HANNAFORD： Ex-Alberta emergency chief says Ottawa destroying national security agencies - as a ma...
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Summary
We live in uncertain times. A third of us Canadians are apparently buying groceries on credit, and our gas prices are all over the place, largely thanks to the situation in the Middle East. How concerned should we be? What should the prudent citizen be doing on his own behalf? With us tonight is Colonel Dave Redmond, formerly in charge of Emergency Management in Alberta. You may recall Colonel Redmond as the author of the excellent pandemic plan that the Government of Alberta simply ignored in their COID panic.
Transcript
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Good evening Western Standard viewers and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show of the
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Western Standard. It is Thursday, April the 2nd. We live in uncertain times. A lot of people are
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living hand to mouth. A third of us Canadians are apparently buying groceries on credit
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and our gas prices are all over the place, driving inflation largely thanks to the situation
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in the Middle East. How concerned should we be? What should the prudent citizen be doing on his
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own behalf? With us tonight is Colonel Dave Redmond, formerly in charge of emergency management
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in Alberta. Welcome Colonel Redmond. Good evening. Thank you for having me. You are very welcome
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here. You may recall Colonel Redmond as the author of the excellent pandemic plan that the
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government of Alberta simply ignored in their COVID panic. And we'll come back to that in a
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few minutes. But first, is there anything in the international situation that people should be
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alarmed about time to stock up on essentials maybe so from my point of view one of the things that
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people do every day in their lives is manage risk and it's very important that as citizens of canada
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we get back to understanding that risk is ours to manage and not the government's and so when we look
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at the things that are happening in the world right now we simply have to restock on a daily
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basis what is the risks to us in emergency management we always broke risks into two major
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categories first of all natural hazards like geological biological and and environmental
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but we also look at human induced hazards both intentional and unintentional and in times like
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this we may be interested in looking at the intentional hazards a little more but in my
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opinion at this point in time Albertans should carry on with their lives with confidence that
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they can manage the risks in their lives and that there's orders of government to help them
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so maybe if we refine that just a little bit in emergency management we always have stated
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very clearly that it's up to an individual if they're not directly impacted by a hazard so
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let's use a flood as an example. A flood is going through a town and it floods some homes but it
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doesn't flood other homes but it might take the power out. So if your home is flooded you're
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directly impacted by the hazard but if you lose your power you're indirectly. So what you should
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be prepared to do as a citizen of Alberta or any province or territory in Canada is to manage the
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first 72 hours of the hazard on your own and allow the response agencies to look after those who are
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being directly impacted so 72 hours one of my colleagues used to joke that in canada all
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citizens were always prepared for 72 days because we always prepared for winter somehow now it's down
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to 72 hours so albertans need to take that seriously now there's lots of tools to help them
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prepare for that 72 hours and if you go to the government of alberta website to the alberta
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emergency management agency there is in fact both the documents to help you make a plan for your
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family and yourself and what type of supplies you may wish to have to prepare yourself for that 72
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hours what i'm not encouraging is hardy what i'm not encouraging is panic buying we should do the
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opposite to make sure everyone has access to what they need but you should pre-stock the essentials
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like water and food etc to get yourself through that 72 hours now if you are directly impacted
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the way emergency management work is it goes up in steps so the next step is first responders and
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first responders are also watching the situation that's developing in the world and preparing to
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respond should something happen in alberta and so those first responders fire police ems are there
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to help those who are directly impacted but next in Alberta and in most provinces and territories
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in Canada the next order of government is the municipal order of government emergencies are
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always local and the municipal order of government in Alberta is charged by legislation to have a
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municipal emergency plan and to test those plans regularly so whatever community you live in in
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alberta there's 314 covered by the act and they all have a municipal emergency plan and so you
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should as a citizen understand how you fit into that plan contact your municipal government
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understand what that plan looks like and be prepared to do your part to help in that emergency
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plan if that's required now if i could just cut in there for a second what i'm hearing you say
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is that other than maybe prudently keeping your gas tank topped up there is nothing that's happening
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in iran in the straits of hormuz or anywhere else that is an emergency for people living here
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in alberta this is not likely to touch us in any way not directly at this point in time so as well
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one of the things the government of alberta runs is the alberta emergency alert system
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and if you haven't got that on your phone you should it's an easy app to install and the
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government can keep you apprised when situations change and it's very geographical based on where
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you actually live so if you've got your 72 hour preparedness kit for you and your family
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if you are connected to your community and understand how your community responds in
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emergencies you're as prepared as you can be for now in order to be looking at what's happening
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in the world well given that there's a huge onus on the provincial government the municipal
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government and ultimately ottoma itself to be prepared for whatever people need after 72 hours
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if you were still advising the government of alberta and they call you in and said talk to
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us about the situation what's going on out there that you know we need to be factoring in as we
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make our decisions what would you tell them well first of all we need to be looking at the provincial
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order of government at all of the hazards that could impact alberta clearly alberta is an oil
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producing um organization for the world not just for albertans not just for canadians but we have
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a massive impact in terms of our production of oil and natural gas to the world and can we actually
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refine enough for our own daily needs we have enough refineries we have four refineries in
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alberta and we could meet western canada's needs and continue to do so on a daily basis if we were
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talking about another jurisdiction in canada that may not be the case but certainly here in alberta
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we have the ability for self-sufficiency good so is there anything else that that the provincial
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government would need to be thinking about today the provincial government should be looking at
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all of the critical infrastructure not just oil and gas but in particular oil and gas
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and dusting off what is the critical infrastructure protection plan which is
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and has been built for our province to look at all the different ways that impacts could be felt and
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not just from human induced intentional but across all of the different types of hazards and so that
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plan exists. It should be being reviewed right now in detail.
