Conference Board of Canada's Public-Private Sector Summit on Critical Infrastructure Security

Remarks by the
Honourable Stockwell Day
Minister of Public Safety

Ottawa, Ontario
7 May 2008
As Delivered

Thank you Jean-Pierre [Jean-Pierre Sauriol, President and CEO, Dessau Inc.]  for your encouraging words.

Mr. Murray [Phil Murray, Conference Chair], you have brought together an impressive group of individuals to discuss important issues pertaining to the protection of our infrastructure across the country.

Ladies and gentlemen, to be properly prepared for eventualities that we hope will never take place is a challenge in itself, but not being prepared is an invitation to disaster.  I’ve recently had the opportunity to visit the sites of what are probably the two most internationally known disasters in recent times, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the flooding of New Orleans. I will talk more about my visits in a few minutes and then I’d like to talk a little bit about how they relate to critical infrastructure. 

As we know, any combination of natural disaster, human error or terrorist activity can have ramifications that can defy the imagination. You have probably heard us state before that the first priority of any government is the safety and the security of its citizens.  If we can’t provide for that, then really everything else becomes secondary. 

That’s why you may have noticed that in our first budget in 2006, out of the $2.6 billion commitment to Public Safety, about $1 billion went just to prepare for the possibility of a pandemic.  That particular activity has moved on at a formidable pace over the last year-and-a-half to two years to the point where plans are currently in place. For example, plans have been devised to deal not only with cross-border situations during a pandemic, but how to begin to resume business following such an event.

Some $38 million was committed in the 2006 budget strictly for enhancing emergency response in those types of situations.  And of course, there’s the funding that goes to the Government Operations Centre, located here in Ottawa, which is monitoring and receiving information from around the world as we speak. This enables us to be as prepared as possible to send out the notices and the directions that are necessary in a time of disaster, when not just human life but also critical infrastructure is threatened. 

In 2002, Canada was included on a list by Osama bin Laden of six countries that would be targets.  Sometimes we forget that.  And of those six countries, we are the only ones that have not been hit.  It is my hope, prayer and focus that it will never happen.  Through the work of our safety and security forces, through the work of our people involved in emergency planning and through the work that a lot of you do, we can look down that road to the future and remain confident that the chances of such an event happening are significantly reduced because we’re capable and prepared.  But we are not immune from risk. 

And so it was in 2007, we again saw Canada being named as a target country by Osama bin Laden. Our critical infrastructure, particularly our oil and gas, was specifically highlighted as a target. When we recall that substantial amounts of our oil and gas production go to the United States, we can see that both countries can be vitally impacted in that one area of infrastructure alone.  

Our borders are vital points of infrastructure. 400,000 people a day are crossing those borders which see $2 billion a day in trade.  One piece of infrastructure alone, the Ambassador Bridge at Windsor-Detroit, handles a significant portion of the trade between our nations. There’s more trade that crosses that bridge than the entire trade the United States has with Japan.  So you can see how reliant our businesses and entire economies are on infrastructure.  And those are just trade-related pieces of infrastructure.  It becomes evident that the area of identifying critical infrastructure is vitally important. 

In January of this year, this particular item topped the agenda at a meeting of federal, provincial and territorial Ministers responsible for emergency planning.  It’s our goal this year to completely revise the National Strategy on Critical Infrastructure.  In doing that, important relationships have to be developed. These relationships are critical to having our infrastructure identified. Working with you, especially in the private sector, is a critical component of this strategy, and we encourage you to do what needs to be done. Our aim is to help make sure that you have necessary protection in place and that you’re able to share information so that we can have a coordinated strategy. 

That is why we want to revise our national strategy. It has to continually be updated. Many of you in the private sector have quite rightly raised issues related to the sharing of information on critical infrastructure.  It’s very important that you get the assurance that the information that you share along those lines is going to be protected, and you have that assurance from the Government of Canada.  This is just one of the challenges that we face regarding issues related to coordination. 

I’ve been impressed with the degree to which many of you in private sector development have identified your critical infrastructure and what needs to be in place to provide necessary protection.  There is still work to be done and the sharing of information is an ongoing process. But this revision and updating of information has been recognized, not just at the federal level but also with our provincial and territorial partners, as something very important. That’s why the process and the development of the strategy will continue through the spring, into the summer and be finalized in the fall.  We encourage you to provide us with your continued cooperation. 

Just as one example of our efforts, Canada has become the first country to sign on with Microsoft for the availability of 24/7 access in the event of a critical infrastructure threat or critical infrastructure disaster.  And when we talk about critical infrastructure and the linkage with an organization like Microsoft, we must understand that our cyber networks are potential targets with possible service interruptions either by error or by a planned attack.  That’s why we also have to make sure that we are always on the leading edge in terms of our cyber protection capabilities.

