TCBF said:
Mayor Mel had quite a flair for the dramatic. I was a bit surprised the military went along though. Are they legally required to abide by a request for assistance or is there room for discussion?"
- If the province makes a formal request under the Aid To Civil Power (now called something else, I believe) the guvmint cannot say NO. Now, what form that assistance takes...
This probably merits a separate thread all on its own, but anyway...
I was the A/G3 of LFCA when the Southern Ontario snow emergency happened. (I say Southern Ontario because we were also providing assistance in Chatham-Kent and in the Kingston area.) While 32 CBG provided the tactical HQ for the operation in Toronto, and provided most of the shovel manpower, it was not alone. In the early stages of the operation, several Bisons from the RCD were positioned in downtown fire/EMS stations to cover runs into areas where the streets had not been cleared. Initially, as far as we could tell, this combined Reg/Res response was adequate. There was no request for further military aid sent to us via the correct and normal channels for unarmed assistance (normally initiated through our standing relationship with Emergency Measures Ontario: EPC had no role whatsoever). Comd LFCA had no intent to deploy the IRU as there was no assessed need, although as an SOP we had alerted 2 CMBG. The city seemed to be managing well, deploying approximately 800 pieces of municipal snowclearance machinery, as well as contracted equipment. Snow was indeed very deep in some streets (I did a recce) but things did not seem disastrous.
Unforunately, Mayor Lastman, for reasons best known only to him, became very worried that the continuing snowfall would create a humanitarian emergency. Instead of going to EMO as he should have done, he appears to have approached then-MND Eggleton directly, on political channels. (Eggleton was a former Mayor, whose Toronto riding offce kept a very active interest in military events, as anybody in LFCAHQ from those days can attest...). Through a process that I do not pretend to understand, the CDS called Comd LFCA and ordered him to deploy the IRU. Despite our Comd's representation that this would be unnecessary, the CDS insisted.
As a result, the RCD (reinforced by a task force drawn from 2 CER) deployed on an eight hour road move through winter conditions from Pet to Toronto. We quartered them at the old Downsview site (which fortunately had not yet been demolished), and at Fort York Armoury. While the RCD were unfortunately very under-employed, the 2 CER task force was assigned in support of Tornonto Works and Emergency Services to conduct heavy snow clearance, which they did to the best of their ability.
Once the snow"emergency" abated, LFCA HQ tried to get NDHQ permission to redeploy the 2 CMBG units back to Pet, but we were stymied by inexplicable foot dragging that kept the troops sitting idle, even though the snow was actually melting! This was probably one of the most frustrating parts of the entire operation.
Keep in mind that all this time, the Province of Ontario had access to literally hundreds of pieces of provincial, municipal and contractor snow clearance machinery that could have been deployed to assist the City. To the best of my recollection, this never happened and EMO was (through no fault of their own) never significantly involved. Mayor Mel did an end-run on the whole system that was (and is) carefully set up to provide checks and balances on CF involvement in civil emergencies.
Was the CF mandated to respond? Under Canadian statutes and CF practices at the time, we were required to respond to requests for aid to civil power (this op was NOT an ACP op) made by the Solicitor General of a Province to the Govt of Canada. We were certainly expected (if not required) to respond to humanitarian emergency assistance requests, when these were made through the correct and well-proven EMO-LFCA channels, on behalf of the Provincial Govt. (Not, I hasten to add, any municipal govt by itself, unless a clear and imminent "life and limb" threat could be proven. This, IMHO, never existed.) The assistance of municipal govts is the job of the provincial govt, until they reach the point at which they can no longer handle it. Then, they turn to us. This point was never, ever reached in the case of Toronto because, except for the limited initial response, the Province was not engaged in the decision to deploy increased CF forces into Toronto.
Although all the troops did great work and the people of Toronto were grateful, the process was very wrong. In a widespread emergency in which we were spread thin, it could have been disastrous. I hope we (the CF and the Fed Govt) have learned our lessons.
Cheers.
