Military Relief

The Canadian military still uses weapons. More and more often, however, the Canadian Forces are involved in peacebuilding, reconstruction, disaster response and development efforts that don’t require much ammo. This week, we invite Elissa Golberg, Canada’s permanent representative at the UN and former director of the Stabilization and Reconstruction Task Force in Afghanistan, to imagine what role the military can play in complex crises. We also feature Rahul Singh who, the year of the Haiti earthquake, was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people for his work with Global Medic in delivering disaster relief alongside national forces.

http://www.globalmedic.ca/ Rahul Singh

looking forward to the discussion
Sharonya Sekhar

is there supposed to be audio?
Elissa Golberg

Good afternoon Philippe. Hi Rahul.
http://twitter.com/liamswiss Liam Swiss

Hello! I am really enjoying the discussion here so far. I wonder if either of Elissa or Rahul might be able to discuss whether and how they think the recent budget cuts experienced at DND/DFAIT/CIDA will affect Canada’s ability to respond to complex humanitarian crises going forward? Will our capacity to respond be affected?
Elissa Golberg

My last words on the subject (I seem to have been booted out of the system) – The Canadian government has come a long way in the last decade. We have built up tremendous experience, and we have made important investments particularly in the last 5 years that have greatly enhanced our ability to analyze crisis situations, deploy our people to them or work in support of others who may already be there, and to program in very difficult environments. More can always be done, especially in prevention and mitigation. We also need to recognzie that engaging in crisis contexts is extremely challenging, and for conflicts it takes patience as change is not linear and often take a great deal of time. I am confident Canada will continue to make a positive contribution.

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Military Relief