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### Viewing cable 05OTTAWA3069, Hurricane Katrina and Canadian Response; Lessons

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Reference ID | Created | Released | Classification | Origin
--- | --- | --- | --- | ---
05OTTAWA3069 | 2005-10-13 19:07 | 2011-04-28 00:12 | UNCLASSIFIED | Embassy Ottawa

`

    This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

    131910Z Oct 05

` `

    UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 OTTAWA 003069

    SIPDIS

    STATE FOR WHA/EX, WHA/CAN

    WHITE HOUSE FOR HOMELAND SECURITY COUNCIL (Townsend)

    DHS OFFICE OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS (Marmaud)

    FEMA (Office of the Director)

    E.O. 12958: N/A
    TAGS: PBTS PGOV PREL PINS CA
    SUBJECT:  Hurricane Katrina and Canadian Response; Lessons
    Learned

    ¶1. Summary: Operational linkages between DHS and Canada's
    Public Safety Ministry (PSEPC) worked reasonably well as
    Canada responded to provide relief in the wake of Hurricane
    Katrina.  But, to make those connections even more
    effective, Canada would like to have a DHS Liaison Officer
    stationed at the Canadian operations center in Ottawa, and
    would like the PSEPC Liaison Officer now assigned to DHS HQ
    to be inside the DHS Operations Center.  PSEPC feels also
    that other linkages need to be strengthened (such as in
    emergency response policy and planning) with DHS.  To ensure
    that Canada-U.S. disaster management and response is as
    robust as possible, Embassy and GoC officials agreed it is
    time to reinvigorate the "Consultative Group on
    Comprehensive Civil Emergency Planning and Management" as
    mandated by the 1986 Canada-U.S. Agreement on Cooperation in
    Comprehensive Civil Emergency Planning and Management.
    Embassy plans on following up by hosting a bilateral meeting
    in Ottawa before the end of the year with DHS,
    Northcom, State, their Canadian counterparts, and other
    interested agencies, to advance this agenda.  End summary.

    ¶2. James Young, Canada's Special Advisor to the Deputy
    Minister at Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada
    (PSEPC) and Ross Hynes, the Director of the Secretariat for
    the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force at Foreign
    Affairs Canada (FAC) joined the DCM for lunch on Friday,
    October 6, along with several other Embassy, PSEPC and FAC
    staff members for a discussion of Canada's assistance to the
    United States in response to Hurricane Katrina (see para 16
    for participant list).  All present agreed that the Canadian
    response was timely and generous, and that the deep links
    between the two countries allowed for multiple channels of
    communication and action.  Bob Lesser, the Director General
    of Operations for PSEPC and Craig Oldham, the Director of
    PSEPC's Government Operations Center noted that the PSEPC
    operational link with the DHS Homeland Security Center
    worked well; especially so because PSEPC has recently posted
    an employee to DHS HQ.

    ---------------------
    PSEPC and DHS Liaison
    ---------------------

    ¶3. Young and Lesser mentioned that PSEPC sees great value in
    having its liaison officer at DHS HQ placed within the DHS
    Homeland Security Operations Center in order to gain greater
    situational awareness. This would create an even more
    effective link between PSEPC and DHS during emergencies and
    disasters. Currently the Liaison Officer has an office
    separate from the Ops Center.  Lesser and Oldham noted that
    the issue of security clearances is a barrier to their
    Liaison Officer gaining full access to the DHS Center; but
    that models exist (for example at NORAD and NATO) to
    overcome this barrier. (Comment - This came up during
    several visits last year by senior DHS officials, such as
    Admiral Loy who indicated he would try to work through the
    clearance issues.  With so much information and intelligence
    already available to GOC through other channels it strikes
    us as odd that we continue to have this restriction as we
    work to improve seamless coordination on border security and
    emergency response.) Lesser also mentioned that PSEPC is
    keenly interested in having DHS station a DHS Liaison
    Officer within the PSEPC Government Operations Center in
    Ottawa.

    ¶4. Oldham described the role of Canada's Government
    Operations Center as providing a strategic coordination
    function for the national response.  That is, it provides a
    central node to identify, track, and - ideally - to
    coordinate federal, provincial and local response.  Another
    department such as National Defence or Transport Canada,
    depending upon that organization's technical expertise and
    equipment, may lead the actual operational response.  Oldham
    added, however, that because Provinces have broad
    jurisdiction in emergency response, command and control of
    disaster management is not as clear as it would be in a
    unitary state such as the UK or France.

    ¶5. Although operational coordination between DHS and PSEPC
    was smooth, largely because of the PSEPC Liaison Officer's
    presence at DHS HQ,  Lesser, Oldham and Young noted that at
    the policy coordination level for emergency management there
    remains some confusion about where and how the two
    organizations should connect.  For example PSEPC's emergency
    planning predecessor, the Office of Critical Infrastructure
    Protection and Emergency Preparedness (OCIPEP) had a strong
    connection with FEMA.  The shifting status of FEMA within
    DHS and the absorption of OCIPEP into PSEPC has attenuated
    somewhat those pre-existing linkages.  PSEPC believes that
    it is critical to invigorate linkages between the emergency
    planning and response policy communities in these two new
    departments.

    --------------------------------------------- ---------------
    ---------
    Coordination with Provinces; Provincial and Private Aid
    Contributions
    --------------------------------------------- ---------------
    ---------

    ¶6. With respect to the differing jurisdictions that have a
    role to play, PSEPC's James Young offered his view that
    Katrina and other recent emergencies underscore that the
    role of governments is changing. Issues don't cascade
    smoothly from the municipal to provincial (or state) to
    federal level as they once did.  He emphasized that it is
    important now to get all levels of government involved at an
    earlier stage.  Young, who has a background in medicine,
    illustrated his point by noting that in the case of an
    influenza pandemic, even though the primary response will be
    provincial, there will need to be a consistent response
    nationwide which will require very early and close
    coordination between the federal, provincial, and local
    governments.

