Who Governs Emergency Information? OCAP® and First Nations Fire and Flood Response

Introduction

Wildfires and floods continue to pose significant emergency-management challenges for First Nations in Canada, including communities in British Columbia and Manitoba. Indigenous Services Canada’s (ISC) incident data show that from 2009–10 to 2021–22, First Nations communities in Canada experienced 1,352 recorded emergencies, including 727 floods and 406 wildfires, resulting in 584 evacuations, 90 of which lasted longer than three months. The Auditor General further concluded in 2022 that Canada had not provided First Nations with the support needed to manage these emergencies and that ISC’s approach remained more oriented toward response and recovery than prevention and preparedness.

Public Safety Canada’s Emergency Management Strategy emphasizes that access to accurate risk information is critical to informed decision-making and that effective emergency management requires information about hazards, vulnerabilities, exposures, resilience and community-specific circumstances.

The principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (OCAP®) offer a framework for how First Nations could govern this information while also making appropriate information available to emergency-management partners. Developed by the First Nations Information Governance Centre (FNIGC), OCAP® provides principles to guide how First Nations information is collected, protected, used, and shared, and explicitly links these principles to First Nations jurisdiction, self-determination, and data sovereignty.

This raises an important question: how might a more systematic application of OCAP® principles strengthen First Nations’ ability to govern, maintain, access, and authorize the use of reliable information before, during, and after emergencies as an essential aspect of effective emergency management?

Why Information Governance Matters in Emergency Management

Information is a core component of emergency-management capacity. Public Safety Canada’s (PSC) national framework emphasizes risk assessment, timely information sharing, early warning, emergency planning and interoperable systems. These capabilities depend on access to information on hazards, vulnerabilities, infrastructure, community capacity and local circumstances. The framework also calls for communities and Indigenous peoples to integrate traditional knowledge into emergency management and disaster-risk reduction.

PSC’s Canadian Core Capabilities List further identifies the following as necessary to emergency management:

• The capacity to collect and assess information about hazards, vulnerabilities and community capabilities;
• the ability to share timely and actionable information;
• the maintenance of early-warning systems;
• the development and validation of emergency plans; and
• the operation of interoperable emergency-management systems.

The emphasis on whole-of-society and Indigenous collaboration also underscores the importance of ensuring that emergency information is locally relevant and developed with appropriate partners. Depending on the priorities and circumstances of each First Nation, relevant information might include community-defined information on infrastructure, roads and evacuation routes, housing, available equipment, local responders, community facilities, vulnerable infrastructure, previous flood levels or fire behaviour, local environmental observations, culturally significant or prioritized areas, and community capacity.

One possible application of OCAP® principles would be to establish information-sharing protocols before an emergency occurs. A First Nation could then determine, before an emergency, which datasets may be shared automatically with provincial fire agencies, ISC, evacuation coordinators, or health providers. It could also determine which datasets require specific authorizations, who can authorize changes, and what information can be disclosed only under defined circumstances. The value would be in moving decisions about information governance from improvised crisis-time arrangements to pre-established, Nation-approved information-sharing arrangements.

The practical question, then, is not only what information should be shared during an emergency, but who determines what information exists, who maintains the authoritative record, who may access it, under what circumstances it can be disclosed, and whether the First Nation itself retains continuing access and stewardship.

Ownership: Treating Emergency Information as a First Nations Asset

FNIGC defines Ownership as the collective relationship of a First Nation to its information. Applied to emergency management, Ownership could mean recognizing information describing the Nation, its citizens, lands, infrastructure, vulnerabilities and experiences as more than an administrative product associated with a particular program, agency or funding requirement.

This has a potentially important preparedness benefit. The Auditor General found that ISC did not use information about community emergency risks and response capacity to inform its program decisions. An OCAP®-aligned approach could support a shift toward First Nations maintaining information for their own governance and making appropriate information available to emergency-management partners, rather than relying primarily on information collected for external program or reporting purposes. This could help ensure that the information remains useful to the Nation between emergencies rather than existing primarily to satisfy external program requirements.

Control: First Nations Decision-Making Over Emergency Information

FNIGC defines Control as the right of First Nations to exercise control over all aspects of information-management processes that affect them, including planning, management, review, and use. In emergency management, Control is especially relevant because Canada’s current policy framework already recognizes that emergency-management partners should participate in governance and decision-making.

Public Safety Canada’s Emergency Management Strategy calls for governments to strengthen partners’ roles, empower partners to develop emergency-management approaches and establish dialogue with Indigenous peoples concerning the emergency-management needs of their communities. Its Core Capabilities List further prioritizes Indigenous collaboration based on recognition of rights, respect, cooperation and partnership.

