Nova Scotia Guard: Wrong name, sloppy bill
Bill 455 needs to be rewritten
Nova Scotia’s Bill 455 is flawed and needs to be significantly reworked.
The bill enables the provincial government to recruit Nova Scotians to a vaguely defined and embarrassingly named “Nova Scotia Guard” to deal with emergencies.
Significantly, the bill also makes it legally possible for the government to call out the Guard for non-emergencies.
It’s not a bad idea to have an expanded database of available local skills and resources for disasters and relief. But the proposed Nova Scotia Guard, as currently envisioned, could lead to a lot of bureaucracy, duplication and confusion — even though the intended focus is volunteers.
Very awkwardly, the words “promote Nova Scotian pride” appear in the bill to describe one of the purposes of the Guard.
That kind of legal language worries me. It’s different than a politician’s sound bite in a speech. Volunteers’ CVs could be mined by a government wanting to find helpers with image and marketing.
MISLEADING NAME
If, however, the real goal is to build on Nova Scotians’ admirable culture of grassroots mutual aid, then the Americansounding, macho term “Guard” is plain wrong and misleading for a volunteer auxiliary of community-minded people.
At Premier Tim Houston’s news conference announcing the Guard, the backdrop on the screen already had an image of a shield — a kind of badge. The words “Nova Scotia Guard” were written in a font reminiscent of the animated television series PAW Patrol.
The bill was personally introduced by the premier (a rare occurrence for a premier) in the House of Assembly on March 28.
The bill has only gone through first reading. The cabinet regulations that would follow passage are not yet known. But the government is already recruiting on-line.
The government’s “early registration” webpage tells potential Guard volunteers what they might be called out to do: “Based on your skills and interests, this [the mobilization] can include everything from making and delivering food to providing first-aid, caring for pets and livestock, helping to remove debris, assisting with logistics, or delivering essential services such as search and rescue.”
The proposed Nova Scotia Guard has already raised the ire of existing regional search and rescue organizations. The president of the Nova Scotia Ground Search and Rescue Association says she was caught off-guard by the Nova Scotia Guard bill.
Moreover, it’s also not clear how the Guard will interact with the Red Cross’s volunteer emergency management teams.
BETTER APPROACH
I want to be constructive, not just critical. How can we enhance community capacity and overall co-ordination to deal with more-frequent emergencies and disasters?
The government could sign agreements with organizations that agree to be “recognized emergency partners.” These would be not just search-andrescue groups but willing service clubs, cultural organizations, universities and others. They would furnish and regularly update a list of services their members could provide, including things like delivering food or clearing debris.
These organizations can then be activated in times of emergency. The agreements with the province would cover their insurance and liability during the call-out. They could even get a modest grant after the fact in recognition of their services.
They could also apply for grants during quiet times for readiness and volunteer recruitment. This would have a positive spillover for existing organizations.
It would be less costly and bureaucratic than having a new administration based in Halifax trying to manage, update, vet, train, risk-manage and insure a vast and unwieldy network of individual, unaffiliated volunteers across the province.
It would tap into and cultivate existing community ecosystems of support and mutual aid, while providing some provincial co-ordination.
The province might still determine that there are some kinds of specialized volunteers that should be directly reachable by the minister or public servants. The province could directly manage such a limited database.
LOCAL CAPACITY
That’s different than the minister trying to maintain upto-date co-ordinates on every person in Nova Scotia who might be available to deliver food to isolated people. That’s an essential support, to be sure, but the volunteer doesn’t need to be placed in a hierarchical government unit commanded by a minister.
After the epic February snowstorm in Cape Breton, the premier wrongly chided the Cape Breton Regional Municipality for calling a state of local emergency.
I therefore have to worry about decoupling too many volunteers from their local organizations so that they can instead join a future “Nova Scotia Guard.”