Canadian Institutional Incompetence

In All Respects NOT Ready

Most Canadians would hold the belief that their sacred institutions from the Federal Parliament down through their Province and Municipal elected officials would have their backs in time of strife or mayhem. Most Canadians have access to 911 service whose operators quickly determine, “Police, Fire, or Ambulance”. In extremis, when provincial resources fail, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) are on call for Aid to the Civil Power operations.

The public should expect that with the billions of tax dollars spent on emergency preparedness with the central coordination run through Public Safety Canada that Canadians should be well taken care of in the event of calamity.

Well, Canada, depending on the scope of the disaster, be prepared to look after yourself.

Here are a few examples to illustrate my point:

Comox Snowfall Cancels Christmas Military Flights

If anyone has lived on the West Coast of BC, either in the Lower Mainland or on the Island, they are somewhat acquainted with that weird meteorological phenomenon called snow. It will occasionally show up, usually in multiples of feet, create absolute havoc for a couple of days, then melt with the subsequent rain. The rest of Canada would take the opportunity to make fun of us for a change while they were suffering from the more usual Canadian winter weather.

Up Island at 19 Wing Comox, there is usually a good wallop of the white stuff maybe once a year. The RCAF are not stupid and like any Canadian airport, they have a Snow and Ice Removal (SNIC) plan. But all the planning does not help when a particular weather event happens rarely. Hence, each and every year, it is like people have never seen snow or what to do with it when it shows up.

That is when the holes of the Swiss cheese all line up and an incident happens such as one occasion while I was the Duty Operations officer for 442 Squadron.

The Christmas Military Flight Airbus had flown into Comox and was ready to start the long cross country journey across Canada to Trenton, ON. A large snowfall had occurred overnight and since the airfield did not have a hangar large enough, the aircraft remained parked outside overnight. The actual snow was not so much the issue as was the ability to de-ice the aircraft whose dimensions were too large for the civilian terminal machines to take care of.

Back in the day when the Boeing 707, aka White Knuckle Airlines, flew, the frequency of flights would be two or three times per week. Nowadays, larger military aircraft flying into Comox is rare.

But, hey, no problem, call in the military de-icer. Whoops, the one guy who knew how to run the machine was on Christmas leave out of the Valley. Okay, we pulled out the Operator’s Manual to see how to run the machine. Fine, but whoops again, the barrels of de-icing fluid were half a mile up a snow plugged road that was very low on the SNIC plan priority list. Long story short, the Keystone Kops bumbling caused the cancellation of the flight and the ruination of hundreds of military member’s Christmas plans.

Lesson Learned: This debacle occurred due to a combination of factors involving the rarity of a weather event and the nature of how the RCAF is run. Snow occasionally shows up in Comox but it is only a bother for a few days until the rain washes it away. You can plan for it but institutional memory is short and can be complicated with frequent postings or lack of adequately trained personnel who are not familiar with how to handle semi-complicated situations.

Town of Slave Lake Burns Down in 2011

According to news articles and the subsequent 2012 KPMG report, it was a miracle that no one died during the evacuation of the Town of Slave Lake on May 15, 2011.

Words like massive, unprecedented, rapidly-developing were used to describe a wall of fire being pushed into town by 100 km/h winds. The fire, later determined to be arson, cost Albertans about $1 billion in damage and recovery costs.

The arsonist has yet to be identified and no blame was ever laid against any of the people in charge of responding to the inferno. But should have the authorities been better prepared?

The KPMG report made a series of recommendations mostly based on better communication and cooperation amongst the disparate entities in charge of the area’s emergency response. One crucial factor overlooked, except for a single minor mention related to the Provincial Operations Center (Pg 63), was literally no one was paying attention to the weather!

It was a hot, dry spring in fire country. There were numerous wildfires in the area, some to the SW of town and Fire 65 (the one that burnt down the town) was to the SE. Would you not think that a single person in charge would consult a weather forecast to see if any weather phenomenon such as high winds were in the forecast?!?

In the military, literally every briefing started with a Met Report so that everyone, especially the Commanding Officer, could weigh the risks associated with the forecast weather situation. Then as the day goes on, there are regular weather updates especially if a rapidly approaching system is expected to impact operations. Also, when all else fails, you look out the window.

