The military can't be the first line of defence in domestic disasters, MPs told

Whateverthe crisis of the moment happens to be, the military is supposed to be the force of last resort.

Increasingly, though, that word "last" is being replaced by "first" and sometimes "only."

A former top national security adviser warned a parliamentary committee on Tuesday that successive federal governments have relied too much on the military to handle crises at home.

Richard Fadden's remarks were met withsome nods of agreement around the table anda slight wince from a representative from one the provinces that has been in the uncomfortable position of having to call for military-backed relief.

WATCH: Former national security adviser Richard Fadden on military responses to natural disasters

Having served both Liberal and Conservative governments as the prime minister's security adviser, deputy minister of defence and head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), FaddenassuredMPs on the House of Commons defence committee that his comments were not partisan.

He said domestic emergency operations such ascleaning up after storms and fighting forest fires distractthe militaryfrom the training it needsin an increasingly unstable world a pointthe Conservatives have been hammering away on since the committee launched its study.

That doesn't meanthe Armed Forces should stay awaywhen Canadians are struck by tragedieslike post-tropical stormFiona, Fadden said.

Sending in the army has become 'too easy' Fadden

The problem, he added,is that in recent yearsthe federal government has acted as if the military istheonlytool it can turn to in a disaster.

"It is becoming too easy for prime ministers not in particularthis one, but prime ministers generally to simply say,'I'm going to send in the army,'" Fadden told the four-party committee, which is studying the military's domestic emergency preparedness.

"And we do this without talking to the provinces, municipalities and civil society about what they could and should do."

Fadden argued that the problem cannot be examined with anarrow focus on military response. He called on the federal governmentto undertake a thorough, independent review of all emergency response capacity across the country, bothfederal and provincial.

Last week, a senior military commander told the committee that the number of requests for assistance the Armed Forces receives from provinceshas ramped up rapidly over the past decade.

Maj.-Gen. Paul Prevost testified that in 2021, there were seven such requests for a military responseto provincial emergencies floods, forest firesand other natural disasters. The period between 2017 and 2021 saw an average of four such requests per year. From 2010 to 2017, the average wastwo per year.

Those numbersdo not include the118 calls for assistance the military answered during the pandemic by, for example,backstopping exhausted health care staff in long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec.

"We probably in this country, right now, don't have another tool." Fadden said.

"I think this is really problematic for a sophisticated, complex governmentlike the Government of Canada today, when a disaster occurs if a prime minister only has one tool."

WATCH: Top soldier raises concerns about military readiness

Canadas top soldier raises concerns about military readiness

2 years ago

Duration 2:01

Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre says hes concerned about the Canadian Armed Forces' overall readiness to respond to events at home and abroad as it deals with growing demands to help with disaster response within Canada.

The idea ofa dedicated forcewithin the militarytasked with responding to natural disasters has been floated frequently since Fiona hit the East Coast. Gen. Wayne Eyre, Canada'stop military commander, has said such a force would require more military capacity.

It's also a bad idea, said Fadden.

"Asking the Canadian Forces, for example, to run a railway would be a mistake. Asking the Canadian Forces to become overly involved in disaster assistance, in my view, is also a mistake," he said.

Fadden argued that disaster response robs the military of time it should spendtraining for international commitments during a periodof heightened international tensions with Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.

"I am not a military person but I don't think you need to be ... the chief of the defence staff or the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs to realize that there is not enough operational training, there are not enough exercises right now," he told MPs.

"It is short of criminal to send our troops into potentially harm's wayif they're not as trained as we can possibly make them. I don't think they're doing enough [training] today. And if they're chopping wood which they may well need to do and do other things to fight forest fires and whatnot they're not doing operational training."

It's the kind of talk that makes provincial government officialssquirm in their seats.

Johanu Botha, who leads Manitoba's Emergency Measures Organization, told the committee the military is indispensable in a domestic crisis because it binds together all three levels of government federal, provincial and municipal.

He said research conducted on disaster response has shown clearlythatsoldiers "will be needed" in future natural disasters.

While Botha said he's in favour of anindependent review of emergency response,he cautioned that its recommendations would be long-term and crises like Fiona tend to demandurgent solutions.

"There's a certain level of support that we won't be able to replace that the military has," he said.

Conrad Sauv, president of the Canadian Red Cross, said that from a civil society point of view, Canada has been "caught unprepared" bynatural disasters that require "rapid response, which the military has."

The question that doesn't seem to get asked very often, he said, is whether the country has "other existing capabilities."

Sauv said governments need to invest far more inlocal civilian emergency preparedness services the people and organizations that are always the first to face a crisis.

"I think we have to heighten that response as a civil protection," he said.