Protecting Public Safety and Health

• Author: Craig Forcese
• Profession: Faculty of Law, Common Law. University of Ottawa
• Pages: 351-374

351

CHA PTER 9

PROTECTING PUBLIC

SAFETY AND HEALTH

The focus of this book has been a lmost exclusively on artif‌icia l threats

to n ational security — that is, threats intentionally caused by human

beings. This empha sis obviously dr aws on recent histor y, not least the

events of 9/11. A longer-range (and le ss Canadian-centric) review of

threats would, however, conclude that the events of 9/11 pa le in com-

parison to the potential harms to national security posed by extreme

natural occurrences or accidents. Moreover, technologies now exist

capable of converting acts of violence into bona f‌ide natural or pub-

lic health disasters, tracing their own trajectory in regions far beyond

those i n which they originally arise. Rad ioactive fal lout from nuclear

weapons or diseases spread by bioweapons are obvious ca ses in point.

Responding to these cala mities may require the suspension of

normal r ules of law, and the imposition of emergency mea sures. Thi s

book has alre ady di scussed in chapter 4 the federal Emergencies Act,1

its scope and its impact on the conventional st ructures of government.

The present chapter di scusses other laws that might govern responses

to natural or human-induced disasters and large-scale accidents, with a

focus on public health issues. It begins w ith a brief overview of disas-

ters as national security thre ats and then tur ns to an overv iew of Can-

adian emergency l aw. Finally, it probes more specif‌ically international

and national rules de signed to grapple with (and forestall) epidemics.

1 R.S.C. 1985 (4th Supp.), c. 22.

NATIONAL SECUR ITY LAW352

PART I: DISASTERS A ND NATIONAL

SECUR ITY

As the 2004 Canadian government national security policy observes,

“many regions of Canada have been subject to severe natural disasters

in recent years which have t aken lives and caused extensive property

damage.”2 The department of public safety disaster database includes 265

entries for t he period 1990 to 2006,3 an average of almost seventeen dis-

asters a year. The In surance Bureau of Ca nada — representing an indus -

try acutely sensitive to disaster trends — notes that “the frequency and

impact of natural disasters is on the rise worldwide. Earthquakes, hurri-

canes, tsunamis, forest f‌ires, tornados, ice storms and severe rain storms

are happening more often than ever before, and costing us more dearly.”4

A. EXTREM E WEATHER EV ENTS

Extreme weather events and f‌looding, in particula r, cause millions of

dollars of d amage annually.5 In the worst ca ses, they also t ake human

lives, and may cause nat ional crises, as events in New Orleans in 2005

demonstrated.

Climate change may precipitate even more radical extreme weather

events. The climate of any given region on the Earth is a function of an

endless list of factors. However, the planet’s climate system, as a whole,

exists largely because of the Ear th’s atmosphere, a soup of gases that

slows the dissipation of solar energy striking the Earth and thereby

facilitates the existence of a rea sonable ra nge of temperatures on the

planet’s surface. Changing the relative composition of these so-called

greenhouse gases a lters the rapidity with which this energy d issipates,

prompting changes in normal clim atic temperatures. All else held

equal, where the concentration of green house gases incre ases, temper-

atures rise.6

2 Canada, Sec uring an Open Society: Canad a’s National Secur ity Policy (2004) at 7,

online: ww w.army.dnd.ca/ lf/Download s/natsecurnat _e.pdf.

3 On-line: ww w.psepc-sppcc.gc.ca /res/em/cdd/se arch-en.asp.

4 Insurance Bu reau of Canada, Natural Disa sters, online: www.ibc.ca/en /Natural_

Disasters/.

5 See Insura nce Bureau of Canada data , online: www.ibc.ca/en/ Natural_Dis as-

ters/documents/Major-Multiple-payment-Occurences-NatDisast.pdf.

6 For a more detailed di scussion of climate cha nge science, see Environment

Canada, Scie nce of Climate Change (2005), online: www.ec.gc.ca/clim ate/over-

view_scienc e-e.html.