This emphasis on First Nations participation and decision-making also aligns broadly with principles reflected in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, including the right to participate through chosen representatives in decisions affecting Indigenous peoples. Article 18, for example, recognizes Indigenous peoples’ right to participate through their own representatives in decisions affecting their rights.

Access: Ensuring First Nations Can Use Information About Themselves

FNIGC’s definition of Access is that First Nations must be able to access information and data concerning themselves regardless of where those data are held, while also retaining authority to determine access by others.

Public Safety Canada also emphasizes access to accurate risk information, the sharing of timely and actionable information and public access to information about community disaster risks. The Emergency Management Strategy additionally identifies historical disaster information as useful for understanding risks, mitigation and decision-making.

This principle could be reflected in shared emergency-information systems in which the First Nation is not only a source of information but has ongoing access to the information being used by emergency-management partners. Depending on community choices and technical capacity, this might involve dashboards, shared geographic information systems, standardized incident records or other interoperable systems that remain accessible to the Nation.

Possession: Building Institutional Memory and Continuity

FNIGC defines Possession as the physical control or stewardship of data and the mechanism by which ownership can be asserted and protected.

Possession may be particularly important in communities experiencing recurring wildfire and flood risks, because information from one event can inform planning for the next. The Auditor General’s incident data show that First Nations have been repeatedly exposed to emergencies over more than a decade, including long-duration evacuations. Public Safety Canada likewise emphasizes learning from previous events, conducting post-event reviews, exchanging knowledge and incorporating lessons into future emergency plans.

When a First Nation possesses and maintains authoritative copies of its emergency information, each fire or flood event could contribute to a community knowledge base: which areas flooded, which infrastructure failed, which evacuation routes worked, which resources were required, and which recovery decisions were made. Maintaining these records within the Nation can help ensure that locally relevant knowledge and lessons from previous emergencies remain available to inform mitigation priorities and future emergency plans.

In addition to the data sovereignty element, First Nation possession and stewardship of this information could also support continuity of emergency-management knowledge across incidents and changes in external service providers.

What an OCAP®-Aligned Approach Could Look Like

Because OCAP® is not a prescriptive model, its application to emergency management would necessarily look different across First Nations. One possible approach would begin with each Nation determining its own emergency-information governance protocol, including which information it considers authoritative, how information is maintained, who may access it, what may be shared during an emergency, how culturally sensitive information is protected, and how records are retained.

Where Nations choose to participate, regional First Nations organizations could support technical infrastructure and interoperability, while federal and provincial partners could connect through agreed standards without requiring the underlying community information to be transferred into external ownership or control.

Moving Forward: A Case for Further Application and Evaluation

The case for applying OCAP® to fire and flood response in Canada should not be overstated. Available evidence does not show that applying OCAP® principles to emergency information governance directly leads to measurable reductions in evacuation times, property loss, or emergency mortality. Direct empirical evidence linking OCAP®-aligned information governance to specific emergency-management outcomes remains limited, creating an opportunity for further implementation, documentation and evaluation.

However, there is a clear policy and governance rationale for further testing and evaluation. Canadian emergency-management policy identifies risk information, information sharing, interoperability, community-specific planning and coordinated governance as essential capabilities. The Auditor General has repeatedly identified shortcomings in how the federal government assesses First Nations emergency risk and capacity and in the intergovernmental arrangements through which emergency services are delivered.

As of April 1, 2025, the Auditor General reported that emergency-service agreements had decreased from six to four and wildfire agreements from six to five since the 2022 audit; four of the five wildfire agreements did not cover all First Nations in the relevant province, and no multilateral agreements involving First Nations had been established.

OCAP® offers a distinctly First Nations approach to the information-governance dimension of this problem. Applied in this context, Ownership would treat emergency information as a collective First Nations asset. Control would support First Nations decision-making over how that information is created and used. Access would support Nations’ ability to obtain information about themselves regardless of where it is held. Possession would support the stewardship and continuity of information over time.

An OCAP®-aligned approach could strengthen the role of First Nations as governing partners in the collection, stewardship and use of information needed to understand risk, coordinate response and learn from previous emergencies. The extent to which this produces better emergency-management processes or outcomes is an important question for future implementation and evaluation. Such an approach could also align with broader Canadian emergency-management priorities around risk information, interoperability and collaborative governance while offering a distinctly First Nations framework for determining how community information is governed.