Disaster Assistance Response Team

The Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) (French: Équipe d'intervention en cas de catastrophe (EICC)) is a rapidly deployable team of 200 Canadian Forces personnel. It provides assistance to disaster-affected regions for up to 40 days. DART's headquarters is in Kingston, Ontario. DART was created by the Canadian government in 1996 in the aftermath of the inadequate response to the 1994 Rwandan genocide, when Canada's aid arrived after the peak of a cholera epidemic. The government determined that it would be of the utmost importance in many disasters if it was able to rapidly deploy a group of people until long-term aid arrived. DART has an annual budget of CAD $500,000, although during specific incidents Parliament can choose to temporarily allocate millions of dollars to DART to fund their response effort. For example, Operation Torrent, the aid mission to Turkey in the wake of the 1999 earthquake which left 17,000 people dead, saw CAD $15 million used by DART in the response.