“There is no higher calling of any government than to keep its citizens safe. That is a responsibility that the Conservative government takes very seriously.” – Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
(OTTAWA) - Following the Harper Conservatives’ serious cuts to earthquake monitoring programs, the Green Party of Canada is calling for increased investment to build a world-class early warning system and improve coordination with other levels of government.
“While Stephen Harper claims to be concerned with protecting the security of Canadians, his administration has steadily cut funds for earthquake preparedness,” said Elizabeth May, Leader of the Green Party of Canada and MP (Saanich – Gulf Islands). “Canada has far weaker and slower warning systems for a major quake compared to our American neighbours. This is unacceptable. Greens will work across party lines for real security and public safety.”
“The Harper Conservatives have repeatedly reneged on promises to improve earthquake preparedness, leaving Canada far behind the U.S. and Japan. When it comes to earthquakes, the people of B.C. are sitting ducks,” said Lynne Quarmby, Green Party Science Policy Critic and candidate (Burnaby North – Seymour). “We need to upgrade our early warning system and provide a complete and adequately resourced response and recovery plan. Emergency preparedness is one of those fundamental services that we expect of our government. What is Stephen Harper waiting for?”
“People here aren’t happy with the federal government’s lack of disaster planning,” added Ken Melamed, Green Party Finance Critic and candidate (West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country). “There are 126 schools in B.C. that are vulnerable to structural failure if an earthquake strikes, including Sentinel Secondary in West Vancouver, which is designated ‘high risk.’ Instead of helping provinces and territories to keep our schools safe, the Harper government eliminated the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program, which offered grants to alleviate the costs of important seismic upgrades. Without that program, the province was forced to delay these upgrades another ten years, until 2030.”
“Living in an earthquake zone means I personally have a heightened awareness of my community’s vulnerability,” concluded Claire Martin, Green Party Climate Change Critic and candidate (North Vancouver). “We cannot stop the ground from shaking but we can prepare for it. Having a plan that includes a clear strategy for mitigation, preparation, response, and recovery is paramount.”
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For additional information or to arrange an interview, contact:
Julian Morelli
Director of Communications
Green Party of Canada
cell: (613) 614 4916
office: (613) 562 4916 (224)
[email protected]
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Background: Earthquake Monitoring and Preparedness
Issue:
Inadequate earthquake preparedness on two fronts: (1) substantial investments to build early warning systems based on the most advanced science and technology available, and (2) federal leadership to ensure coordinated action by governments and stakeholders.
Catastrophic events in Haiti, New Zealand, Japan and now Nepal have brought earthquake preparedness to the forefront in Canada. The 9.0 Tohoku earthquake in 2011, followed by a devastating tsunami, up to 30 metres in height, running inland upwards of 10km and the resulting nuclear meltdown, has particular significance to the risks on Canada’s West Coast.
To properly prepare for an earthquake requires urgent action on two fronts:
- Substantial investment in technology and expertise to build world-standard early warning systems.
- Federal government leadership to ensure an emergency response system that is proactive, comprehensive and long-term – a system that efficiently and effectively coordinates key emergency management players at all levels of government and a wide range of stakeholders.
Canada lags significantly on both these fronts.
Background
In 2010, the federal government cut $35.8 million over three years from the budget of Public Safety Canada, resulting in the closure of Canada’s only national emergency preparedness college (the college assets were awarded to Centennial College in Toronto); the elimination of the Joint Emergency Preparedness Program (JEPP) grants for emergency preparedness infrastructure and training cost-shared with the provinces and territories; and reduced funding for emergency management by First Nations. These cuts were imposed on an already-inadequate PSC budget and severely compromised Canada’s emergency preparedness which depends on the federal government leading well-structured coordinated initiatives across levels of government and critical stakeholders.
With specific reference to West Coast earthquake preparedness, a disturbing March 2014 report entitled Catastrophic Earthquake Preparedness by the British Columbia Auditor General noted that provincial coordination with the federal government was particularly inadequate in three key areas: funding, logistics, and responsibility to First Nations. The Auditor General also noted that Emergency Management B.C. (EMBC), the provincial agency responsible for leading emergency responses, had failed to come up with comprehensive plans to deal with a catastrophic quake or tsunami. There are critical gaps in earthquake response plans, procedure, training exercises, public education programs, and oversight of stakeholder readiness and capacity. With deficiencies at both the federal and provincial levels, municipalities charged with the responsibility of preparing for and responding to emergencies, do not, in the vast majority of cases, have the finances to put their local emergency plans into practical use.
