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1/15/2025
WT Staff
January 15, 2025 1014 am PST
Wildfires or floods, good neighbours will always help each other
Interview with President of the King's Privy Council in Canada, Minister of Emergency Preparedness, Hon. Harjit Sajjan
WaterToday: Hello Minister, thanks for being here. Can you tell me about the process, how Canada became involved helping with these fires in California?
Minister Sajjan: First of all, there is a long-standing history of supporting one another. The US has been there for us during our wildfires, and we have supported them in previous wildfires. How it works is two-fold, there is obviously a national system where states can request in times of emergency, what they need from Canada, and that process is taking place now. As well, certain provinces have reciprocal arrangements in place with states like California; BC does and I believe Quebec already had a contract in place. That is why you saw immediate support from water bombers, you may have seen on social media. We have our four water bombers that went down there quickly with some of our crews from BC. Additional requests were made for Type 1 wildfire firefighters. Three teams have been sent down, they paused for a bit to reassess the situation. We have about a hundred people ready to go, well-led, well experienced crews with inter-phase urban wildfires like this. We have additional aircraft ready to go, two from Ontario and two from Alberta, those two actually have night vision capabilities as well.
WT: Have you been officially asked for more resources, or does that request go directly to the provinces?
Minister Sajjan: As Minister of Emergency Preparedness, all requests inside or outside the country go through me. In terms of wildfires, we have a Canadian centre that manages these inside the country. The resources are kept in the Ministry of Natural Resources but I manage the terms of deployment overall when it comes to emergencies. So when the request comes in, the local level coordinates, we (Canada) can activate additional equipment very quickly across the provinces, such as aircraft, these resources go through the government operations center where we can mobilize very quickly. In normal circumstances between provinces, things happen seamlessly. Because this is such a massive fire, with extreme devastation, we have to coordinate at a national level. That's why I am more involved now. I will give you an example, in this case I have been able to get military aircraft on standby so we can send them down if additional requests are made.
WT: Given that the incoming US President has said about not-so-neighbourly things, we don't do politics when there are official emergency requests?
Minister Sajjan: No, not at all. People have asked me this before. It doesn't even factor in whatsoever. When our closest friend and ally is in trouble, we respond. They have always been there for us as well. This is a great reminder for everybody, especially with the new US administration coming in, just how integrated we are when it comes to the work that we do, in emergency response, our economies, our militaries and so forth.
WT: Are you involved in any of the discussions about buying new water bombers?
Minister Sajjan: We are looking. First and foremost, what we try to do is give the provinces the opportunity, making sure they have what they need, having the opportunity to purchase. Ottawa is looking at options for holding resources at the federal level. We do have amazing companies in Canada with the expertise that has been developed. Our aircraft are sold all over the world, all over Europe, bought in significant amounts for the mass devastation wildfires there as well.
WT: When we send aid like this to California, or the US generally, who pays for that? Can you tell me a bit about how that works.
Minister Sajjan: Where there are reciprocal arrangements between the countries, when we have people coming in, we do pay for that. I would say we don't nickel and dime each other. There are a lot of things that are just done. For example, we can have military aircraft sending equipment. There is a lot that takes place, where we just do what good neighbours do. There are some reciprocal arrangements already in place where the costs are covered but that is done at the (provincial or territorial) level.
WT: My understanding is that Canada has a total of 60 water bombers all spread throughout the provinces, the Minister of Natural Resources has some, is this accurate?
Minister Sajjan: The resources are actually held at the provincial level. Some provinces actually own their water bomber fleet, and many provinces contract out to private companies. There are different methods of how to deal with it. When you contract out, essentially they belong to you, as to how you utilize those resources. Across the country, I don't have the exact number of aircraft that are available, they are all owned by the various provinces and private companies. They coordinate amongst each other. When an incident goes to a higher state of readiness based on the emergency itself, then we start the coordination at the national level. One thing we all agree upon, you might hold resources but there might be a higher priority somewhere else. Those decisions have to be made and coordinated at a national level. We have a very good system that works very seamlessly. Sadly, we have been dealing with wildfires for a very long time. We have not dealt with this scale, (as Los Angeles), in previous years we have had towns, Fort MacMurray on fire, and most recently this last year the town of Jasper, this one was known worldwide.
WT: I am curious about some of the other types of emergencies you represent. If a province or territory needs soldiers, or it needs flood gear does that come under your Emergency Preparedness Ministry?
Minister Sajjan: Yes, for any type of coordination in the country. This portfolio didn't exist before. We used to coordinate with Minister of Public Safety and then the military was our main tool for responding. Sadly, the natural disasters were increasing in frequency and severity where we needed a concentrated effort. The Prime Minister created this portfolio, where the Emergencies Act allows the Minister to be able to respond. That responsibility comes under me. My role in the Privy Council also allows me to coordinate our federal response. Whether it is wildfires, flood, we have had to evacuate a dance...
We are having to expand our definition of what emergencies actually are, so the Prime Minister wanted not just to coordinate the ability, but one of the tasks I have is to modernize our emergency system across the country, to be able to meet the timing, to respond to all that we are actually dealing with now.
WT: What does this look like, modernizing the Emergency response?
Minister Sajjan: Our system before was designed based on the individual provinces dealing with the disaster directly. These are coordinated between provinces. In a rare situation, once in a while they need to request assistance from the federal level. Most of the time the response would be handled through our military. Because of the increase in events, we now have a government operations center that is connected across the country looking at all types of emergencies, whether its wildfires, flood, earthquake, even potentially health issues like a pandemic, potentially even cyber (events). If there is an emergency where coordination is needed across governments, then that is when this portfolio kicks in to respond.
We are not at a decision yet, exactly how this will go. I have my thoughts, what I want to do is anticipate the disasters that we deal with almost every single year. Then there are those that we deal with once every five, and every ten years. Then we have the bigger ones, earthquakes, pandemics. Each one is going to require resources at different levels. What we want to do is make sure the resources are in the right place at the right time. This means the federal government will be holding on to resources at the higher level. How we coordinate this is going to be critical because provinces in the federation still hold the responsibility, however when they run out of resources, we do need to be able to respond. We are going to have to build up the response capability at the federal level, so that is what I am doing now.
WT: One of the things I have heard if we are going to upgrade and operate Emergency Preparedness, that most of it is going to be run through the Canadian Armed Forces, is that accurate?
Minister Sajjan: No, quite the opposite now. When I was Minister of Defense, we were deploying the Canadian Armed Forces quite a bit. They are not the right resource sometimes, to deal with this. What we need to do is fill those gaps with the right people. We have been working with many organizations to build up capabilities, what we call the Humanitarian Workforce program, through key non-government organizations to be able to respond and fill those needs with far better expertise than what the military brings in. What we are trying to do is have less reliance on the military to only call them in when it is absolutely needed. Of course if they are needed they will be called. We have built the capabilities with Red Cross, Salvation Army, Team Rubicon. There are other teams whose skills we could build up, for example more wildland firefighters, we need to be able to deal with flooding, potential earthquakes in Canada, we have to be ready for that as well.
WT: I want to thank you for doing this. I am glad Canada is helping keep California safe.
Minister Sajjan:Thanks for having me.
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