Jim Montgomery
President and CEO
Canadian Disaster Response Organization (CDRO)
After 32 years of service with Ottawa Police Service, principally with service in the Emergency Operations Division, as a member of the Tactical and Explosives Unit. Jim was a member and the Officer in Charge of the Explosives Unit for 19 years and a Supervisor or Training Coordinator of the Tactical Unit for 22 years. For the final five years of his career, Jim was the Emergency Management Program Coordinator for the Police Service and was a sitting member of the City of Ottawa, Emergency Management Program Working Group.
Jim ended his career with the Ottawa Police on a secondment to the City of Ottawa, Office of Emergency Management as the Response and Development Coordinator responsible to research, develop and implement a comprehensive and inter-agency training and exercise program for emergency management.
Jim retired in 2009 and became the Deputy Chief for the City of Ottawa’s Office of Emergency Management. Over ten years with the City, Jim played a critical role in the design, development and implementation of a comprehensive and integrated emergency management program. The Program included the seventeen business lines of municipal services, and included partners and stakeholders from utility services, non-governmental organizations and provincial/federal ministries.
In 2014 the City of Ottawa Emergency Management Program was awarded the internationally recognized Emergency Management Accreditation Program’s recognition, EMAP is an independent non-profit organization, that fosters excellence and accountability in emergency management programs, by establishing credible standards applied in a peer review accreditation process.
Jim retired from the City in 2019, after serving ten years as the Community Emergency Management Coordinator for the Nations Capital
Jim is a co-founder and currently the President of Canadian Disaster Response Organization, a not-for-profit non-governmental organization consisting of in excess of seventy members with over 1,000 years of experience and expertise
Jim currently holds the Disaster Recovery Institute designation of Associate Business Continuity Planner, and with the Emergency Management Accreditation Program is an Accreditation Manager and an Assessor for the Program.
Jim as a Master Exercise Program Practitioner has facilitated, planned, hosted and evaluated international, national, municipal and agency specific exercises.
Jim has been an Instructor with Canadian Emergency Management College, Canadian Police College, and National Incident Commanders Working Group. Jim also is a member of the Emergency Management Ontario’s Incident Management System Steering Committee and Training Working Group. Jim is certified to instruct for Emergency Management Ontario’s Basic Emergency Management and Incident Management Courses and for ICS Canada’s Incident Command System Courses
Jim is happily married with three grown children, who are now leading their own lives.
