Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/925007
18 DECEMBER 2017/JANUARY 2018 www.vanguardcanada.com security ecosystem vide medical support for mass casualties, and longer-term aspects such as reclaiming and rebuilding neighbourhoods. Countries have to take measures to ob- jectively inventory their capabilities and conduct an organizational analysis on how their ministries and entities communicate, coordinate and collaborate. It is a continu- ous process; there is never a point where you can stop analyzing your organization- al approach to make sure the seams and gaps are closed – and stay closed. At the same time, more effort is required upstream to assess and understand at-risk populations. "One problem we consis- tently find is our inability to grasp the factors that are radicalizing youth," says Gen. Allen. "Countries have not moved far enough upstream to assess the sources and means of radicalization. When was the person who became an extremist or terror- ist radicalized, how long did it take, what were the principal factors? These answers are really important for understanding how to reduce hot-spots of extremist ac- tivity. We need to conduct systematic com- munity outreach and work in close part- nership with community leaders to reduce these vulnerabilities." In addition to these immediate, on-the- ground issues, global megatrends can be expected to further exacerbate current se- curity challenges. Global megatrends "Global megatrends are driving defence and security vulnerabilities that are almost all non-country specific," says Thomas Modly, PwC's Global Government De- fence Network Leader. He notes that Western democracies are all facing similar types of challenges. "They have diverse populations, they face decentralization of the threat, and technology is enabling individuals and very small groups to do highly disruptive and destructive things that they couldn't have done twenty years ago." These megatrends – macroeconomic and geostrategic forces that are shaping our world – present both tremendous oppor- tunities to seize and extremely dangerous risks to mitigate. While they may affect dif- ferent countries in different ways, depend- ing on each nation's own institutional and structural strengths and weaknesses, the