Protecting After the Fact: Reactiveness, Fragmentation and Disconnection in Canadian Hazard Governance

Abstract

Canadian emergency management is a multilevel governance area in which municipal governments have most of the responsibility to manage emergencies. However, the provincial government possesses most of the jurisdiction in emergency management, the federal government has most of the fiscal capacity, and social actors provide important resources and services to affected communities or municipalities. Operationally, the emergency management system in Canada has an all-hazards approach that is divided into four policy phases: mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Despite this all-hazards approach, the system has typically been reactive rather than proactive, where the mitigation phase is under-emphasized. Academics and multilevel practitioners have constantly proposed a more proactive approach, but the system remains reactive, and attempts at more proactive policy have been unsuccessful, despite wide agreement on the need for change. I therefore investigate reactiveness in Canada from a multilevel governance lens, using the following research questions: Why is Canadian emergency management still reactive? How do roles and interactions of multilevel governance actors factor into this reactive rather than proactive approach to emergency management? Using a novel multilevel survey of emergency management practitioners, I argue that one important source of the reactive approach in emergency management is due to fragmentation in the multilevel governance of this system, which prevents the implementation of a standardized mitigation (proactive) strategy. Furthermore, my empirical data shows extensive evidence of misperception and misunderstanding from survey respondents about actor roles and interactions in this system. I arrive at this conclusion from a comprehensive review of the Canadian emergency management literature, and from studying perceptions of key governmental and non-governmental emergency managers across Canada.