The December 2014 Consultation Report on Earthquake Preparedness submitted to the B.C. Attorney General and Minister of Justice, in response to the concerns expressed by the B.C. Auditor General, called for “clear vision, sufficient resources and strong political will”, to ensure much greater federal and provincial support for emergency preparedness efforts at the local authority level and for First Nations emergency management.
Problem: the federal government is missing in action
Despite rising concern, the federal government remains missing in action on earthquake preparedness.
The 2014 Budget provided $11.4 million over five years on a cash basis to Natural Resources Canada to “upgrade the earthquake monitoring system to incorporate more advanced technologies that provide timely public alerts in high-risk and urban areas.” Budget 2014 also created the National Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP) – with $200 million over 5 years from 2015 to 2020.
Minister Blaney publicly noted that the existing national earthquake monitoring system was installed over 20 years ago and stated: “Earthquakes represent a significant threat to the safety and economic well-being of Canadians, especially in British Columbia. Public earthquake alerts allow Canadians to take action to reduce earthquake damage and protect lives by slowing and stopping trains, preventing cars from entering tunnels and automatically shutting down industrial systems.”
In Vancouver on October 15, 2014, at an earthquake symposium hosted by the Insurance Bureau of Canada, Minister Blaney made the all-too-familiar appeal to all levels of government, industry, academics and the public to work together on earthquake preparedness strategies. The Minister then stated, “Canada’s evolving approach to emergency management means our government is shifting from a reactive model to one that allows us to better identify risks related to natural disasters, and to take steps to eliminate or reduce these risks and their impacts before disasters strikes.”
But these were empty words – mere smoke and mirrors. Both the initiatives in the 2014 Budget regarding slight increases in funding for NRCan and for the NDMP, which the Minister referenced as illustrations of the new proactive approach to emergency management, are reactive and will have a particularly minimal impact on earthquake risk management. Moreover, to date, absolutely no information on the allocation of Budget 2014 funds is available. At the very least the establishment of a robust new network of strong motion sensors, with the associated distribution of warning data, requires clearly designated funds. It appears that Treasury Board may have agreed that the additional NRCan funds might eventually cover ‘refurbishing seismic and GPS networks”, but will only cover some of the cost, with the remainder coming from existing (limited) operating funds. This negatively impacts operations and research. It is like buying paint, but not the services of a painter. And Minister Blaney recently announced the NDMP funding would focus almost exclusively on flood-risk identification and prevention measures, not earthquakes.
The 2015 Budget continues the Conservative administration’s practice of making meaningless announcements to serve partisan ends, certainly not public safety. There was a quiet reference in the budget to taking another step towards the long-discussed creation of a Public Safety Broadband Network (PSBN), something that is an important component of emergency preparedness for all risks including earthquakes. This initiative is long overdue and would finally ensure that Canada has robust inter-agency communications with interoperability capability. The 2015 Budget provided for the designation of an additional 10 MHz of the 700 MHz band; the first 10 MHz had been designated in February 2012. But the government has only allocated a mere $3 million over 2 years, and only beginning in 2016, “to take the initial steps to establish the PSBN.” So, more than four years after the spectrum was first allocated, the government is only promising to take initial steps in 2016-2017.
WHAT IS NEEDED
The bottom line is that emergency preparedness for earthquakes remains both reactive and woefully inadequate. The Conservative administration is not prepared to provide the clear national leadership required to coordinate levels of government and stakeholders, or to make any effort to find the funds required to upgrade our emergency preparedness to world standards.
- Substantial investment in technology and expertise to build world-standard early warning systems.
We need a much better early warning capacity, similar to those in place in the U.S. and Japan, incorporating modern seismograph and GPS technologies. The U.S. West coast has a dense network of GPS monitors to provide early warning of earthquakes. In contrast, B.C. has only a small scattering. The difference is in critical minutes of life-saving warnings that Canadians will not have.
