Question Period Note: Emergency Management Strategy for Canada

Update on the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada, and next steps for the development of an Action Plan with Federal, Provincial and Territorial partners.

• In January 2019, Federal, Provincial and Territorial Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management approved Canada’s first ever Federal, Provincial and Territorial Emergency Management Strategy.

• The Emergency Management Strategy for Canada builds on the foundational principles articulated in the Emergency Management Framework and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction in order to establish Federal, Provincial and Territorial priorities to strengthen the resilience of Canadian society by 2030.

• This Strategy establishes common priorities and areas for action that will help Canada prepare for the impacts of climate change, the effects of which are already being felt across Canada.

• The Government of Canada is committed to advancing this work with the ongoing collaboration of Federal, Provincial and Territorial Partners.

• This includes preparing for the publishing of an Action Plan which is intended to advance defined outcomes within the EM Strategy, and outline the concrete steps that FPT governments and respective EM Partners will undertake to build preparedness and greater resilience to disasters over the course of 2021-22.

In January 2019, Federal, Provincial and Territorial (FPT) Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management approved Canada’s first-ever FPT Emergency Management Strategy for Canada (EM Strategy), which establishes FPT priorities to strengthen the resilience of Canadian society by 2030. The EM Strategy seeks to guide FPT governments and their respective Emergency Management (EM) partners in carrying out priorities aimed at strengthening Canada’s ability to assess risks and to prevent/mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from disasters.

The EM Strategy seeks to align the efforts of all Canadians, as well as to strengthen overall resilience through five priority areas of activity. These priority areas of activity were approved by FPT Ministers responsible for EM in May 2017:

1. Enhance whole-of-society collaboration and governance to strengthen resilience;
2. Improve understanding of disaster risks in all sectors of society;
3. Increase focus on whole-of-society disaster prevention and mitigation activities;
4. Enhance disaster response capacity and coordination and foster the development of new capabilities; and,
5. Strengthen recovery efforts by building back better to minimize the impacts of future disasters.

After approving the EM Strategy, FPT Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management directed the Senior Officials Responsible for Emergency Management (SOREM) to develop and advance a series of Action Plans to advance the implementation of the EM Strategy to 2030. SOREM represents the collection of FPT government organizations who lead emergency management efforts on behalf of their respective jurisdiction.

The Action Plan is intended to advance defined outcomes within the EM Strategy, and to develop the concrete steps that FPT governments, and respective EM Partners, intend to take to advance resilience to disasters within Canada. This series of Action Plans will begin with a 1-year plan in 2021-22 (due to COVID-19 delaying development), but will enter into a biennial cycle beginning in 2022-24.

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