Notes on Organizational Legitimacy: Reflections on the New Brunswick Emergency Measures Organization
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Date
1974-05
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Publisher
Disaster Research Center
Abstract
Description
In New Brunswick, in the early sixties, the Energency Measures Organization was divided into three segments based on Provincial, County and Municipal organizations each contributing to the costs with the Federal Government on a 75 percent, 12 1/2 percent, 12 1/2 percent basis. All efforts in this field were supervised and controlled by the Province, and depended mainly on volunteers. In 1967 there was a major change in the concept of Provincial Government operations, centralizing many of the responsibilities of the Municipal Government and dissolving the existing County Government system. At this time, E.M.O. became a sole provincial operation based on a Provincial Headquarters and five areas, each with its own headquarters and small staff.
After the 1968 Federal budget cut, the Provincial Government lost little time in initiating its own E.M.O. cutbacks. In the spring of 1968, the New Brunswick Government announced a major re-organization of the provincial E.M.O. From a separate entity, E.M.O. was absorbed into the Municipal Affairs Department, and the Deputy Minister of that department was appointed Provincial Co-ordinator. Staff was reduced to one full-time training officer, and his secretary. The inventory of equipment accumulated by New Brunswick E.M.O. was transferred to departments of government whose normal activities were allied to a number of responsibilities previously the sole jurisdiction of New Brunswick E.M.O. A member of the Provincial Government which initiated these measures explained, in an attack on the proposed expansion of E.M.O. four years later, that his government had decided that "there was very little these people could do or were asked to do.”
Keywords
history, structure, activities, emergency, E.M.O, New Brunswick