot ask people to come to work if they feel they are leaving their families in jeopardy.
Senator Meighen: Following the SARS outbreak in Toronto, has there been any lessons learned subsequently in the conference, specifically, and do you keep a lesson learned book in the province of Alberta for that or other disasters?
Mr. Sampson: Chief Bruce Farr of Toronto Emergency Medical Services has been here and made his presentations around the SARS outbreak and we have had a lesson learned session.
Incidentally, during the SARS outbreak, the EMS Chiefs of Canada had daily conference calls, where we shared information around the outbreak in Toronto and tried to understand exactly what was happening and how we needed to take precautionary steps.
One thing that SARS did for us was substantially enhance our communications on the municipal level.
We had an outbreak at one of our drop-in centres a year and a half or two years ago, and while going to the call, we called our peers saying, ``Are you having a problem at the same time?'' That kind of informal communication has been outstanding.
Senator Atkins: We talked about funding and the interrelationship among levels of government. You people are responsible for public safety. Can you describe what kind of a public awareness program you have in place in Calgary?
We know that the public is generally blasé about almost everything. How do you reach them and guarantee that you can provide the kind of guidance that they need in any particular circumstance?
Mr. Sampson: Without letting the cat out of the bag yet, senator, because we will go forward in two weeks to our council, we are forging partnerships with the Calgary Health Region and with our communications folks internally. We are developing, in essence, Pandemic 101 information that can train Calgarians on how to respond to a pandemic, how to treat a family member who comes down with signs and symptoms of the illness and where they can go for assistance.
Of course, one of the most fundamental things that we can ask for is that people wash their hands continually to prevent the transmission of these sorts of problems.
We are developing, in conjunction with our health region, which has primary responsibility for this area, a coordinator approach in terms of educating Calgarians and providing them with that baseline information.
Additionally, we encourage Calgarians right now through Disaster Services to be more prepared for a 72-hour emergency. We hope we can expand that personal preparedness to an eight-week cycle, which is coincidental with the first wave of an anticipated pandemic, which would last approximately eight weeks.
Senator Atkins: In terms of emergency preparedness, is this a priority?
Mr. Sampson: Absolutely: In Calgary, we are spending a lot of money at the municipal level.
We believe we will be the first responders to this, and we do not know how long we will be on our own, the YOYO effect. We, with the Calgary Health Region, feel that we will be on the pin for a period of time until the federal government becomes engaged.
Mr. Dongworth: Certainly, we take every opportunity to send the message out to the public. Today, we will use the demonstration as an opportunity.
Every year, we also take part in National Emergency Preparedness Week, and the strong message around that.
As Chief Sampson said, a lot of our messaging lately has been about personal preparedness and family preparedness, the 72-hour concept. This year, we will also give some messaging about the sheltering-in-place concept for emergencies.
We take every opportunity. This message is a tough sell in Calgary, though. Calgary is not the easiest city to market being prepared for emergencies but we do everything we can.
Senator Atkins: Senator Meighen asked if any lessons were learned from the SARS experience. Have any lessons been learned from the Hurricane Katrina experience?
Mr. Sampson: We sent a crew to the aftermath of Katrina. That experience resulted in us recognizing, at least from an EMS perspective, that we needed to be prepared to operate an ambulance service without having our existing supply lines in place, and perhaps without access to stores in the way we thought we would have access.
One problem with just-in-time inventory management is when we have an incident such as Katrina, where supply lines are all damaged. For example, in Calgary, we have only a three-day supply of gas and diesel. Substantial changes need to be made, and we are working right now to secure our supply management chains, access routes and those sorts of things. However, I think it is better that Disaster Services talk about some of the other lessons from Katrina.
Mr. Dongworth: From the perspective of our HUSAR program, our program literally took every piece of information they could from the Vancouver team that deployed, at the time it deployed as well as subsequent to that time. I believe that team was one of the first on the ground to deploy in the Katrina situation, if not the first. Certainly, lessons have been learned there.
