By GLORIA GALLOWAY
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Ottawa â †Federal officials say a Canadian disaster-response unit launched with much fanfare in 1996 is not being deployed in the early days of the tsunami crisis because its field hospital and water-purification unit are not the relief tools required at this time.
Critics worry that cuts to the military have made it financially impossible to move the Canadian Forces Disaster Response Team, known as DART, to the areas levelled by the giant waves. It takes 24 lumbering Hercules airplanes to transport it out of the country and cost the government $15-million the last time it was dispatched.
But representatives of the departments of National Defence and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Canadian International Development Agency, said yesterday that finances and logistics are not keeping the unit grounded.
Deploying DART â Å“very much has to be driven by the needs that have been identified in a given crisis situation based on what our partners on the ground are telling us,â ? said Elissa Golberg, a director of humanitarian affairs in the Foreign Affairs Department.
Water purification is the major requirement in regions hardest hit, and Ms. Golberg said Canada has responded by sending water-purification tablets and other components on a plane that left for Sri Lanka yesterday afternoon.
DART, which involves more than 200 military personnel from medics to security officers to field engineers, is not generally used during the first 72 hours of a crisis, she said. It was not sent to Haiti earlier this year when a hurricane killed more than a thousand people and has only been deployed on rare occasions.
â Å“It's more of a medium-term intervention,â ? Ms. Golberg said. â Å“The DART is not off the table. It's an important part of our tool kit. But we need to make sure that it is the kind of tool that is needed to respond to this particular circumstance.â ?
Colonel Guy Laroche acknowledged that there are not enough Hercules available to get DART to a country like Sri Lanka, but said there are other methods of transport that could be used, including commercial aircraft.
Ms. Golberg added that the government has been discussing ways to better mobilize the operation, including breaking it up so that, for example, the water-purification unit could be deployed on its own.
Ministerial officials denied that Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew and International Development Minister Aileen Carroll being out of the country for holidays has affected Canada's response. Both ministers have been in regular contact with their departments and officials overseas even if they have not been available to talk with the media, they said.
A spokeswoman for Defence Minister Bill Graham said DART would not be used without a request from one of the countries hit by the disaster or one of the aid agencies working in the region.
â Å“This is the biggest catastrophe in years,â ? said Isabelle Savard. â Å“On the other hand, we're not just going to put people on the plane without knowing where they are going to go and what they are supposed to do.â ?
But Ted Menzies, the Conservative critic for CIDA, said he was concerned the unit was being kept at home for financial reasons.
â Å“I have to wonder, have we cut our military so badly, does DART even exist any more?â ? he asked. â Å“I hope that they're there because, if we were ever going to put this team into action, now is the time.â ?
He also questioned whether there could be any doubt that a field hospital and a water purification unit would be valuable in areas hit by tsunamis.
â Å“We've seen enough news clips on television to know there is a disaster â †probably the largest natural disaster that we have ever seen and hopefully ever will see in our lifetime,â ? Mr. Menzies said.
â Å“We're going to sit back and wait for a request to come and help? That's ridiculous.â ?
In fact, Ms. Golberg said, the government of Sri Lanka has said it believes it has enough medical professionals to deal with the crisis and the situation in other countries such as Indonesia has not been fully assessed.
â Å“We never want Canada to be in a situation where it just deploys a tool because we have it. We have to make sure that the kind of things that Canada provides is going to meet the needs of the victims.â ?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20041229.wxtsunami-dart29/BNStory/National/
[Moderator note: Edited only to remove useless links]