Preparation is the key.  This week, as many of you may know, is Emergency Preparedness Week.  We started that off with various announcements across the country. When you see the teams of first responders, especially those in charge of responding to incidents where critical infrastructure has been affected, it’s quite reassuring to see the results of planning, training and investment by the federal, provincial and municipal governments. These efforts focus on the tools and training that are required post-incident to make sure that the threats to life and to the economy are minimized.  It’s very impressive to see what these teams of people can do. 

But as impressed as we are with everyone’s work, you cannot take any kind of backward steps or slow down the process of looking at your own plans, identifying your own critical infrastructure and being willing to share that on a partnership basis. That way information can move ahead in a timely fashion right from the time a warning is issued to a possible incident. This will reduce the damage incurred from a critical infrastructure failure, be it a power blackout, as we saw a few years ago, or an incident of greater and more horrific magnitude. 

Looking at some of the situations, not just in Canada but in the United States as well, gives us a sense of the importance of critical infrastructure planning. We have some of our friends from the United States here and I welcome them today as their experiences are very helpful. Having visited the site of the September 11 disaster in New York City, just a few days after the tragedy, I can recall with intensity what I saw and felt when I was there. A lot went through my mind when I saw that horrific sight. I was standing beside the firefighters who were continuing to find some of their own colleagues within the destruction of the World Trade Center.

I talked to a Canadian woman whose husband had called her on a cell phone from one of the upper floors of one of the twin towers to tell her that she would never be seeing him again, and to ask her to tell their yet-to-be-born son that he loved him.  Seeing the impact, to hear the agony of what can happen in the aftermath of such a tragedy, is something that you can never forget. It gives people the determination to say that they want to do everything they can in their area of responsibility to see that such a tragedy never happens again. 

What is known to many of you, but not to a lot of the population, is just how incredible the extent of planning for such a disaster was among many of the first responders in New York City. Their preparation was evident in their actions and exercises prior to September 11. They had practiced disaster scenarios of that order of magnitude.  One of the reasons that the horrific disaster and its effects were reduced was because they had planned and trained for the day when critical infrastructure would be massively devastated. 

Just last week I was in New Orleans with our Prime Minister, at the Security and Prosperity Partnership Leaders’ Summit for Canada, the United States and Mexico. After the summit, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Mayor of New Orleans and a number of officials on the emergency planning side including the head of their emergency planning, the person whose job it was to identify areas of critical infrastructure.  Now there was a case where the infrastructure failed horribly and some things had been planned for but others things had not been planned for at all.  They had not planned for nor anticipated the effect of thousands of first responders being needed but having to leave the scene because their own homes were being destroyed.

Hundreds of thousands of homes were destroyed in that city alone. And in areas of critical infrastructure, they lost everything for a period of time and some are still being rebuilt.  The critical infrastructure related to their water supply, power supply, telecommunications, television and cell phone towers went down. Virtually every support network was taken out. 

This is the type of incident that we can learn from. Preparation is the key and the emergency planners that I met with, along with the Mayor himself, said that as much as people knew there was a threat, the planning could have been better.  By contrast, in New York City details down to the first speech that was read out by Rudy Giuliani following the terrorist attacks had been prepared before an incident ever happened. 

Planning, cooperation and collaboration are essential.  That’s why we reach out to you as individuals, as people who are involved in the study of these situations. For example, the work that is done at the Conference Board of Canada is very helpful to us on the policy side and on the preparation side.  As a matter of fact, the Conference Board did an excellent piece related to the Katrina disaster, which provided incredibly insightful recommendations, not just to governments, but also to businesses. 

We have made it a goal to put together a revised National Strategy on Critical Infrastructure. As much as we have great levels of collaboration and a new piece of legislation, the Emergency Management Act, which signals to government departments who is responsible for what and when, we have to continue to look at ways to plan, identify, share information, and work in collaboration. 

One of the greatest lessons learned in New Orleans regarding critical infrastructure is that you have to plan for the worst. You have to think about what is the worst that could happen to the piece of infrastructure for which you are responsible. The very worst in this case was the collapse of virtually every support area of infrastructure. They learned a lot from it and they’re sharing their lessons with the world, which is generous of them and not an easy task.  We are all beneficiaries of the lessons learned in New Orleans and other tragedies.

So on that somewhat sombre note, I want to thank you because I believe your level of dedication is there and it is matched with our level of determination to work with you and our various partners to protect our critical infrastructure.  Should some type of disaster strike, the beneficiaries of our efforts will be our citizens, the people who rely on our planning and our commitment to work together. 

Thank you for being a vital part of that.