This is the best summary I could come up with:

Retired Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie told CBC News the lack of a national rapid response force to help with wildfires, floods, evacuations and other emergencies is putting citizens’ lives at risk.

A federal emergencies ministry spokesperson told CBC News there are multiple ways Ottawa is preparing for future natural disasters, including $700 million spent on wildfire management, where the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre — which co-ordinates mutual aid between provinces and territories — is key.

He sees several options for what authority might oversee such an agency, but the armed forces have an obvious appeal — especially if they can gain specialized training, and respond to multiple types of climate disasters quickly.

Already, experts say, the country’s military is severely underfunded, and struggling to maintain operational readiness — let alone coming close to Canada’s NATO obligation to invest two per cent of its Gross Domestic Product into its armed forces.

He said Canada’s overseas commitments — including thousands of troops in Russian neighbour Latvia, and training and supplying Ukraine — combined with multiple domestic deployments this year alone have pushed the CAF to the “breaking point.”

But, he asked, is soldiers filling sandbags during floods, felling trees to create wildfire breaks, and going door-to-door during ice storms going to actually mitigate the worst to come with climate change?

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