ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the trend toward public policy thinking based on long-term risk reduction, its guiding principles and aims for disaster management and the critical challenge it presents to the dominant conceptual model employed in emergency management. It provides necessary background against which to identify gaps in policy research concerning the interdependency dilemma, the public information infrastructure, and the management of critical infrastructure. In Canada, telecommunications policy for emergency management is rather narrowly focused and existing programs have been developed based on the predominant response-oriented model of emergency management. Mitigation-oriented social policy is thus regarded as an enlightened approach to building and maintaining civil society, a view clearly reflected in several of the key themes that emerged from the early round of consultations that took place in 1998. Among those key themes, several echoed the view that a mitigation strategy needs to be extended across a range of public policy undertakings.