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Paul Jay Okay. Well, we were talking earlier about the number of IRGC,
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Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, about 8,000 members of this organization. I mean,
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it's a terrorist organization that's designated as such. But somehow they're here in Canada,
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and what they're doing and what they're preparing for, we don't know.
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But how concerned are you that we have this cadre of people who are no friends of ours
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who might try to upset our apple cart during this situation?
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Or do you think they'd maybe be trying to work their way down into the States
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i've always been concerned in particular for the past 11 years as i watched every element
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of our national security being devolved i think is the nicest way to put it so maybe maybe if i
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can just sort of step back and look at national security there's 10 elements to national security
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which in my opinion over the past 11 years have been intentionally destroyed or completely reduced
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in capability the first is the study of geopolitics and geopolitics says canada lives next door to a
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superpower who has been and continues to be our largest ally and trading partner i believe it's
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important for canada to strengthen that relationship not chip away at it or try to destroy it
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so geopolitics defines that we have the comfort of a superpower to ourselves but we also have
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the hazards and risks that come with that and we need to recognize that the united states is our
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friend and ally and we need to be working more closely in troubled times with them not stepping
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back from them in particular though that means the people that are threats to canada number one
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china who is funding all of the activities worldwide including the islamic republican guard
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which is operating in canada and has been for some time we need to ensure that we look at all
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the hazards and risks so the next step in in national security is our intelligence services
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which have been ignored and and displaced as we know we're not even part of the five eyes
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significantly anymore next is border services we should have been strengthening our borders
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and our border services to make sure that we don't have people like the rgc coming to canada
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and operating in canada next is our our immigration services and the immigration policy in this
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country has been completely disrupted intentionally in my opinion in particular for the past five
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years and we're seeing people who have no desire to be canadians coming to canada for none no other
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reason than to disrupt our country. We see the protests in all our major cities screaming
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death to all Jews, death to all Christians, death to all Canadians, with no reaction from the next
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step in our national security, which is our policing services, which we should be strengthening
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and upgrading at this point in time as we watch world events. Well, let me ask you this. You have
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said several times dave that this is intentional that these organizations and these services have
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been not merely allowed to uh to fail out of negligence that was intended that they should
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fail do i understand you correctly in my opinion you understand me perfectly this has been an
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intentional erosion and when we see things like the foreign interference inquiry not being even
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started for five years and then when it is started to be placed on a back burner that's an intentional
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act to go from calling china the largest strategic threat to canada one year ago and now calling it
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a very significant strategic partner is a completely intentional act you can't say it's not
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and so from my point of view each of the steps and the degradation of the 10 elements of national
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security have been thought through and are intentional.
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That implies, I mean, for nine years, the Prime Minister was Justin Trudeau, and I think
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many of us have interpreted the decline of the effectiveness of these services as something
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that happened not exactly by accident, but he didn't care, and he did care about other things,
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and so that's where the priorities went, and this was an unfortunate accident.
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What you're saying now is that for nine years, it was actually intentional to bring about
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a certain purpose. So what is the purpose? And do you actually feel that Mr. Trudeau had the
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competence to do it, or that he merely watched other people do it?
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No, I believe it was intentional. You and I are both old enough to have lived through his father,
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pierre elliott to doha joined the army in 1972 and watched him try to destroy our national security
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if you believe that china is your partner and the united states is not you are taking intentional
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acts to change the form of government when trudeau jr stated that we were a post-national state that
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was a clear definition that canada as a nation didn't exist nationhood the national interests
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of our country were subservient to world interests of a post-national state i strongly believe that
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canada is a nation has a defined culture that we should be fighting for our unity that we should
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be fighting for our national security because a country is defined in simplest terms when a group
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of people who share common interests and values bond together in a defined geographical region
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which they are prepared to defend so unity and national security are the top two of the six
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national interests that define a country and when you take away or attack the unity of a country
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by bringing in people who do not share your common interests and values it's an intentional act in
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order to break the unity and to reduce the ability of a nation to stand by itself i may have to
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reassess my opinion of Mr. Trudeau as an effective politician.
