Plans developed by Canada’s best professional Emergency Management Officers (EMOs) were discarded at the start of Covid, says Alberta’s former EMO.
“We threw out every lesson we had ever learned,” Lt. Col. (Ret.) David Redman told the National Citizens’ Inquiry (NCI) on April 27th. “Alberta’s Emergency Management Plan already had an appendix for a Pandemic. It was never opened.”
Redman served in Canada’s Armed Forces for 27 years before he was made head of Alberta’s EMO, where he served for eight years. His two-hour presentation to the NCI covered the basics of Emergency Management and contrasted that process with the chaos which occurred when Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments launched its Covid measures in 2019.
He confirmed that every province and territory has an EMO, staffed, trained and fully equipped. The federal EMO is Public Safety Canada.
“EMOs manage fires, floods and terrorism, and SHOULD have managed the pandemic,” he said.
“Public Health should never have been in charge of the pandemic management. They are part of the team of course – but Public Health never manages an emergency.”
Redman told the NCI that he personally wrote letters to the Premiers of each province and territory to explain to them that the Covid pandemic should to be managed through their EMO teams, putting the needs of citizens first.
“Citizens were being told they needed to protect our health care system. That is backward. Citizens don’t exist to protect the health care system; the health care system exists to protect the citizens. I wrote to every Premier to warn them the dangers of ignoring Emergency Management principles, but never heard from anyone. I failed,” he observed plainly.
Redman presented the NCI with a thorough overview of the Emergency Management process, during which he emphasized repeatedly that teamwork involving subject matter experts from a variety of disciplines is the heart of the process. These experts meet regularly between emergencies to keep plans and information updated.
“We discarded Emergency Management principles, and it cost us dearly,” Redman said.
NCI is a Canada-wide citizen-led and citizen-funded initiative to investigate governments’ Covid-19 policies in a fair and impartial manner completely independent from the government. Through questioning led by lawyers, individual Canadians and experts are presenting evidence under oath to Independent Commissioners.
As described on its website, the NCI’s purpose is to listen, to learn, and to recommend by asking questions such as: “What went right? What went wrong? How can Canadians and our governments better react to national crises in the future in a manner that balances the interests of all members of our society?”
Testimonials have also been provided to the Inquiry in Truro, Toronto, Winnipeg and Saskatoon, and Red Deer. Examples include funeral directors who refused to keep family members separated from their loved ones despite government limits on attendance; health and safety professionals who watched every rule of workplace safety get decimated by employers; and police officers who refused to implement martial law when politicians called for it.
Further hearings are being scheduled for Victoria, Vancouver, Quebec, and Ottawa. The hearings (from 9 am to 5 pm local time in each city) will be broadcast live on the National Citizens’ Inquiry website.
