The Harper government stepped up its response to earthquake-ravaged Nepal on Sunday by dispatching advance elements of its highly specialized Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART).
Defence Minister Jason Kenney told CBC News on Sunday evening an advance team of experts was already en route and is expected to be in Nepal by Monday night.
The team will assess the situation and determine how to deploy other resources including DART, the military unit that deals with natural disasters or humanitarian emergencies.
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A shipment of emergency supplies and the first wave of DART members departed CFB Trenton on Sunday evening — flying to Europe, Kuwait and then India, where they will wait until called into Nepal.
Separately, Foreign Affairs Minister Rob Nicholson said the advance team will take in the scale of the devastation following magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which has flattened many buildings and left as many as 2,500 people dead.
The team is expected to report back in a few days on what opportunities exist for assistance and that is likely when the search and rescue elements will be told to go in.
The full DART unit consists of a medical platoon and mobile clinic, engineers and equipment to clear debris, a communications team and a mobile water purification system to provide cleaning drinking water.
It was last deployed to Panay Island in the Phillippines during the fall of 2013 after Typhoon Haiyan. DART also took part in disaster relief operations following devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Pakistan.
DART is designed to deploy for up to 40 days to help stabilize the region until the local government and international aid agencies are able to step in with their own assistance.
DART members load equipment into a C177 Globemaster at CFB Trenton in November 2013. (HO-Department of National Defence- Cpl. Levarre McDonald/The Canadian Press)
Nicholson says he's spoken with Nepalese counterpart, Mahendra Bahadur Pandey, and "expressed Canada's willingness to help in any way possible."
Ottawa announced Saturday it is contributing $5 million to relief efforts.
The Department of Foreign Affairs is also boosting its consular staff in the region to assist stranded Canadians.
The department said on Saturday that there are 388 Canadians registered as being in Nepal, but cautioned that is only an estimate as registration is voluntary.
Nicholson's office was asked, but did not respond to questions about whether the number had been updated and what the status might be of Canadians in that country.
The DART became a political football in late 2004 when Paul Martin's Liberal government was seen to be slow in putting the unit into the field after a earthquake and tsunami devastated parts of Sri Lanka.
Although the team was ready to go within a day, the government didn't announce its response for 48 hours after the disaster, and it took nearly two weeks for the DART to get going because of a lack of transport aircraft.
It was one of the reasons the Conservative government pushed ahead with the purchase of C-17 heavy-lift transports.
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