    ¶7. The unparalleled relationship between Canada and the
    U.S., with its hundreds of millions of border crossings each
    year, coupled with a completely integrated energy
    infrastructure (a prime CIP asset) and the proximity of
    major Canadian cities to the U.S. border (approximately 80
    percent of the Canadian population lives within 100 miles of
    the United States border), suggest that to be as robust as
    possible emergency preparedness planning must fully include
    the Canada-U.S. dimension.   For example one avenue of aid
    contribution could be the ability of provinces to provide
    resources (perhaps first responder units) to "backfill" for
    northern states that send their own resources to help other
    states in need.  That is, Canadian resources could be seen
    as a force multiplier that allows rapid response from U.S.
    states to afflicted regions, and vice versa.

    ¶8. On a related note, Craig Oldham cautioned, that there
    needs to be consideration of resources and redundancy by the
    provincial and federal governments.  For example when
    Vancouver's Heavy Urban Search and Rescue (HUSAR) Team went
    to Louisiana, as they did for Katrina, it was necessary to
    identify who could respond to an emergency in Vancouver
    while the HUSAR team was absent.

    ¶9. Emboffs described also the phenomenon of private sector
    offers of aid and asked how those were tracked by PSEPC.
    Lesser and Oldham noted that they had a long list of private
    offers which they had forwarded to DHS, but that they were
    not always certain which offers had been acted upon.  All
    agreed that there were many cases of private aid efforts
    that were not communicated or coordinated through the
    federal government.  In one instance, for example, the
    Embassy was aware of chartered aircraft carrying Canadian
    volunteer Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) to the
    affected Gulf States.  The effort was arranged and managed
    solely via informal routes within the Canadian and American
    EMT community.  There may be a need to more explicitly
    recognize this type of interaction in joint Canada - United
    States emergency planning.

    -------------------------
    View from Foreign Affairs
    -------------------------

    ¶10. Ross Hynes mentioned that although nominally Foreign
    Affairs had the lead in coordinating the Canadian response
    to Katrina, that the role was shared because of the existing
    PSEPC-DHS links; there were no turf issues at the
    operational level.  Whether communication went through PSEPC-
    DHS or FAC-State channels was immaterial as far as they were
    concerned.  Tobi Nussbaum, Director of the U.S. Relations
    Division at FAC, added that there was another level of
    communication as well, i.e. between Canadian military and
    foreign affairs officers at NORAD/Northcom and Canadian
    authorities at FAC and Department of National Defence (DND).

    ¶11. Hynes told us that the GOC will be compiling an internal
    lessons-learned on the Katrina response, and invited U.S.
    participation in that exercise.  They plan to address, inter
    alia, an inventory of challenges such as: consular access;
    channels of aid offers; the FEMA-PSEPC link; and approval
    process for use of DND assets.

    --------------------------------------------- ---------------
    -----
    Next steps: Establish U.S.- Canada Group under the 1986
    Agreement
    --------------------------------------------- ---------------
    -----

    ¶12. The DCM summed up by saying it would indeed be useful to
    create an index of issues from the lessons learned and
    subsequently
    have Canadian and American officials work together to
    prepare a full lessons learned report as suggested by Ross
    Hynes.

    ¶13. Both the Canadian and American participants at the
    luncheon agreed that the 1986 bilateral agreement on
    "cooperation in comprehensive civil emergency planning and
    management" allows for a broad array of actions and should
    still be an effective strategic blueprint and broad-brush
    guide for Canada and the United States to provide assistance
    in case of disasters.
    ¶14. But to address specific planning, and to address some of
    the gaps identified in the Katrina response, it may be time
    to reinvigorate the Consultative Group on Comprehensive
    Civil Emergency Planning and Management as mandated in
    Article I of the Agreement.  The Consultative Group, which
    is described (in Annex I of the Agreement) as being
    responsible for supervising Canada-United States
    comprehensive civil emergency planning and management, for
    both peacetime and times of hostilities, is tasked with,
    inter alia: recommending to the two governments actions to
    be taken regarding studies, the exchange of information, and
    the development and coordination of plans and
    recommendations; encouraging and facilitating planning and
    development of mutual cooperation for comprehensive civil
    emergency management by provinces, states and
    municipalities; and the group may invite other federal,
    regional, provincial, state or local authorities and
    representatives of the private sector to meetings of the
    working groups, as appropriate, with the prior consent of
    both Parties.  Thus it seems the ideal forum and body to
    address the bilateral assistance questions raised during the
    Katrina response.

    ¶15. To precipitate an invigorated Consultative Group on
    Comprehensive Civil Emergency Planning and Management the
    Embassy plans on hosting a bilateral meeting in Ottawa
    before the end of the year with participation from DHS, from
    Department of Defense (in particular from Northern Command)
    from State, along with their Canadian counterparts, and
    other interested agencies.  Embassy will be in contact with
    Washington agencies in the next few weeks to identify
    appropriate participants.

    ------------
    Participants
    ------------

    ¶16.  US Embassy: DCM John Dickson, Political Minister-
    Counselor Brian Flora, DHS Attach John Considine, Economic
    Officer Lucy Abbott, Economic Specialist Bud Locklear.  GoC:
    James Young, Special Advisor to the Deputy Minister PSEPC;
    Bob Lesser, DG Operations, PSEPC; Craig Oldham, Director
    Operations Center, PSEPC; Ross Hynes, Director, Secretariat
    for the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force, FAC;
    Tobias (Toby) Nussbaum, Director, U.S. Relations Division,
    FAC.

    Wilkins

`