THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 28, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries, as well as rural and Indigenous communities, throughout the country.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: I call to order this meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. Good morning, everyone. It’s good to see you here.
Before we begin, I remind you about the earpieces, the microphones and the need to keep one away from the other to help ensure the safety of the folks behind us that work and support us. When you’re not using your earpiece, feel free to leave it down on the sticker that’s on your desk. Thank you for your cooperation.
I want to begin by welcoming members of the committee, our witnesses today who are all online, and those watching the meeting on the web. My name is Robert Black, senator from Ontario, and I chair this committee.
Before we hear from our witnesses, I would like to start by asking senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator McNair: John McNair, New Brunswick.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Burey: Sharon Burey, Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory, homeland of the Métis.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
The Chair: Today, the committee continues its study on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and the agriculture industry.
We have two panels today, and, for our first panel, we welcome, as an individual, Stephanie Montesanti, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Health System Integration, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, who is joining us by video conference.
From the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, we welcome Kara Westerlund, President, also joining us by conference.
Welcome to our witnesses, and thank you for being with us. You will each have five minutes for your presentations.
With that, the floor is yours, Dr. Montesanti.
Stephanie Montesanti, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Health System Integration, School of Public Health, University of Alberta, as an individual: Thank you, senator, and good morning.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. My name is Stephanie Montesanti, and I live and work in Edmonton on Treaty 6 territory, the traditional lands of diverse First Nations and Métis people, including the Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, Ojibway, Saulteaux and Anishinaabe.
My opening remarks outline the health effects of wildfires on rural, remote and Indigenous communities in Alberta.
Our University of Alberta team researched the health and mental health effects, as well as social harms, experienced by Indigenous residents and communities following the 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray. This research was conducted in partnership with McMurray Métis Local and the Nistawoyou Association Friendship Centre
On May 1, 2016, a wildfire swept through the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo in northern Alberta, causing a mandatory evacuation of 88,000 residents and the loss of 2,400 homes and commercial buildings. The wildfire, also known as the Horse River wildfire, resulted in community devastation, destruction, loss of homes, job insecurity, financial loss, injuries, impacts on mental health and displacement and separation from loved ones.
Disasters are stressful situations that may challenge the individual and the community’s ability to cope with unexpected and sudden stress.
The region is home to five First Nation communities and five Métis communities.
Many Indigenous communities do not have the necessary resources, capacities, and infrastructure to mitigate, respond to and recover from disaster events adequately. Pre-existing social and economic inequities and past historical trauma also contribute to Indigenous residents’ experience of disaster evacuation and displacement. For instance, Indigenous communities often experience poorer access to health care and significantly higher rates of disease, which further exacerbates vulnerabilities and their ability to cope during a disaster.
Our team’s research highlighted not only the experiences of physical and emotional stress from the wildfire but also the challenges that Indigenous residents faced when accessing necessary services and supports for health and mental wellness. External support from local and provincial government agencies was underscored as critical in assisting Indigenous communities in coping during and after the wildfire.
Following the Fort McMurray wildfire, local addictions and mental health staff received a massive jump in referrals in the first two months after the fire — 20,000 in 51 days, compared to the typical 1,200 per year.
Wildfire health research conducted in the region highlighted the prevalence and delayed onset of mental health concerns. While evacuees are often focused on the immediate physical and material concerns such as housing or loss of property, mental health and emotional issues were usually not identified until months or years after the wildfire.
I wanted to highlight a few important lessons from our work. One is focused on the attention needed for the long-term mental health impacts following wildfires. Emergency response plans and activities are frequently designed to address and mitigate the immediate impact on the health and safety of affected communities and residents; however, few emergency plans fully anticipate and prepare for disasters’ long-term mental health-related effects.
To highlight the consequences of this, following the 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, the Alberta government funded additional mental health therapists to deliver mental health services in the region, but they were funded on short-term contracts, and this does not align with the evidence I referenced on the lingering, long-term impacts of mental health.
Second, jurisdictional relationships and coordination can delay providing needed mental health services and supports for Indigenous residents. The jurisdictional relationship between the federal and provincial governments, for instance, has generated tension regarding who is responsible for funding health, resulting in confusion, setbacks, resentment and failure to address health and mental health care in Indigenous communities, not only related to funding for health services but also with components that impact the determinants of health. Whereas the federal government has a fiduciary obligation to First Nations’ and Inuit health in Canada, our research findings have demonstrated a lack of clarity on federal leadership in emergency management for First Nations.
There is also a lack of recognition for Métis governments and rights, and given our partnership with McMurray Métis local this was noted during the wildfire. With the onset of the wildfire, the Métis local in the regional municipality of Wood Buffalo had no emergency response plan, and they were neither integrated nor considered in the disaster response plan within the region and not eligible for receiving support from the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.
Indigenous organizations and local health service centres were reported as being underfunded and understaffed, impacting their ability to be prepared for public health emergencies.
Some recommendations for the future: First, Indigenous communities need to be included in the planning and emergency evacuation and response. Health system responsiveness during the wildfire could also be improved by encouraging community control over what services are provided. Second, by increasing awareness of health and social and inequities and risk management — I think my time might be up.
The Chair: It is; I apologize. Somebody will ask you the question about your recommendations, and that way you’ll be able to finish your presentation, if you don’t mind.