Canada’s earthquake monitoring networks are nowhere near the world standards established by earthquake prone parts of the world, including the United States, Japan, and New Zealand. We need to catch up and establish large integrated networks. Specifically we must build a denser network of GPS sites in B.C. and Yukon to complement the dense networks in the lower 48 and in Alaska as well as strong motion networks similar to those deployed in Japan that provided the residents of Tokyo warning of the impending shaking from the 2011 earthquake. The implications of a Cascadia Subduction earthquake and tsunami, as well as smaller damaging earthquakes in B.C. and other at risk areas in Canada, requires much more detailed study to better understand the consequences as well as improve warning systems and preparedness.
At the very least, NRCan needs more resources, financial and human, to establish long-term research and monitoring of earthquake risk. For example, NRCan should be funded to levels that would permit an integrated western North America (Canada / U.S.) monitoring and warning system. And we need the Public Safety Broadband Network now, not years from now.
The federal government should examine other countries’ model for funding of the extensive expenditures required for proactive preparedness, such as the system of real-time GPS in Japan. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan operates the unique GEONET array, comprising more than 1200 real-time GPS stations. While not yet integrated into the tsunami early warning system, it has been demonstrated since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, that the network could have accurately predicted the parameters of the devastating tsunami as soon as 3 minutes after the beginning of the earthquake. In the United States, a collaborative effort between federal and state agencies as well as universities funded by the National Science Foundation and other agencies, supports the critical research and development of earthquake and tsunami early warning systems.
- Federal government leadership to ensure an emergency response system that is proactive, comprehensive and long-term – a system that efficiently and effectively coordinates key emergency management players at all levels of government and a wide range of stakeholders.
The federal government must take the lead to coordinate the different levels of government and stakeholders, support collaborative and cost-sharing approaches to ensure adequate funding, and strengthen community capacity building and preparedness.
In a recent evaluation of its Geohazards and Public Safety Program, NRCan points out that Canada lags behind other jurisdictions such as Australia that are more proactive and effective in coordinating key emergency management players and engaging stakeholders and communities. Yet “the magnitude of disaster risks in Canada is higher than it has ever been due to aging infrastructure and climate change, and the financial costs resulting from natural hazards in Canada are expected to increase. …[and] the federal government has a legislated mandate relating to hazards monitoring, national security, public safety and the provisions of disaster financial assistance to the provinces and the territories.”
The Green Party believes Canada should adopt the model used successfully by Australia to bring together the various levels of government, identify specific needs of the government in areas of hazards research and set the collective emergency management agenda. This model is the Council of Australian Governments acting through the Standing Council on Police and Emergency Management. The goals of the SCPEM are threefold:
• Promote a coordinated national response to law enforcement and emergency management issues;
• Provide a framework for cooperation and shared strategic directions for the policing and emergency services of Australia and New Zealand; and
• Encourage and share best practice in police policy and operations and in emergency management, across jurisdictions.
The well-structured process for intergovernmental collaboration has resulted in the Australian National Strategy for Disaster Resilience – a comprehensive, long-term, multi-hazard approach to disaster risk reduction that integrates all risk considerations, with a focus on disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness and vulnerability reduction. The Strategy was introduced as a response to a fractured system in which disparate policy agendas and competing priorities resulted in gaps and overlaps in natural hazard preparedness and management.
The Green Party supports the creation of a similar administrative body – a Council of Canadian Governments – to bring all levels of government together – provincial, territorial, municipal and Indigenous. The time is overdue for national leadership to bring all governments and stakeholders together to provide Canadians with a world-class system of earthquake monitoring and emergency preparation.
Our national government must get back into the business of supporting comprehensive municipal, territorial, and provincial emergency preparedness plans. This includes: public education and training programs; fast-track seismic upgrading of public buildings such as hospitals, schools, and fire halls; local emergency infrastructure, such as adequate tsunami warning systems; civil defence sirens and other communication systems; adequate marking of emergency evacuation routes; and means to supply essential services such as medical services, energy supplies, food and water.
Links:
Assessment of the GHPS sub-program of NRCan: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/evaluation/reports/2014/16274
Re Japanese GPS system for tsunami early warning system:
http://www.nat-hazards-earth-syst-sci.net/13/1285/2013/nhess-13-1285-2013.pdf
Council of Australian Governments – National Strategy for Disaster Resilience:
http://www.em.gov.au/Documents/1National%20Strategy%20for%20Disaster%20Resilience%20-%20pdf.PDF