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Canada's efforts to respond to large-scale disasters are being hobbled by "bureaucratese" and a lack of communication, according to a new report released Tuesday morning by the Senate Committee on Security and National Defence.

Coming on the eve of an election call, the strongly worded report garnered a political reaction within hours of its release. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day dismissed the findings in a written statement as "irresponsible" and then accused the committee chair, Liberal Senator Colin Kenny "of playing fast and loose with his alleged research."

The plainly titled report — "Emergency Preparedness in Canada: How the Fine Arts of Procrastination and Bafflegab Hobble the People Who Will be Trying to Save You When Things Get Really Bad" — amounts to a progress report on federal emergency-planning measures.

The report suggests that past floods, ice storms, the SARs epidemic and blackouts in Canada, and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, should have served as a wake up call for various levels of government to hatch concrete plans to work together to ward off disaster. But the Senate, which last looked at the issue in 2004, finds there has been little discernible progress.

"It can be measured in inches," Mr. Kenny said in an interview Tuesday.

"There's that tremendous line from Cool Hand Luke," he said. "'What we have here is a failure to communicate.'"

The report makes a point of being a plain-language review of disaster-planning measures in Canada, and sometimes adopts a chiding, even sarcastic tone, as it reviews replies federal agencies gave to questions the Senate asked them.

"Bafflegab is a peculiar kind of language that is unique to public servants who are trying very hard to justify their existence," Mr. Kenny said. He went on to say the new report can appear as if it were written "a tad emotionally," but that was partly a reaction to the "smug self-satisfied way bureaucrats and politicians go about handling what could be life-and-death issues."

The Senate committee researched the report by corresponding back and forth with bureaucracies and departments across Canada. Among the problems the report highlights are the lack of follow-up funds handed out to municipalities to maintain or improve their readiness.

The committee also found that "there is no centralized system of funnelling "lessons learned' and "best practices" to first responders who will have to deal with emergencies on the front lines."

The Senate tried to speak directly to front-line responders to disasters. For example, last year a survey was sent to the heads of disaster planning for 92 cities across Canada, and the completed questionnaires are incorporated in the report.

To use one example, the City of Toronto's emergency manager, Warren Leonard, was asked whether Canada's largest city would be prepared for a disaster on the scale of the hurricane Katrina disaster that afflicted New Orleans a few years ago.

"Our belief is that real operational support to municipalities is one of the shortcomings of the current hierarchy of emergency management in Canada," he replied.

He said that judging from what he knew about the federal response to the evacuation of Canadian citizens from Lebanon two years ago, there would be a "prolonged debate" about who got to be the lead agencies as well as competing requests from different agencies.

The report points out that the Department of National Defence has announced plans set up for disaster-response platoons across Canada. Yet the Senate committee has "been unable to retrieve any information as to whether 'security platoons' or these 'rapid reaction' battalions are for real or figments of someone's imagination," the report says.

Canada has 165 field hospitals, with 200 beds each, stashed around the country, but the report finds that municipalities do not necessarily know where the stores are. And some municipal officials who have seen them complain that the supplies are "Korean-war vintage."

The committee also suggests there has been no progress by federal officials to provide municipalities with equipment that could be used in the even of a chemical, radiological or nuclear attack.

"As for action, none yet. No guarantee of action in anyone's lifetime," the report says.

"... Let's give Nero credit where credit is due: At least he played the fiddle."

The tone of the report drew the ire of the Tories. "The Senator's report, from the title on down, is irresponsible and does not reflect the true picture of how much progress has been made in protecting Canadians since the last election," the Public Safety Minister, Mr. Day, said in a statement from his office.

"We did not have to wait for Senator Kenny to tell us that the Liberals neglected emergency management for 13 years."

The multivolume report found that there is no system to force the communications industry to keep citizens informed during emergencies; and described overall emergency planning and funding in Canada as "top-down."

"[Federal] and provincial bureaucrats issue edicts to municipalities to prepare for emergencies without listening to first responders," the report notes. "There are at least a score of major issues that deserve serious (and timely) attention."

The senate committee last reported on the topic of emergency preparedness in March of 2004, issuing a report titled "Canada's Fragile Front Lines." That report also gave Canada's emergency preparedness efforts a failing grade.