Friday is the deadline for B.C.’s 78 search and rescue groups to register with the province Emergency Management and Climate Readiness agency.
Under new directives outlined in the Emergency and Disaster Management Act, which passed into law Nov. 8, the B.C. government wants Ground Search and Rescue teams, which represent 3,400 volunteers, to register as public safety providers (PSP) for three-year terms so their members are covered by liability insurance.
But Jordan Sturdy, the BC United MLA for North Vancouver-Sea-To-Sky, says there a chance some SAR groups will ignore the deadline.
“It’s an arbitrary invitation to apply, though these teams have been operating 10, 20, 30 years and are in good standing, and they felt this was a bit offensive,” said Sturdy.
“There are issues around the ministry taking responsibilities away from the organization. In the past, when it came to recruitment, that was the purview of the SAR teams. Now the provincial administrator has the right to establish standards, protocols, procedures with respect to recruitment.”
The new membership requirement was first communicated in mid-November and before the extension was granted it gave the groups just two weeks to determine what their obligations and responsibilities will be as PSPs. Sturdy says SAR members, before they sign on, are looking for clarity on how the new legislation will be implemented and how the government will make its management decisions.
“The big one is it will become the purview of the provincial administrator to create the standard procedure with respect to deployment of volunteers and that really irked a lot of these guys,” said Sturdy. “ A Whistler SAR member of a Pemberton SAR member is here to serve the community and the people in the region. They didn’t sign on to get sent to Prince George.”
While SAR groups have been asked to register, the government says volunteers do not need to sign on individually. Each individual is registered for a five-year period as a Public Safety Lifeline Volunteer, and only needs to renew every five years.
Sturdy is a former B.C. Ambulance Service paramedic and ski patroller at Whistler-Blackcomb and he’s intimately aware of the concerns of members of the 11 SAR groups in the South Coast region. He’s worried the added layer of bureaucracy and what he sees as a lack of collaboration from the government will negatively affect the operations of SAR teams.
He says the province has promised consequences to SAR groups if they do not register.
“They have been threatened with not being tasked, and they don’t want it to come to that,” he said.
“It’s going to come to a head this Friday and it could be that we have no search and rescue on the South Coast on Saturday, that’s pretty dramatic. They’re there as volunteers and at some point they can’t just be browbeaten into this.”
In the fall of 2021, the Ministry of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness implemented a pause on new capability requests from SAR teams (the services they actually provide). The policy was put in place to ensure their resources are best aligned with the needs of requesting agencies such as the RCMP and BC Emergency Health Services.
In north-central B.C., the moratorium prevented Bulkley Valley SAR west of Prince George from proceeding with a plan to add a flat-ice rescue capability. It alspo stopped Fort St. James SAR from adding tracking capability and ruled out advanced training for a dog handler with tracking ability hoping to work with Houston SAR.
In an email, the ministry said the pause will remain in effect until a needs analysis is completed to develop an evidenced-based approach to positioning of SAR resources across the province.
The ministry said there is no intent to fundamentally change the process for the deployment of registered SAR volunteers and that any changes contemplated in future will be made in consultation with the Provincial Ground Search and Rescue Advisory Committee, made up of members of the SAR agencies and the B.C. Search and Rescue Association.
