History
Source: The BCDRC was established more than 20 years ago in response to citizens' requests to be informed about the activities of the Canadian military involving chemical and biological armaments, particularly but not exclusively those at CFB Suffield. CFB Suffield, an army base located in southeastern Alberta near the hamlet of Ralston, is primarily a training and research facility. With its expansive and isolated testing grounds, it had been the site of numerous field tests by the British and American forces of chemical warheads during the World War II and Cold War eras. Since 1971, it has hosted the British Army Training Unit Suffield for large-scale armoured warfare exercises. Starting out as the Experimental Station Suffield in 1941 (as a replacement for the French/British experimental station at Beni Ounif in Algeria that had fallen toMandate
Source: Canada is a State Party to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction (commonly called the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention) and to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production, Stockpiling and use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction (commonly called the Chemical Weapons Convention). However, the threat from such weapons persists and the Government has an obligation to ensure that members of the Canadian Forces are able to protect themselves against them, whether while deployed abroad or while supporting domestic responses to terrorist incidents or other emergencies involving these agents or related materials. Nevertheless, the Canadian public and the international community have the right to be assured that Canada maintains a strictly defensive capability in regard to such materials and that any research, development or training activities undertaken in this vein are conducted safely. The mandate of the BCDRC is to provide an independent, third party review of the Biological and Chemical Defence (BCD) research, development and training activities undertaken by the Department of National Defence (DND) and the Canadian Forces (CF) with a view to assessing whether they are defensive in nature and conducted in a professional manner with no threat to public safety or the environment. The committee's activities are funded under a renewable, five-year Contribution Agreement with DND. These activities vary somewhat from year to year, but always include lengthy and in-depth visits to DRDC Suffield, theMembership
The Committee consists of three non-government scientific members and an executive officer who coordinates and administers the affairs of the Committee. The scientific members include a toxicologist nominated by the Society of Toxicology of Canada, a microbiologist nominated by the Canadian Society of Microbiologists{{Cite web , title=Home , url=http://www.csm-scm.org , archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20240916055308/https://csm-scm.org/ , archive-date=2024-09-16 , access-date=2024-12-25 , website=The Canadian Society of Microbiologists , language=en-US and a chemist nominated by the Chemical Institute of Canada. The Executive Officer is a retired senior military officer. For all Committee members, the terms of service were initially set at three years, but have varied in length since then. One of the scientific members is chosen by the committee to act as the Committee's Chair.Reporting
In its initial mandate, the committee reported to the Chair, Defence Science Advisory Board, who relayed the report to the Deputy Minister and the Chief of Defence Staff, who then could respond and eventually release the report to the public. Later, the reports were posted on a DND website dedicated to the BCDRC. Today, the BCDRC operates at arm's length from Government and operates its own website where its annual reports since 1991 are posted. Ahead of publication, the reports are still reviewed by the DND for national security reasons but have never been edited or censored. They are then translated into the other official language.References
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