Emergency Management and Programs Branch Overview

Branch Background

The Government of Canada plays a crucial role in helping Canadians and their communities protect themselves from emergencies and disasters related to all kinds of hazards – natural, human-induced, and technological. Pursuant to the Emergency Management Act, Public Safety Canada has the legislative mandate to build a safe and resilient Canada by providing national leadership in emergency management in the development and implementation of policies, plans and a range of programs.

The Emergency Management and Programs Branch (EMPB) supports this mandate by working with other federal departments and agencies, provinces and territories, national Indigenous organizations, as well as other stakeholders, to advance an integrated policy, programmatic, and operational approach across the four components of emergency management:

EMPB, with approximately 330 employees, is composed of four directorates: 1) Policy and Outreach; 2) Programs; 3) Government Operations Centre (GOC); and, 4) GOC Modernization.
In addition, the Branch is also responsible for the Department’s regional offices located across Canada. With presence in 13 locations (one in each province and one in the Northwest Territories), these regional offices serve as the primary point of contact for the Department at the regional level and play an important role in building and maintaining partnerships for emergency management operations and in supporting communities.

Key Files and Responsibilities

Emergency management is a core responsibility of the Government of Canada and a collective responsibility of all federal government institutions. The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency preparedness has statutory responsibilities of coordinating emergency management activities among government institutions and in cooperation with the provinces and other entities. As disasters in Canada continue to increase in frequency, severity and costs, the leadership role that Public Safety Canada plays in Canada’s emergency management system is becoming increasingly important in order to ensure a whole-of-society approach to strengthening Canada’s response and resilience.

Policy

The Policy and Outreach Directorate is responsible for providing emergency management policy advice as well as developing policy and program instruments that translate policy into action. Through outreach and engagement activities, EMPB fosters relationships with key partners, including provinces and territories, municipalities, international partners, Indigenous communities, academia, volunteer sector, private sector and civil societies, to raise awareness, promote a common approach, and advance emergency management policy objectives.

Guided by the Emergency Management Framework for Canada (2011) and in collaboration with provinces and territories, the Directorate led the recent publication of the Emergency Management Strategy for Canada: Toward a Resilient 2030. The strategy is a collaborative, whole-of-society roadmap to strengthening Canada’s ability to assess risk, prevent and mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Furthermore, it identifies federal, provincial and territorial priorities that will strengthen Canada’s resilience by 2030.  The development of a corresponding pan-Canadian action plan is well underway and is aimed for review at the next meeting of the Federal/Provincial/Territorial Ministers Responsible for Emergency Management in March 2020 (TBC).

The Policy and Outreach Directorate is also conducting a review of the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangement (DFAA) – a program that provides significant financial assistance to provinces and territories in the event of large-scale natural disasters, when response and recovery costs exceed thresholds specific to each province and territory.

The Directorate is also working with partners in monitoring the implementation of the Post-Traumatic Stress Injuries Action Plan; in developing a National Risk Profile that identifies national risks and capability gaps; in advancing search and rescue initiatives in Canada; and, in leading policy and program development with respect to emergency communications, such as the National Public Alerting System and the Public Safety Broadband Network.

Programs

The Programs Directorate, with the support of its 13 regional offices, delivers departmental programming related to Indigenous policing, crime prevention, exiting prostitution, radicalization, search and rescue, and emergency management. In the last fiscal year, the Directorate delivered approximately $560M in program payments – for instance, $309.5M in DFAA and $146.1M in First Nations Policing Program expenditures.

In order to strengthen the Directorate’s capability to deliver a total of 27 programs by
April 2020, the Programs Directorate is reviewing its existing payment and reporting processes as well as organizational design, to optimize program delivery efficiency.

Operations

The Government Operations Center (GOC) provides an integrated federal emergency response to all-hazards events (potential or actual, natural or human-induced, accidental or intentional) of national interest. Despite being situated within EMPB, the GOC operates on behalf of the Government of Canada, and is an asset for the entire federal government. This includes support to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness in coordinating the federal response to provincial or territorial requests for assistance to address local or regional emergencies. Specifically, the GOC provides 24/7 monitoring and reporting, national-level situational awareness, warning products and integrated risk assessments, as well as national-level planning and whole-of-government response management.

As part of the GOC modernization initiative, EMPB is working with key partners to implement incremental improvements to the GOC, with a focus on mandate, governance, capacity, and resources. For instance, one aspect of the initiative is to re-locate the GOC to a refurbished facility in 2022.

Key Partners

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