At the higher level for us, one piece that we need to be much more robust in is the whole concept of business continuity and recovery. Indeed, we have proposals going forward right now.
Of course, a large component of pandemic planning for us is business continuity. How do we keep the lights on, the water running and the emergency services running during a time when 35 per cent of our work force and our population may be impacted?
We learned another lesson in the floods of 2005 in Calgary. Sure, we have a crisis phase of an event, but there is the whole piece around recovery from that event: returning people to their homes and returning things to normal, plus a whole overlaying piece of how to keep critical services running during a crisis.
We have had presentations as well from our waterworks folks on the impact of Katrina.
Senator Atkins: When you were there, were they organized to deploy your offer to help?
Mr. Dongworth: To clarify, Calgary did not go, though the offer was made. Vancouver went.
We were in touch with them. Bruce Gray, who is behind us, was in touch on an hourly or daily basis to offer them what support we could.
We could have sent some resources there, but eventually they were not needed. We did take the opportunity to learn from everything that they experienced.
Mr. Burrell: There is a fundamental philosophy in emergency management in Canada, which is significantly different than the structure for emergency management in the United States.
The closer we come to the U.S. system, I believe the more at risk we are for catastrophic breakdown of the system.
The emergency management system in Canada, since the end of the Second World War, has been based on the fact that, when it overwhelms the capacity of the municipality, the municipality then, in turn, requests resources from surrounding municipalities in the provinces and, subsequently, from the federal government.
There has been a lot of rhetoric and lot of movement lately to pattern an emergency management system in Canada which, by the way, has not been broken for over 60 years, on something that more closely aligns with the U.S. emergency management system, national incident management, NIM.
All I would say is, if that is the direction we are headed in as a nation, I think we should head there very slowly.
Senator Atkins: Or not.
Mr. Burrell: Or not.
Senator Atkins: You talk about the Canadian Emergency Management College. The sense I have when we talk to different organizations such as yours across the country is that there is a problem in terms of sending people to Ottawa for training — the cost and this sort of thing. There are common interests that relate to the whole emergency management issue.
Would it make sense to have a regional college, say in Western Canada, which not only deals with the common issues but the regional issues too?
Mr. Burrell: I was intrigued by the chief's comments because I was not aware of the branching out of the Canadian Police College. I think that suggestion gives us all much room for thought about how we deliver programs in Canada.
There is value in having a national training centre and a nationally driven standard, to have everybody across Canada working from the same song sheet and the same philosophy, especially in the big events when we deal with other orders of government. We all need to talk the same lingo and operate in the same manner.
I see some benefit to having more than one potential location for delivery of programs.
I think if there are too many locations, we might lose some of the continuity over the program that is required, but I was intrigued by the two-location model. I think that model might be an excellent one for the government to look at.
Senator Atkins: When you send people to the college, who pays for it?
Mr. Burrell: We pay the wages, and the Emergency Management College pays for the air flight, accommodation, meals and program costs.
Senator Atkins: Is there a limit to the number of people you can send?
Mr. Burrell: That issue is the bigger one, I think. A small municipality of 2,500 people might want to train their reeve, their fire chief, their public works guy or whatever else. They need to train three or four people, and chances are, their workforce is probably sustainable: they will be there for a long period of time.
In larger centres such as Calgary, for example, to keep the bank of senior officers trained in one of our organizations, we each require probably eight to ten seats a year per agency, to train everybody at the level we like to have them trained at.
There is no way we will ever have 24 to 36 seats a year for fire, police and EMS only. If we do that, we completely leave out the administrators of the other departments, areas such as public works.
Our demands are significantly higher. We need more input into the coursing — course dates, more advance notice and more slots for training if they are available.
Senator Atkins: How long is the course?
Mr. Burrell: The course is one week in duration for either emergency site management or emergency operations centre management. For both segments, it is two weeks.
Senator Banks: Chief Sampson, in one of your responses to Senator Atkins, you said, as an example of preparedness, the City of Calgary had three days' supply of gasoline, I think you meant, and diesel fuel. Do you mean that this area could sustain itself for three days, or that your vehicles have a three-day supply?
