Canada’s COVID-19 Disaster Response and Recovery Costs
After managing dozens of government disaster financial assistance programs, one thing is clear, it is going to be very very messy for governments, especially those that have not had much experience with the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements.
In Canada, disaster financial assistance is provided to indigenous and non-indigenous communities and to provinces/territories (PTs) for disasters that are caused by natural hazards. For this blog I will focus on non-indigenous disaster financial assistance as there is a more common approach for this process across PTs.
Disaster financial assistance programs pay for related response and recovery costs and they are developed using a fairly standard path.
Municipalities
Impacted communities assess their damage.
They start recovery planning.
They submit their estimated response and recovery costs (with any actual costs) to the provincial government for review and a decision.
Provincial/Territorial and the federal governments
If the event qualifies, the provincial/territorial government provides funding to the community, normally through one or more ‘buckets’ of funding.
Then the province requests financial support from the federal government.
If the province qualifies the federal government commits to funding.
In Canada, each territory and province has different processes for indigenous related costs, the federal government funds all indigenous costs but in some cases federal funding may flow through the provincial process. In Alberta Metis communities will work directly with the provincial government.
For COVID-19, each level of government should be trying to estimate their initial and ongoing response costs while calculating and documenting their actual costs. At some point they will start to estimate their recovery costs through their planning process, document actual costs and submit these to thier respective PTs. But sooner, rather than later, all communities and PTs will start asking “who is paying for what?”
Where do pandemics fit in this model?
Formally, they don’t. As of the start of 2020, the majority (maybe all) of PT, and federal government guidelines for disaster financial assistance only speak to providing assistance for the repair, restoration, and replacement of assets caused by natural hazards.
Pandemics, for human based events, are not defined in these guidelines. Any mention of outbreaks in disaster financial assistance guidelines are normally related to agriculture live stock scenarios.
But with the federal government moving to an All Hazards emergency management framework pandemics and other hazards, such as cyber threats, will need to be addressed within the federal guidelines, or through some other type of program.
This is going to get messy
At the onset of every disaster response governments are quick (rightly so) to do what it takes to save lives, which includes spending a lot of cash. During the 2013 southern Alberta floods I was granted a one million dollar spending limit (per invoice) so decisions could be made quickly.
Normally, during a response, the federal government is not so quick to jump in and offer financial assistance directly to those impacted by a disaster. They usually wait for a PT to request assistance, then federal auditors review the PT submission, then the federal government makes a decision.
During the 2016 Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (Fort Mac) fires I led a small team through the process of securing $300 million from the feds. This included coordinating all government department leads as federal auditors came to Alberta to review our funding ask, before they committed to funding.
With the federal government offering response assistance, it is going to get messy when the PTs submit their claims for federal reimbursement. The federal government could make the case that because they provided response assistance, any PT claims are the sole responsibility of the PT.
One thing is for certain, politics will play a big part in who gets what. Municipalities will be submitting their costs to their respective PT governments and the PTs will be applying to the feds.
One question I have is:
Given that the feds have a financial assistance program for response costs, will Alberta be eligible for reimbursement, from the federal government, for it’s Emergency Isolation Support Program through the federal Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements (which are meant for natural hazards)?
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Author: Brad Ison is a professional disaster and emergency management coach. He’s held various position specific roles in the Alberta Provincial Operations Centre and had decade long career at the Alberta Emergency Management Agency where his focus was on Disaster Recovery and his last role served was as the Director for Training, Accreditation, and Standards.
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