Muskoka is asking the province to change its regulations on yearly emergency exercises.
A resolution tabled at the district’s Health Services Committee in February asked regulators to exempt municipalities from annual exercise requirements if they have responded to an actual emergency that year.
Jeff McWilliam, Muskoka’s Chief of Paramedic Services and Emergency Management, says it would avoid what he calls a costly “doubling of effort.”
“We’re not suggesting that you just say ‘hey, we did an exercise, we’re out’. We could demonstrate proof to it, it’s just there’s a lot of time and effort that goes into planning exercises,” says McWilliam. “If the whole idea of an exercise is to learn from that, if you’ve gone through an emergency, you’ve already done the after-action review and learned from that, and implemented changes.”
According to McWilliam, there is precedent for such exemptions. He says the provincial government suspended the requirement in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but reinstated it for 2021.
Aside from COVID-19, McWilliam says Muskoka activated the Emergency Control Group multiple times last year, including for the water advisories for Bracebridge in January and Gravenhurst in November.
“If you’re including other area municipalities, maybe our local airport, [the] hospital, there’s lots of coordination between different stakeholders,” says McWilliam. “But then there’s the time of all those stakeholders. And these are things that are obviously important, but they do take time and they do take money to put these things on.”
For example, McWilliam says, an emergency exercise that lasts three hours and involves 20 people would mean 60 hours worth of staff time and wages. That’s without factoring in any of the equipment costs, or various logistical expenses that would be required.
Muskoka is not alone in this ask– McWilliam says the initiative came from his counterparts in Simcoe County.
If the resolution is ratified at next week’s District Council meeting, it’ll be forwarded to Premier Doug Ford, Parry Sound-Muskoka MPP Norm Miller, Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing Steve Clark, and Solicitor General Sylvia Jones.