U.S., Canada open to a 'NORAD-like' model of joint disaster response: Blair
CBC As Canada grapples with hundreds of wildfires burning across the country, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair says the federal government is looking for ways to deepen its cooperation with the United States on disaster response.
In an interview withCBC's The House airing Saturday, Blair said he's spoken with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) America's federal disaster response force on how to better cooperate in respondingto major natural disasters.
"We've been talking about even a NORAD-like approach," he said. "Because these emergencies of wildfires, floods, earthquakes, emergencies writ large and all hazards they're borderless."
That was made obvious this week when dangerous wildfire smoke from intense fires in central Canada drifted south over Ottawa and Toronto to the east coast of the United States.
Blair did not say whether deeper cooperation might meant the creation of a new cross-border agency or an organization similar to NORAD, or a different sort of cooperative framework altogether. NORAD is the Canada/U.S. joint military aerospace defence command, which patrols North American airspace and has operations facilities in both countries.