Going back through the meteorological records from the Slave Lake Airport starting at midnight May 13, the wind was from the West at 20 kph, veered North at 0900, dropped to 10 kph and continued to veer to ESE at 1600 picking up again to about 20 kph. The barometric pressure started to steeply decline at this point. For the next three days the wind stayed in the Southeast with the really strong winds occurring on the 15^th, the day of the main evacuation.

This type of weather indicates there was a deepening, west to east moving, low pressure system with a steep pressure gradient to the west of town. The weather forecasters would have predicted the high winds but no one was paying attention.

Lesson Learned: Complacency and lack of specific knowledge almost got a lot of people killed. The area was described as ‘fire country’ so no one was particularly concerned about fires in the area. The arson, whether deliberate or accidental, should have been foreseen because of the conditions. But the most egregious lack of foresight was the collective oversight of simply looking up the forecast or even noticing that the wind was steady and freshening from the direction of a rapidly growing fire.

Lack of Coordination Between Lower Mainland Emergency Services

The over-riding emergency fear for Vancouver’s Lower Mainland is the inevitable ‘Big Quake’. To that end, the province has attempted to prepare for it.

Thankfully, the 2010 Winter Olympics helped officials as they were able to tap into extra money which was put towards emergency preparedness. A great example is the province’s E-Comm system (finally fully rolled out in 2018) whereupon all the seperate agencies can actually communicate with one another.

During an emergency, the first item to fail is communications. While I was with the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) in Vancouver, our communication link onshore at an incident scene was usually a police member with a cell phone. Useless! It was just easier to look for the flashing lights as the hovercraft sped up the Fraser River.

Unfortunately, Canada usually waits until after a disaster before politicians put money into proper prevention. Again with the CCG, we attempted to set up exercises with the police and fire services but were turned down as there was not money in the budget for the extra overtime.

Lesson Learned: Money for proper emergency preparedness in Canada is usually too little, too late. Of course, you have to balance budgets and be reasonable but there are simple, prudent, relatively low cost measures which are not being considered due to other spending priorities. Canada has a history of being reactive vice forward thinking.

This brings me to the unfolding debacle of Canada’s Covid-19 response. I will focus on one small aspect otherwise this article would be too lengthy.

This fall’s response by Manitoba’s Health Ministry with regards to protecting our most frail and elderly has moved into the territory of criminal neglect. From MB’s 2^nd Covid-19 News Bulletin dated Feb 07, they were already advising people with flu-like systems to avoid senior residences. Quickly after that, there were ample examples coming from Italy, Spain, Quebec, etc. of what should have been prepared for. The CAF Report on LTC homes was harrowing reading and should have been a wake-up call to the other provinces.

MB Premier Brian Pallister did not listen.

To their credit, the Manitoba health system kept the Covid-19 virus out of the Long Term Care (LTC) homes during the spring spike which decimated the facilities in ON and QC.

But this fall has been a bloodbath, particularly in homes like the Winnipeg Revera Maples Long Term Care Home. According to the government’s News Bulletins, for the month of November, a full 25% of the 200 bed home’s residents have succumbed from the virus. On Nov 13, the Province announced it was setting up a review of Maples plus other hard hit facilities. No kidding!

What exactly did the Province think was going to happen in these homes whose staff consists of low paid, mostly recent immigrants? I do not blame the staff whatsoever as they have been shouldering ever increasing workloads and health issues with miniscule extra support from government. At Maples, it finally reached a breaking point on Nov 6 when the staff mutinied by en-mass calling in sick for the evening shift.

In the Navy, this would have been called a Messdeck Lock-in where the lower deckers refuse to come out until their demands for better treatment and conditions were met. Work people too hard, for too long without support and they become despondent and rebel.

Ministry inspectors and the Health department should have foreseen these issues but blindly disregarded obvious problems with the LTC homes. Too little, too late and in my opinion government officials and LTC home management need to be charged and jailed for negligence.

Do you feel safe with the fact that all these agencies are supposedly in charge of keeping you safe during a major emergency?

I don’t.

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Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.