Transcript

(P) Exercise STAGED RESPONSE 2019 recently wrapped up in Gagetown, New Brunswick.

The annual command post exercise focuses on domestic operations in the Atlantic Region and the planning required to respond and provide assistance to provincial government authorities during such operations.

Canada’s Defence Policy, Strong, Secure, Engaged, reaffirms that assistance to civilian authorities is a core mission of the Canadian Armed Forces.

(S) It’s Safety and Health Week, a time to raise awareness of the importance of injury and illness prevention in the workplace.

For instance, being a firefighter in the National Defence Fire Service has inherent risks of exposure to potential carcinogens while working on the job.

Here’s Lieutenant-Colonel Lee Goodman from the Canadian Forces Fire Marshal on how Defence’s Carcinogen Exposure Reduction Program aims to reduce these inherent risks.

(LG) We’re going to take this with a three-pronged approach. And the first approach is entirely about “Prevention”. We want to prevent the exposure so that we don’t have to deal with something later on. The other pillar is “Protection” and in a sense it’s the physical protection. We want to look at the bunker gear and the equipment our fire fighters use, and our actual practices once they’ve been exposed. So that we’re keeping that potential contamination away from their living place, the clean side of the fire station. The third piece, and in the long term that’s probably the most important piece, is we need to be rigorous in our record keeping. We need to ensure that anybody who’s exposed to a live fire event or another chemical exposure is “Recording” it. Because at the end of the day, when you leave the public service or military service you want to be able to document that in fact there were risks.