The Military and Disaster Management: A Canadian
Perspective on the Issue
David Etkin
, Kenneth McBey
, and Cliff Trollope
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative
Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.
“The Military and Disaster Management: A Canadian Perspective on the Issue”
by David Etkin, Kenneth McBey and Cliff Trollope is licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to introduce students to the role of the military
throughout a range of crisis situations, ranging from emergencies, to disasters, to
catastrophes, primarily from a Canadian perspective. Specifically two issues are
examined: (1) the role of the military within the disaster/emergency management
cycle, and (2) the implications of militarization for crisis management. The
military plays an important role in disaster management, particularly during large
scale catastrophes, due to their special expertise, ability and resources.
Controversy exists, however, as how to best place them within the disaster
management cycle and to what extent the military model is appropriate. This
paper discusses issues such as command and control decision making structures,
and the use of and constraints to use of military forces in disaster management,
mainly within a Canadian context (with some comparisons with other countries).
Critiques of military style approaches to disaster management, and potential
weaknesses in the critiques (that are mainly written from a U.S. perspective) when
applied to the Canadian Forces are analyzed.
Corresponding Author, Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Toronto,
Ontario, etkin@yorku.ca
Graduate Program in Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, Toronto, Ontario
Business Resilience Practice Leader, Meyers Norris Penny
