The following is an edited excerpt from and interview with Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, conducted in late 2005...

If sustained human-to-human transmission of H5N1 happens, what do governments need to start thinking about?

First the government is going to have to deal with is the tremendous amount of interest by the Canadian public. Because unlike other natural disasters, there is so much pre-warning, so much hype, so much discussion that folks are going to be very, very reluctant to let folks outside of the country come back into the country from particular areas -- and pretty soon from worldwide. And therefore there is very much a security issue here.

Airports, ports, border crossings – there will be a call from the grass roots to shut down the borders. And I don’t think that there is any doubt certainly in my mind that that would immediately happen.

In 1918-19, the last great pandemic, the military suffered proportionately from the infection. What kind of challenges would there be as a commander if a large portion of your troops were getting sick?

Any organization that eats together, sleeps together, trains together, exercises together, operates together in close proximity is obviously vulnerable to any contagious disease. That was the problem in 1918.

That being the case, if we extrapolate that to today, they wouldn’t suffer as much by way of passing a disease in that these days not a lot of soldiers live in barracks, they live at home and they commute to work.

However, in the event of an emergency or a disaster, then they would concentrate in some of the few bases across Canada. No more than hospitals, no more than schools, no more than universities. The threat to them would not be any greater than those other organizations that gather together to do their day-to-day profession.

What happens to civilian leadership in a time of crisis?

The civilian leadership has been getting organized since 9/11. Within Canada we have the Department of Public Emergency Security Preparedness Canada. There is also a cabinet committee that looks after health and emergency preparedness.

Within that public security emergency preparedness is a military component and the military helps with some of the communication and obviously plays a role with all the other first responders.

9/11 created a impression within Canada that we’ve dodged the bullet, but we are going to have to deal with either a large natural disaster, pandemic, or terrorists attacks and therefore we are structurally much better organized.

The departments within provincial governments and the feds, for the first time in some of their lives, actually get together in the same room and talk these issues over where it used to be what’s commonly referred to as silos. Not so now -- the only way we can respond adequately is if all the departments work together.

How would you go about closing the borders in Canada in the case of a pandemic?

We are talking about a pandemic here, so the idea of escaping across the border to another province, another country, doesn’t enhance your survivability. We are not going to be free of the pandemic in Canada if it happens in the United States or vice versa.

So you would need unmanned air surveillance, drones, that would identify groups of people if they were trying to cross the border and then you would launch the reserve forces so that you have standing by your rapid reaction forces to intercept them. The same thing on the coastline.

The way we are looking for drug runners coming on to the Nova Scotia coast now, you would just have to up the ante. It wouldn’t be haphazard; it would be 24 hours a day, and seven days a week -- extremely manpower intensive, very expensive.

How would you go about restrictions within Canada?

Within Canada, it is going to be extremely problematic because if my gut feeling is correct, the moment that there appears to be a really good chance of this becoming a pandemic in Canada, I would think a lot of folks would leave the densely populated areas assuming it would be safer to be out in the countryside. Would you rather be in Toronto, or in a ten in Algonquin Park in a tent somewhere?

I could see a mad rush from the large cities, from Montreal, from Vancouver, from Toronto to outlying areas and I can see the people in the outlying areas not being terribly welcoming. That sets up a security problem -- a law and order problem. And when you start using all your police forces and your military forces to cordon off certain areas, then you probably start getting looting and you have to redeploy your security forces. We’re not talking about large numbers here available to shut down a particular area and stop crime.

Under what scenarios does war start to break down in big centres?

I think it will be blatantly obvious when that happens. I think it will be very obvious when people’s reactions are observed by the government.

Now, maybe I am totally misreading Canadians. Maybe everyone will show up at work. Everyone in the medical system will show up to assist those that are ill. Schools will continue, universities will continues and life will go on as normal.

I personally don’t think that’ll happen, primarily because people are becoming more and more familiar with the threat and in fact have exaggerated it in some cases -- there is education that is being done for all the right reasons, but at the same time it is elevating the level of concern. I think the public will react in ways the will demand and enhance security within the country.

^TOP

What would be some of the things that you worry about in terms of public reaction?

Traffic jams, disobeying of traffic rules, hording food, hording medical supplies, invasion, overwhelming smaller communities’ medical facilities, much the same as it would with a major terrorist attack.

We tend to look at enhancing the medical facilities within large cities, when in actual fact, people will leave the large urban centres and overwhelm the smaller centres.

How do you begin to coordinate a response to that?

You don’t fix it, you deal with it. You try and employ the resources that you have -- police, military, fire -- to establish a degree of normality and to show people that in actual fact, you are dealing with a situation. You’ve got to deal with it on the educational side, with propaganda -- because propaganda can be a positive thing -- get propaganda out and get folks to understand what the real threat is.

On a national level, where is the nerve centre for response?

The PSEPC – Public Security Emergency Preparedness Canada has an operation centre in Ottawa, it reports to a cabinet committee. Deputy Prime Minister, Anne McClellan, is the key minister responsible, and here are representatives from the different departments at that operation centre.

Where would some of the fault lines be between what politicians think they need to do to satisfy voters, and what actually needs to get done to make Canada a safer healthier place during a pandemic?

I can’t think of another challenge facing the country where a political party would have to have a suicide death wish if it tried to play the political game and start throwing blame around. If they do, they deserve to be annihilated as a political party. It would be totally and absolutely inappropriate. There will be lots of time for that after the event; God knows we’ll have a royal commission to look at how we reacted, what went right and what went wrong.

But during the build up in particular and during the actual event then I think it would be the parties’ political interest of survivability to cooperate with each other.

In terms of closing the borders, there are a lot of experts that say it’s useless, but that we need to do it to satisfy people.

Closing the border would be hurtful. We all know the figure – a million dollars a minute, 365 days a year, goes over the border into the United States. That’s our economy. It would have a horrendous impact on the economy; there would be great concern from the business community about shutting down the borders. It wouldn’t be an easy decision for the government to make.

What is your sense right now about how well prepared we are to maintain security in a pandemic?

My only concern is the amount of horsepower that is available – the limited amount of personnel to deal with security issues. So what do you do? You have to pick your priorities. And you have to assign your resources to your leading priorities.

In 1918, troops were used to do things like dispose of bodies because they were piling up in the big centres. What other things do you think troops might have to do in an extreme pandemic?

There are other areas where the military could contribute: moving supplies, trucking things around, communications, travel control, food preparation. The military has what we call ‘flying kitchens,’ where trucks have cooking facilities in the back and can move from point A to point B and can set up and be serving meals within an hour.

Personally, are you worried about the flu pandemic?

I’m concerned. Sure. But I am not losing any sleep over it and with some confidence say that, if nothing else, we are better prepared to deal with it now then we were five years ago.

MORE INTERVIEWS»