What federal emergency preparedness?

Not strictly military but relevant (and remember Emergency Preparedness Canada--EPC--was a civilian agency under the aegis of DND). The running down of overall federal emergency preparedness capabilities began under the Liberals, as I outlined in this guest-post at Daimnation! over two years ago. And the Conservatives are not taking the matter seriously. A story in the Ottawa Citizen April 12 delineates the feds woeful incapacity to plan effectively in the specific area of critical infrastructure protection:

Seven years after 9/11 and repeated government promises, Canada still has no strategy to protect critical national infrastructure from terrorists, natural disasters and other calamities.

Just this week, the federal government quietly discontinued classified security briefings for energy infrastructure operators. The move comes little more than a year after al-Qaeda's Saudi wing urged North American supporters to attack Canadian oil and natural gas facilities to choke the U.S. economy...

There is no mandatory, standardized definition of what constitutes critical national infrastructure, raising questions about what is in need of protection and how to prioritize limited public security resources, including the military, if and when something happens.

There is no accepted plan about how responsibilities between governments and operators are to be determined, though industry has the primary responsibility for the protecting corporate assets "from the gate in."

There is no national, cross-sector consensus on what redundancies and resiliencies should be built into systems to mitigate disruptions and restore services quickly, or how much public money should be spent fortifying or expanding what are for the most part private assets...

Although some "tremendous work" has been done by mid-level management at Public Safety (and its previous incarnations), Transport Canada, Industry Canada and Public Health Canada, "they had no overhead cover, they had no senior leadership at the director-general and assistant deputy minister level. They are doing the best they can, but without any national program, they're working in a vacuum ... there is no single operational process...

On Jan. 28 this year, Scott Broughton, senior assistant deputy minister of Emergency Management and National Security at Public Safety told the committee officials "will try to finalize" the strategy in the next few months...

The root of the problem, as highlighted above, is that emergency preparedness generally gets little attention at senior government levels. It's simply not sexy or contentious, bureaucratically or politically (unless the shit hits the fan). The lead department is Public Safety Canada (based on the old Solicitor General Canada); when first created the department's name was Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada. The contraction of the name speaks volumes about priorities.

Central to that situation is that, instead of having a dedicated and autonomous federal emergency preparedness agency as used to be the case, the function is now buried in the vast Public Safety portfolio. Just look at what Mr Broughton, mentioned above, is responsible for: "Emergency Management and National Security". Now that includes CSIS and counter-terrorism (some RCMP and CBSA things there too). Where do you think his priorities are?

The Deputy Minister also must oversee departmental handling of:

Policing (RCMP)
Aboriginal Policing
Border strategies (Canadian Border Services Agency)
Corrections Policy (Correctional Service of Canada)
Conditional release program development (National Parole Board)
Corporate Management
Strategic Policy.

How much concern do you think she--with the best will in the world--pays to emergency issues? There's a fundamental structural problem here.

There's a further important factor. Many EPC staff developed a real, personal interest in their subject; they spent large parts of their careers in the agency and developed serious expertise. That will not be the case within Public Safety Canada. Public servants there will flit in and out (that's the way the public service works) of the sections devoted to emergency and infrastructure matters as they pursue federal government careers. There will be little expertise and less institutional memory. Just what one needs to deal with rare major emergencies.