Mr. Sampson: We recently hired a new purchasing manager who, I believe, was a colonel in the Canadian military.
Senator Banks: That could be a disaster.
Mr. Sampson: Actually, I think it is a good thing.
Senator Banks: Military preparedness and acquisition is an interesting question.
Mr. Sampson: We are impressed with him. He advises me that if Calgarians were to use their fuel at the current rates, we would have a three-day supply for all parties, all around.
Senator Banks: Has there been any thought given to a set-aside reserve supply for the vehicles that you use?
Mr. Sampson: Absolutely, and he is doing that now: creating plans to secure larger amounts of fuel in the event of a major event.
Senator Banks: Is that for police cars and fire trucks?
Mr. Sampson: Absolutely.
Senator Moore: I wanted to ask a couple of questions: one dealing with the communications, following up on Senator Atkins' question, and the other dealing with the Canadian Forces that Senator Kenny mentioned.
Maybe you can tell us a bit about the communication system you have in place and also whether your city was consulted by CRTC with regard to the proposed CANALERT system? Also, would you be supportive of the reverse 911 system?
Mr. Burrell: That is CANALERT and reverse 911. I missed the first question. The first one was around the involvement of?
Senator Moore: What is your basic communication system? In the event of an emergency, how do you communicate with the people: what kind of equipment and what can they expect?
Mr. Burrell: There is the emergency public warning system in the Province of Alberta.
Senator Moore: We are aware of that.
Mr. Burrell: As well, we also have a 311 centre, which is strategically located within the same structure as our 911 centre, and a web-based portal that allows us to transmit web-based information to the public. Those are our preliminary methods of dealing with information.
As we develop our business continuity and recovery plans further, we are looking more and more at different models. The City of Calgary has recently contracted for a crisis communications plan specific to the Disaster Services agency in the City of Calgary, to talk about how we communicate in the event of a crisis.
Senator Moore: Is it something you are working on now?
Mr. Burrell: Yes: On a day-to-day basis, over the last year, we have integrated our 911 centre and a joint communication centre for all three agencies. It is appropriately constructed to meet the Underwriter's Laboratories of Canada, ULC, standard for a public safety communication centre.
Senator Moore: Great.
Mr. Beaton: I do not know if you have been watching the Alberta environment, but the Alberta Solicitor General's office has been concerned about our ability to communicate among ourselves, not only at the city level, but at the provincial level as well. The ministry has allocated a set amount of money already to develop a provincial-wide communication system.
That was one of the directions given by our new premier to the new minister, saying this system will be a priority for the Solicitor General's office.
They have set aside about $100 million to get it going. We are encouraged by that from the provincial government.
I will be able to talk to a fellow officer in Edmonton, and EMS will be able to talk to somebody in Fort Macleod, if it comes out the way it is planned.
I know they are entering into discussion with different vendors. They began those discussions already. I have talked with some of the vendors, so I am encouraged by the provincial initiative.
Senator Moore: Do you have any comment with regard to the proposed CANALERT system, whether or not you were consulted, or the city was consulted?
Mr. Burrell: I can only speak to my involvement in my previous municipality, but apparently not at this municipal level, no.
Senator Moore: What do you think about the possibility of incorporating a reverse 911 system? Is that something you would support, or is that something that is thought of in this new communication?
Mr. Beaton: Can you tell us what a reverse 911 system is? I think it would help us.
Senator Moore: As I understand it, the current system that everybody makes a call to, I think this system would be a reverse whereby you can communicate with the public.
Senator Banks: Alberta has not looked at it so far, seriously, I understand, chief, because of the CKUA-operated early warning system, but it is a system in which a message is sent out by telephone to people's houses in a particular neighbourhood, or the whole city, so if there is a problem in Bowness, every phone in Bowness rings at the same time and people are told what to do.
Mr. Beaton: We call it a little different. I will let the chief talk to it.
