Throughout the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic response, the Government of Canada has been providing significant support to provinces and territories.
The Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, the Honourable Bill Blair, confirmed that the Government of Canada has approved an extension to a Request for Federal Assistance from the Province of Ontario to manage the COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care and retirement homes.
As a result of this extension, the Canadian Red Cross will continue to support long-term care and retirement homes upon request from the Ontario government until November 30, 2021, with the option to extend by an additional two months until January 2022.
The Red Cross deployment is funded by Public Safety’s new Humanitarian Workforce Program, which was set up in Summer 2021, following the 2020 Fall Economic Statement. In the Fall Economic Statement, the government announced its intention to provide additional $150 million over two years, starting in 2021-22, to support the Canadian Red Cross and other non-governmental organizations in building and maintaining a humanitarian workforce to provide surge capacity in response to COVID-19 outbreaks and other large-scale emergencies.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government Operations Centre has administered more than 130 Requests For Federal Assistance (RFAs), of which 40 were COVID-19 specific RFAs (including extensions) from the Province of Ontario. These requests have been administered in collaboration with federal organizations such as the Department of National Defence, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, as well as with non-governmental partners, such as the Canadian Red Cross.