|
Armed Forces disaster team grounded by paperwork
Military expert 'appalled' by slow Canadian response
Chris Wattie
National Post
December 28, 2004
Canada's military disaster response team must wait for an official request from the Department of Foreign Affairs before it can be sent to help victims of a tsunami in Southeast Asia.
While other nations had teams already in the air yesterday to help with the aftermath of the deadly tidal wave, defence spokesmen said the Canadian Forces' Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) will not be going anywhere without the proper paperwork.
"A formal request would have to be made by the Department of Foreign Affairs to the Department of National Defence," John Morris, a spokesman for the Defence Department, said yesterday.
"To date, we have not received a formal request for our assets at this time."
Bill Graham, the Defence Minister, said the military teams will remain on standby for now, awaiting a formal request from one or more of the governments in the region hit by the tsunami.
Foreign Affairs would then pass the request along to the Forces, he said. "The DART team obviously is a potential tool," Mr. Graham told a news conference
"It's a wonderful tool, but it's for specific purposes, and we haven't seen where that's necessary at this particular point."
However Dr. David Bercuson, director of the University of Calgary's Centre for Military and Strategic Studies, strongly disagrees.
"It's exactly what [the Forces team is] designed for, and what it was actually used for up until the late 1990s," he said. "It's appalling that they haven't been offered already."
"What do we have a DART team for, if not for things like this?"
The Israeli Defence Forces yesterday dispatched a medical relief team to Sri Lanka and Thailand.
The Israeli military has also offered help to India, including a military search-and-rescue team and consignments of food and medicines.
The United States military also activated its military disaster-assistance teams yesterday, including units based in the Philippines, and Australia began loading emergency supplies on board two Royal Australian Air Force cargo planes.
"It's the sort of thing that makes me ashamed to be Canadian," Dr. Bercuson said. "It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that they have a disaster of major proportions over on the other side of the world and aid is flowing in from everywhere ... and where are we?"
The team, a group of up to 200 soldiers, medics and military engineers designed to fly to disaster zones around the world, was last dispatched to a Turkish earthquake site in 1999.
The Martin government was widely criticized this year for not sending the team to the Caribbean after a hurricane struck Jamaica and Haiti. Pierre Pettigrew, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, cited the cost as one reason for the decision not to send the team to help Haiti.
Dr. Bercuson said the government instead may be trying to avoid a potentially embarrassing problem with the military's ageing CC-130 Hercules transport planes. They are nearly 40 years old and more than half of the air force's fleet of 32 aircraft are under repair at any given time, according to internal defence documents.
"It would be a tremendous embarrassment if the DART team took off in its Hercules aircraft and had to turn back," Dr. Bercuson said.
It takes 26 separate Hercules flights to move the full team to a disaster area, and Dr. Bercuson said it is likely the team will be at its base in Kingston for at least the next few days.
"If they do go it will be an absolute triumph over adversity by the members of our military."
___________________
 Nathan Fake - Outhouse (Valentino Kanzyani Remix) || ID PLZ! PVD ID!!!
Disco and classical had sex while watching a sci-fi movie. Their child: trance.
|
Lieberal response to tsunami a disgrace