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I'd like to take you back to earlier times in Alberta. You had, as the provincial government's
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emergency planner, written a complete plan, not just to cover pandemics, but to cover all
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eventualities then came code we had a plan but we didn't use it i'm sure it would have been better
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if we had for those of us for those um watchers who were younger and maybe didn't live through
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this or weren't particularly paying attention to it what just happened here so maybe a quick
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look back at COVID back in 2005 the Deputy Minister of Health who was charged with the
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pandemic influenza plan came to me and asked if we would co-chair the rewrite of the pandemic
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influenza plan and the reason she did that at that time was the World Health Organization had just
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published a document which defined the 15 non-pharmaceutical interventions which we now
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call lockdowns. So maybe just a quick, the 15 of them included things like school closures,
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business closures, closing of borders, washing of hands, everything down that list that we saw
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implemented. And what that document, and it was updated three times, said was do not use these.
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They are only valuable as a very last resort and in some cases simply never to be used
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So we rewrote the Pandemic Influenza Plan across all of government,
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involving all the departments like transportation, like infrastructure, like water supply,
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to make sure we built a plan that was not based on the use of NPIs, we now call lockdowns.
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It's still on the government of Alberta's website,
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and it was completely ignored and disregarded starting in March of 2020.
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We did exactly the opposite of what should have happened.
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Elected officials, in my opinion, across our whole country,
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ignored all of the science and went for the fear.
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And so we saw it happen, and it tumbled across our country,
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and it got worse as it came across and then it swept back imposing stricter and stricter and
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stricter lockdown measures the use of the mpis and so they gave into fear but i put it to you
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that there was no need to do that the country of sweden never used any of the mpis and came out
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far better than any of the countries in europe and in north america some leaders were strong enough
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and brave enough like ron de santis in florida after the first wave stepped back and said something
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doesn't feel right. He got Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, one of the authors of the
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Great Barrington Declaration to come, and he stopped and stated very clearly in
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May of 2020, we will never use NPIs and lockdowns again in Florida, and they
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didn't and came up far better than California who had massive restrictions.
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This was a choice by elected officials in cooperation with the medical officers
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of health and done completely incorrectly and we're still paying the price the the increase in
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suicides mental health issues the destruction of three years of our children's education which
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they have never going to be able to make up studies show that the loss of one year of education
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in child reduces their life span by three to five years and reduces their economic capacity by five
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to 10 percent. We have done catastrophic damage which is still showing in our society and unless
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we do a detailed recovery to recover from those use of MPIs, those dangers and consequences will
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continue. Did you at any point have an opportunity, I don't think you were still the emergency planner
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when this happened in 2020 but did you at any point have the opportunity to confront an elected
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official and say why are we doing this we should be doing something different i was fully retired
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in 2020 and what i did is i tried to contact i did contact every premier's office in canada
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all 10 provinces and three territories and i did it monthly begging them just to phone and talk to
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me here in alberta i got responses saying basically uh no we're going to do it differently and thank
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you very much don't call again so at the end of a year of constantly trying to contact premier
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offices i wrote uh what i called canada's deadly response uh to covet 19 in the hopes that one day
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elected officials and moh will be held accountable and it's published on the frontier center for
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public policy. It's an astonishing story. Do you believe that if similar circumstances arose today,
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the politicians would react in the same way? Could they perhaps have learned something from
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what happened five years ago? Unfortunately, I believe that until an elected official is held
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accountable for gross negligence and medical officer health similarly, that we will do exactly
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the same thing again the world health organization has put out a protocol which removes the powers
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of elected officials in countries and gives that power to the world health organization and canada
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signed that document so i believe we will not only do it worse we will do it immediately and longer
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Well, given that pandemics come around with depressing regularity, I suppose we'd better
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Next time there is a medical emergency, we're going to have to be individually prepared
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i believe that if individuals do their part and demand that elected officials become more
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accountable and that they become involved in their local politics we still can change this in time
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so you're right pandemics do happen there's been five in my lifetime uh and and they will happen
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again but we need to far more than just the health emergencies what's happening right now is we see
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a more and more authoritarian approach to our government at the federal level now here in
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alberta thank goodness we have some uh protections against that and and a government that doesn't
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believe in that but that's not true across our country and so i believe that it's time for us
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to hold accountable elected officials for what i would call gross negligence and that is chargeable
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in the courts and so we need to have citizens re-engage so when we talk about emergency
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preparedness the individual needs to take responsibility for themselves and their
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families far more i i always uh in in these type of discussions talk about helicopter parenting for
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20 20 years and bulldozer parenting for the next 20 years and what's that done in my opinion is
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it got citizens to think that risk wasn't theirs it belonged to government to manage that's not
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true and we need to make sure that we are building resilient citizens starting in kindergarten
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starting from birth but in the home and then all the way through their education process to say
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take back responsibility for the risk in your lives then you can see things like having children
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talking with their parents about a 72-hour preparedness kit and what their parents do
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and instead of saying things like when a when a forest fire happens everyone flee and evacuate
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all able-bodied personnel are built into a municipal response, pre-trained, and help fight
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the forest fire instead of running away and allowing just the SRD firefighters and the
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military to be called in to save their homes. It's time for communities to stand up and protect their
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communities in a trained and proper way, as is detailed in the Alberta Emergency Act.
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you know dave what you're talking about is the pioneer settler mentality that
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didn't look to government just got it done themselves we've got a long way to go to get that
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back thank you for coming on the show it's been great having you and for the western standard i'm