As a developing professional practice, emergency management is not well understood by many and yet is a critical component of the wider social and political policy framework in which our communities operate. Studies of emergency management policy are rare and are normally targeted more at the disaster studies researcher than the policy audience. This new book, Multilevel Governance and Emergency Management in Canadian Municipalities edited by Daniel Henstra, is a refreshing contribution to this field and its inclusion in the wider Fields of Governance series shows that emergency management policy can be part of the mainstream discussion.
In the first contributed chapter Luc Juillet and Junichiro Koji from the University of Ottawa offer an overview of emergency management policy in Canada. In doing so they set out the two competing “frames” – “a filter through which actors define, interpret, and understand the social reality surrounding them” (p28) – which they see being applied by emergency managers and politicians regarding the federal – provincial/territorial – municipal relationship. In particular the authors focus on the nature of the relationship between the Federal government and municipalities, usually in the form of major metropolitan areas, and the effect of the provinces to facilitate or impede that relationship. One resource the authors refer to are the 2006 reports of the Senate Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security which was actively engaged in this debate. However they do not incorporate comments from the 2008 report, led by Senator Kenny, that was titled Emergency Preparedness in Canada: How the fine arts of bafflegab and procrastination hobble the people who will be trying to save you when things get really bad[…] in which the Senators highlight their frustration (as demonstrated by the inflammatory sub-title) and pose many of the same arguments regarding the disconnect between federal and municipal levels in emergency management. The challenge of writing about the evolution of a dynamic system is the reader has the benefit of hindsight unavailable to the authors. This should not deter the reader but rather it reinforces the very idea of a “frame” in which “time” is one of the filters through which the discussion must be viewed.
Political scientists Malcolm Grieve and Lori Turnbull undertook interviews to better understand emergency management policy in Nova Scotia. Through their discussions with elected officials and civil servants, primarily at the local government level but also including regional and provincial participants as well as some interviews with representatives from local non-government organizations, the authors describe the local perspective on the multi-level relationships. These interviews took place between 2005 and 2007 so there are a few comments that have become more or less relevant over the intervening years. For example there is a comment regarding the Federal government's contribution to local professional development through the Canadian Emergency Management College which was still operating at the time of the interviews but has since been closed. Readers should be conscious that this snapshot of emergency management in Nova Scotia is inevitably influenced by the issues that were prominent at the time of the interviews. This does not necessarily undermine the relevance of the authors’ insights but can account for why some issues, such as the National Disaster Mitigation Strategy which was relatively new at the time, seem to hold more promise than the intervening years have yielded.
The fourth chapter examines the situation in Newfoundland and Labrador. It benefits from the combination of a hazards perspective, provided by Norm Catto, and Stephen Tomblin's political and policy insights. The chapter makes the connections between the hazardscape, the perceptions of risk and the socio-political context including a sense of how significant historical events, both disasters and political change, have shaped today's emergency management practices. The authors use a combination of historical fact and recent (2007) interviews with relevant officials to provide the background for their evaluation of the current legislative and policy framework. Newfoundland and Labrador is a unique province in many ways and the authors point out how these differences are another policy driver.
The final case study, Alberta, receives a detailed and comprehensive treatment by Geoffrey Hale. He examines the range of complex interactions not only between municipal, provincial and federal governments but also those between large cities, their surrounding bedroom municipalities and the private sector, especially the oil industry, which are equally important. Drawing on extensive interviews Hale is able to look beyond the traditional emergency response activities and includes discussion of land-use practices, emergency social services and other emergency management issues that do not attract frequent attention.
Robert Young, who is the series editor, teams up with Daniel Henstra to recap the main findings and highlight the challenges of low-salience, regionalization and weakening political and popular support that face emergency management policy makers. They also examine the implications of open federalism and other forces on emergency management governance. To conclude they examine emergency management policy against a set of benchmark criteria and find evidence of some improvement but the general feeling is that Canada's emergency management policies need to be better. The editor's introduction and conclusion provide the context and overall analysis that add significant value to the other chapters.
This book provides an important bridge between policy studies and emergency management studies. Readers interested in learning more about Canada's emergency management practices will benefit from the contributing authors’ discussion and assessment of recent changes while those more concerned with the general policy development process will find this a unique subject area to explore. The chapters are presented as independent pieces with their own notes and references making each an easy reading assignment for instructors in either discipline to integrate into an undergraduate class. Taken as a whole the book is a pleasure to read as recurring themes emerge from each chapter regarding the challenges facing emergency management policy makers.
