Emergency Preparedness Canada : Emergency preparedness planning in Canada dates back to 1936 when, at the first meeting of the Canadian Defence Committee of Cabinet, the Chief of the General Staff stated that the armed forces could not protect civilians against gas attacks or air raids. In February 1938 the Minister of Pensions and National Health was given responsibility for air raid precautions, because the government believed that tending the wounded would be the chief civil defence task. The Air Raid Precautions organization ran coastal defence centres, provided clothing, gas masks and sirens to communities and provided financial assistance to the provinces and to volunteer organizations. When the likelihood of air attack disappeared, this organization ceased to exist.
With the escalation of the Cold War and the realization that Soviet bombers could reach North America, an order-in-council (P.C. 29/4855, 23 October 1948) set up a small civil defence staff in the Department of National Defence under Major General F.F. Worthington. On 23 February 1951 the Department of National Health and Welfare took charge of federal civil defence powers, duties and the supervision of civil defence personnel (P.C. 1951-985), acknowledging mounting concern about planning for the survival of Canadian civilians. Also, by 1951 the provincial governments had each established cabinet-level civil defence organizations and almost every city of more than 50,000 had developed civil defence plans. By July 1956 civil defence planning called for the orderly evacuation of urban areas in the event of an imminent nuclear attack. Elsewhere people would stay put, while measures to protect them from radioactive fallout were to be implemented.
The development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, which reduced the warning time of possible attack to practically nothing, forced the government to take measures to ensure the continuity of civilian government during and after a nuclear attack. The Emergency Measures Organization was established within the Privy Council Office on 1 June 1957 to coordinate planning for government and civilian survival. Originally established by a Cabinet decision, its functions were successively redefined and amplified by a series of orders-in-council (P.C. 1959 -656, 1963-993, 1965-1041 and 1981-1305). In response to a review of civil defence by Lieutenant-General Howard D. Graham, Prime Minister John Diefenbaker announced on 23 March 1959 that Emergency Measures would become a small central agency coordinating and underwriting civil defence measures and planning by government departments and agencies. Civil defence would be considered a normal activity of government rather than a special organization. National Defence had jurisdiction over operational tasks; National Health and Welfare retained health and instructional duties; Justice maintained policing; and Emergency Measures, within the Privy Council Office, provided overall coordination.
For its first fifteen years Emergency Measures focussed on military emergencies. This was reconfirmed in the period of increased tension following the Cuban Missile Crisis, when an order-in-council (P.C. 1963-993, 27 June 1963) transferred Emergency Measures Organization from the Privy Council Office to the Department of Defence Production. However, in June 1965 another order-in-council transferred it to the Department of Industry and emphasized the need to coordinate the federal response to peacetime disasters.
The early 1960s was a period of great civil defence activity. Warning attack systems and an emergency broadcast system were established. Plans were prepared dealing with the evaluation and provision of emergency resources, such as medical supplies, manpower, communications and transportation. Surveys were undertaken to identify public buildings which could serve as fallout shelters and buildings were modified and stocked with supplies. A public information programme included publications on such subjects as basement fallout shelters. Six Regional Emergency Government Headquarters bunkers were constructed. Exercises Tocsin A and B tested the national civil defence system.
In 1968 Project Phoenix, an analysis of civil emergency measures, resulted in another transfer, this time to the Department of National Defence (P.C. 1968-1302 and 1968-1580). Yet another study, this one by Lieutenant General N.R. Dare, resulted in the Cabinet transferring emergency planning responsibilities to individual federal departments, under the coordination of the new Emergency Planning Secretariat at the Privy Council Office, on 18 October 1973. A civilian National Emergency Planning Establishment, known under the federal identity programme as Emergency Planning Canada, took shape in which the Emergency Planning Secretariat directed policy and administration was by the Department of National Defence. The 1981 Emergency Planning Order (P.C. 1981-1305) firmly established the primacy of peacetime emergencies.
The Emergency Preparedness Act (35-36-37 Eliz. II, ch. 11), of 27 April 1988, set up Emergency Preparedness Canada as an independent federal agency encouraging uniform national standards of emergency preparedness in training, promoting and enhancing public knowledge, and ensuring the continuance of constitutional government during emergencies. Emergency Preparedness Canada monitored preparations within each federal department and cooperated with provincial and foreign governments. This structure remained until February 1992 when the budget speech declared that organizational autonomy was not necessary for Emergency Planning Canada, which would be absorbed into the Department of National Defence. A 1995 amendment to the Act permits the present (2000) organization of an Emergency Preparedness Committee chaired by the Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff.
Today Emergency Preparedness Canada is headed by an Executive Director, to whom reports the Director General, Policy Planning and Readiness; the Director, Communications; the Director, Finance and Administration; the Director, Training and Education; the Senior Scientific Advisor; as well as the regional directors in each provincial capital.