Mr. Burrell: The issue we have with that particular system is that, under the Alberta Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, we are not able to access phone numbers from the telephone utilities. They will not disclose that information other than for use for —
Senator Moore: So it is a privacy issue?
Mr. Burrell: We have been told it is a privacy issue.
We cannot access the Public Safety Answering Point, PSAP, information that would allow us to take a polygon of the area in a municipality and do the reverse calling.
Mr. Beaton: In the Calgary Police Service, we have what we call a police and crisis team, PACT, program where the citizens can register, and it is a call-out system. We use it for crimes specifically in different locations.
If criminals are operating in, let us say, the hotel/motel industry, we are able to segment that population out of those that have registered and send them information.
We have community residences — I will use Haysboro because I live there. If someone is signed up to the PACT system and something happens in Haysboro, our PACT system allows the Calgary Police Service to send out warnings to those people about problems in their communities.
Senator Moore: I was interested in your comment, Chief Burrell, with regard to the Canadian Forces and your being in touch with them in your previous work in Halifax.
Maybe the officer in charge of the Canadian Forces in this region is not aware of that experience you have had. Maybe it might be an idea to invite that officer formally out for a coffee or something and say, ``Look, this is how we did it in Halifax and maybe we should talk about that. Maybe we can help each other and cooperate here.''
Is that worth pursuing, rather than waiting on the military — you probably have more experience in this kind of relationship than the commanding officer does.
Mr. Burrell: Absolutely, it is probably not only worthwhile pursuing but something we will endeavour to do in the next little while.
I admit, it has not been one of my initial priorities since I arrived here about a year and a half ago. I have focussed on other things.
I was fortunate where I came from because of the long-standing and significant amount of military in the Halifax region. It was only a building and fostering of relationships and taking them to a new level. Here, I believe it is probably a little bit of a ground-up build, but we are willing to take it on.
Senator Moore: Whether it is fire or police, I think it would be worthwhile opening the door. Rather than wait on them, take the initiative and see what comes out of it.
Mr. Burrell: Absolutely.
Senator Day: We discovered when we were in Edmonton, that corporate sponsorship was being considered as a way to obtain funding to help with the lack of funds for services in relation to emergency planning and communications.
Have you thought about that potential source of revenue?
Mr. Burrell: Specific to preparing for disasters or preparing to deal with some of these teams, no, we have not considered corporate sponsorship.
The closest we have come to that would be our strategic alliance with STARS, but other than that, no, we have not in these particular areas.
We have partnerships and corporate sponsorship for other programs within the department, but not specifically for these programs that we discussed today.
Mr. Sampson: Within Calgary Emergency Medical Services, we have established an EMS Foundation to act as a funnel for funds that come in surrounding these types of initiatives. Predominantly, they are in relation to prevention initiatives, but most recently with the establishment of our emergency medical assistance team, EMAT, we have been talking to our medical sponsors to see if they are interested in assisting us with some of the expenses. They have indicated positively so far, so we move forward with that. The answer is yes.
Mr. Beaton: The Calgary Police Commission at its last open meeting last month, as a matter of fact, made an announcement that they are proceeding with the foundation to assist us in many areas of policing. We are only starting to establish what EMS has already established in our city.
I will say this: we have great corporate sponsorship in Calgary. The PACT program is sponsored in Calgary by EnCana to the tune of some $250,000 a year right now. I think the EMS Foundation will be a good vehicle to assist us in some of the areas but will not provide all the funds we require.
Senator Banks: Chief, if I recall, the last time we were here, the capacity of all your agencies that are sitting here to be addressed by the same person from the same desk in a specific emergency situation was almost fixed, but not quite.
When that happens now and you go to your emergency control centre, can somebody sit in a chair and talk to each of these chiefs that are here at the same time, in the same way, and communicate completely among the respective municipal agencies?
Mr. Burrell: Are you asking about the construct of our EOC, and whether we all are there together working collaboratively?
Yes, we can do that in the current EOC structure, but as I alluded to in my opening remarks, one of our challenges, prior to my arrival, was the floods, which showed that the EOC both technologically and spacing-wise had some challenges.
