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PM should create permanent emergency preparedness cabinet committee, say experts, political players: be ‘prepared for the next natural disaster, terrorist act or health crisis is the objective’
By Mike Lapointe September 21, 2020
Richard Fadden, who worked as the national security adviser to the prime minister between January 2015 and March 2016, says that 'if this country wants the national security agencies to worry about a pandemic, then they need to raise it on the list of priorities set by cabinet.'
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, pictured on Sept. 16, 2020. Former clerk of the Privy Council and top bureaucrat Mel Cappe suggested in a piece written for the Centre of International Governance Innovation (CIGI) that the cabinet committee on COVID-19 should 'be turned into a standing committee on emergencies' and that 'being prepared for the next natural disaster, terrorist act or health crisis is the objective.' The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade
In this global pandemic, a former national security adviser to the prime minister says Canada “doesn’t worry about emergency preparedness as much as we should” and that he believes “there should be a cabinet committee to deal with emergency responses—not just the pandemic,” with one Liberal MP saying it would “go a long way towards minimizing the various silos that exist and that we can no longer afford.”
Mike LapointeMike Lapointe joined the The Hill Times in June 2019 and covers the federal public service, deputy ministers, the Privy Council Office, public service unions, the Phoenix pay system, the machinery of government, and the Parliament Hill media.
Follow - mlapointe@hilltimes.com
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