At next Tuesday’s council meeting the three elected members of the Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee will be giving a presentation on the background of how the municipality created the model for the governance structure through recovery and rebuilding our community.
Speaking to reporters in a meeting Wednesday afternoon Councillors Keith McGrath and Sheldon Germain explained the process had started May 12 and administration had recommended creating a committee and task force structure on May 25.
It’s something Germain said he wished had been made public from the beginning but they’re working now to correct some misinformation about how the structure of the Recovery Committee and Recovery Task Force came to be.
It was the brain-child of administration based on best practices developed in other communities for responding to a disaster. The idea was to create a governance structure with members of council taking part so that administration could focus their efforts on the operations side of things.
The committee and task force will work within the overall strategic plan of the RMWB but will form their own silo.
“It’s like a board of directors,” Germain said, explaining the committee will only oversee the governance portion of the recovery work while the task force will offer a specialized service model based on resident’s needs and will handle the operations side of the recovery and rebuild work to be done in the community.
“The recovery committee is the governance structure, it’s non-operational, it’s a council-mandated committee to support the needs in recovery,” said Germain. They essentially make the legislative changes that have to be put in place to allow the work of the task force to go forward.
By separating all staff who will work in the task force the municipality is able to track all spending above and beyond normal operations of the RMWB. As many as 80 people will be moving into the 5th floor of Jubilee Centre to work specifically on recovery, whether they’re people already employed in the administration side of the RMWB and moving over to the task force or they are people who will be hired as an expert from industry, the community, other levels of government or from around the world.
McGrath said they’re looking to bring in the best people suited to the work and in many cases that will mean people who work for the RMWB and already understand the framework of how this municipality operates. But that will also mean contracting services out to experts in intergovernmental relations, for example, who can help ensure work with the federal and provincial governments runs smoothly.
And that’s important because the other two levels of government will play a significant role in the recovery, not just through helping with things like environmental monitoring and resource management but also with funding the recovery effort.
Expenses from recovery, including salaries, to be covered by provincial and federal governments through disaster funding
Any expenses above and beyond normal operations, including the salaries of the task force staff and committee members, will be covered by the Disaster Response Program. That program is a nation-wide program that sees the federal and provincial governments contribute to the cost of recovery after a disaster. It’s a sliding scale that can see the federal government cover as much as 90 per cent of the costs in some areas.
The expenses to be covered by the DRP include the full-time salaries of the three councillors sitting on the committee. The RMWB is also applying to have the salary increases of part-time councillors covered by the DRP as they, too, are directly related to additional work taken on during the response to the fire and recovery.
At the meeting with the media Wednesday, McGrath and Germain made it clear the six members of the public at large who sit on the Wood Buffalo Recovery Committee will be compensated for their time. The same model used for determining the salaries of the full-time councillors will be used to determine these salaries, based on hours and commitment and expertise. That compensation model has been in effect since April 2009.
The RMWB has received more than 70 applications for that committee, the most ever received to serve on any committee in the municipality’s history. The Selection Committee will go through its usual process to choose six people from those 70 applicants to serve on the committee.
There are certain skill sets they’re looking to bring to the committee, including:
- governance experience
- strategic planning
- communication and government relations
- financial acumen
- executive leadership experience
- legal and legislative experience
- risk management experience
- human resources leadership
- health and safety leadership
- stakeholder relations
- public engagement
- indigenous peoples leadership
- rural development leadership
- planning and development
- project management and construction experience
The goal is to have all of those skills met by the sum total of all nine members of the committee.
McGrath said the six members of the public at large who will serve on the WBRC will likely be chosen within a week.
“If this was just about rebuilding there wouldn’t be a committee,” McGrath said, adding their work will be about the people of our community first and “making sure no one falls through the cracks.”
Once all nine positions on the committee are filled they will have to start the democratic process of electing a chair from amongst their ranks and electing a co-chair. This process cannot begin until all members of the committee have been chosen. There is no requirement for either the chair or vice chair to be a member of council, the positions can be filled by anyone sitting on the committee.
Then they will get down to the business of running the governance structure of the recovery work.
Getting to work
In order to launch the operations side of things they need funding. The committee will draft a projected budget for their work for the year but they can’t do that without some staff to start.
So, at Tuesday night’s council meeting the committee will be asking council to approve some start-up costs for the WBRC and Recovery Task force totaling $4 million.
This is based on ball park estimations of the short-term costs of getting both the governance and operations sides up and running. They forecast committee expenses at $200,000, administration salary expenses at $500,000, overhead expenses at $3 million, and contingency for unrecognized costs at $300,000. Again, these are only short-term estimates and will be worked in to the long-term budgetary planning, but they need immediate funds to bring administration under their operations to do that planning.
This committee will help smooth the transition from the Regional Emergency Operations Centre to the full recovery operations. Many of the experts who took part in the initial wildfire response and the re-entry are expected to serve now on the task force.
Having a governance structure in place will help bridge that gap.
Recovery efforts are expected to take years with the understanding there are no one-size-fits-all solutions and that the work must be done step-by-step, will be relationship-based and will be difficult.
The committee is expected to be in place for the next 36-48 months, or three to four years to put it another way. After that it’s expected there will be a change in the reporting structure and recovery will become part of municipal operations in some way.
With the Recovery Task force operating in a separate silo, as something greater than just a separate department, the RMWB will be able to track all expenses and apply to have them covered through the Disaster Response Plan. They do already have an assurance from the province that incremental costs will be covered.
Germain explained they will have to present the rationale behind their spending and present a business case.
“It’s not a blank cheque,” he said, adding there are reasons they have to make a case for the spending but that within reason it will be covered. There are even some elements above what the DRP will cover that the province has agreed to help with.
McGrath said it’s important for the public to know that every time they’ve requested a meeting with the province they have had the door thrown open for them and have been welcomed with open arms, insight and the help they’ve needed.
If council approves the start-up funding request next Tuesday, the committee and task force will get to work on fulfilling their duty to get residents back into their homes and to rebuild the community.
They will follow five pillars: people, environment, economy, rebuild, and mitigation. Those pillars will help guide the work they do with the understanding the people come first.
The presentation will be live for you to view when the agenda is released on Friday. All members of the public are invited to Tuesday’s council meeting to see the presentation and to speak on it. You can also, as always, watch the meeting live online or on Shaw TV.