We are fortunate to have received council support and funding to build a new EOC, and we will break ground on that this year, during 2007.
The Chairman: High ground.
Mr. Burrell: We have spent a substantial amount of time selecting the site, which is yet to be disclosed. We will have a state-of-the-art emergency operations centre within the next two to two-and-a-half years.
Senator Banks: Does that include an upgrade of the communications?
Mr. Burrell: Communications is a huge piece of it.
We have taken some interim steps. The police are upgrading their police operations centre. Chief Samson is in the process of getting some video conferencing in his operations centre. We have installed both at the disaster services boardroom in the emergency operations centre, and at the fire operations centre, as well as in the city manager's office.
We took our key emergency response agencies, including waterworks, and we have put them on a video conferencing network that, in the event that we need to react incredibly quickly to something, we can link the operation centres of the agencies prior to even opening our EOC.
Senator Banks: Will there be a redundant EOC, a duplicate someplace?
Mr. Burrell: Absolutely: There is currently, and we would not consider moving forward without having built-in redundancy.
Senator Meighen: Chief Beaton, I am intrigued by that PACT program. Do you know whether it exists elsewhere? What is the level of those who voluntarily sign up for the program, the degree of participation? When you send out a message to those who have signed up, is it a reported message or an individually spoken message?
Mr. Beaton: It is one of our crime prevention strategies. Any time we go to a shopping mall or community association, we bring the PACT booth with us and people sign up. I cannot tell you how many, but tens of thousands of people have signed up already.
Senator Meighen: Are they both businesses and individuals?
Mr. Beaton: That is correct. It can be both businesses and individuals. They can segment a certain part of their community, whatever they want — the business side or the community side. We can put a tape recording in there, or we can do a good telecast on whatever message we want to get out.
We have used it specifically for crime and crime prevention, but it could be used for disaster.
Senator St. Germain: Some of you gentlemen came from various other jurisdictions before you came to this job. I guess the question is, Chief Beaton, you spoke of EnCana's corporate involvement, and my understanding is that the STARS program started in a similar manner years back.
What do you think brings Calgarians to the forefront? Is it individual leadership of people such as Gwyn Morgan of EnCana, or is it something in the community that allows the corporations to participate at a level that I do not think exists anywhere else in Canada.
Senator Banks: It is the spirit of Alberta.
Senator Moore: It is in the water.
Senator St. Germain: Do you think there is something in the water or whatever, Chief? I will ask you, Chief Burrell, because you came from Halifax.
Mr. Burrell: We are fortunate on the East Coast as well to have sponsorship. Of course, the economic climate is significantly different.
The number of sponsors that are available out here and the spirit of sponsorship is significantly different, from a financial perspective.
The rate of volunteerism even in the City of Calgary, I would say, is incredibly high compared to my experience in other municipalities in Canada. Maybe it is in the water.
Senator St. Germain: Take the credit. Maybe it is your leadership.
Mr. Beaton: I am impressed with the corporations that I have the opportunity to engage with. They specify an amount of their budget to go towards community development in companies such as EnCana. There are other great organizations. I say that is specifically a budget item. You will not see that sometimes in the jurisdiction. They set aside, I will say 1 per cent of their budget, because I know some companies do that, and it goes into community development.
The second thing, as you mentioned here, is that volunteerism in Calgary is the best I have ever seen in any city in North America. We have 850 volunteers who volunteer their own time to work with the Calgary Police Service on an annual basis. I do not know why, but we absolutely love them.
The Chairman: It has been a terrific hearing. We appreciate receiving the information in advance as well. We learned a lot and are grateful to you for assisting us.
I think there is room for more connection with Canada Command. I think there is room for us to go back to the federal government and say, take another try with the province and see if we can have all three orders of government talking. I think you need to make your efforts with the province so there is a positive response.
This silliness of not communicating, I mean, surely the Constitution does not stop people from sitting around a table and having a chat, and that is really where we are trying to go with this.
On behalf of the committee, I want to thank you very much for appearing before us.
The committee adjourned.