Ms. Westerlund, please proceed.
Kara Westerlund, President, Rural Municipalities of Alberta: Thank you. I want to say a special good morning and welcome to Senator Sorensen. I’m coming from Banff this morning at Buffalo Lodge, so I’m enjoying your community out here this morning.
Thank you for the invitation to present to you today. My name is Kara Westerlund, and I am the President of the Rural Municipalities of Alberta, or RMA.
The RMA represents Alberta’s 69 municipal districts, counties, specialized municipalities and the special areas board. Together, RMA members provide municipal services in 85% of the land based in Alberta, which represents about 15% of the population. You can imagine the challenges we have there.
As such, RMA members are impacted by wildfires every year. I want to share with you about these impacts and highlight work that RMA has undertaken to help identify solutions to managing wildfires. I’ll also close by speaking about my experience as an elected official in Brazeau County, which was directly impacted and hit by a major wildfire in 2023.
Following Alberta’s historic 2023 wildfire season, we surveyed our members to better understand the challenges they faced related to wildfire preparation and response. Only 18% of survey respondents reported that they were not impacted by wildfires in 2023. Fifty per cent of survey respondents reported that a wildfire occurred within their municipality, 32% hosted evacuees, 29% required evacuations themselves and 66% provided resources to other municipalities. In total, 2023’s wildfire season cost Alberta’s rural municipalities more than $78 million in response costs. These numbers demonstrate that wildfires have widespread impacts on rural communities that lead to significant and unpredictable local financial impacts.
I want to shift now to discussing how municipalities in Alberta are involved in fighting wildfires. I recognize that in most cases challenges in this area are within provincial jurisdiction; however, they tell the story of how wildfires impact local planning and response capacity. In Alberta, responsibility for wildfire response varies based on region. In Alberta’s forest protection areas, which are created by provincial regulation and covers most of northern Alberta and the eastern slopes, the province is responsible for wildfire response. Outside the forest protection area, responsibility falls to municipalities. Of importance for this committee, large forested and agricultural lands are located outside the forest protection area, and non-forest protection area wildfires seem to be increasing in frequency and severity in recent years. This has significantly strained the capacity of rural municipalities and created more acute issues around access to training, funding for wildfire-specific equipment, a heavy reliance on primarily volunteer firefighters, challenges in communication between municipalities and other levels of government during wildfire events, and others.
To address the challenges of managing wildfires outside of the forest protection area, RMA put together a multi-stakeholder working group. This group met over the summer of 2024, and a final report is being developed and it will make recommendations to improve planning, response and recovery related to wildfires outside the forest protection area. While the recommendations are not yet finalized, many of them address the need for increased supports for municipal fire departments to enable them to respond to wildfires that are larger, last much longer and occur more frequently than those previously experienced in our communities.
A specific example of a support that would assist municipalities in managing wildfires is access to mapping data that shows fuel loads and other risks. Municipalities do not have the capacity to build this data themselves and are not in a financial position to pay for access to this data. This may be a natural point of increased federal-municipal collaboration, as it is our understanding that significant federal data exists related to wildfire risk that is often unavailable to local authorities. In addition to the cost of fighting wildfires, unfortunately, we are seeing increased cases where municipalities have their infrastructure damaged or destroyed. This runs the gamut from roads and bridges to water and wastewater facilities, and even our recreation facilities. The loss or damage of this critical infrastructure has a significant financial impact on municipalities. Increased funding from other levels of government to make rural municipal infrastructure more resilient to wildfire and other disasters would also go a long way to lessening local impacts when wildfires do occur.
I will end there. I did see the hand from you, chair. If there are any questions, I didn’t get a chance to speak about my own local experience from my community. That was all I had left.
The Chair: Thank you very much, we’ll move on to questions. Senators, five minutes for a set of questions and answers. I will start with the questions and ask Dr. Montesanti: What were your recommendations?
Ms. Montesanti: Thank you, senator, my recommendations are twofold. One is to focus on investments and resources for addressing the long-term mental health impacts following wildfires. I had noted that emergency response plans and activities are frequently designed to address and mitigate immediate impacts of disasters on health and safety. However, few emergency plans fully anticipate and prepare for a disaster’s long-term impacts on health and mental health.
The second recommendation focuses on jurisdictional relationship building and enhancing coordination with respect to emergency management and planning, as well as acknowledging Indigenous rights and governments and their role in identifying their needs and providing that support to develop their own response and recovery plans. Related to that is increasing awareness around health and social inequities in risk management, and I think this is possible. It’s important to engage communities in risk reduction planning to promote their own community-led and culturally safe responses to disaster and emergency management.
The Chair: Ms. Westerlund, how have you been impacted by fires?
Ms. Westerlund: In May 2023, I am sure many of you are aware that my community of the Drayton Valley and Brazeau County area was evacuated due to a large wildfire. Ten thousand residents from the two communities had to evacuate. We had to send them to Edmonton, which is about an hour and a half to the northeast.
It burned right into the edge of town. It took out, I believe, six homes in the community and quite a bit of oil and gas infrastructure in our community. Obviously, that is used for heating in Alberta. Heating your homes was a little difficult at that time; it was still cool.
I was actually involved in it. I was evacuated from my property. I have young children. It’s hard, actually. Even a year and a half later, I’m still tearing up talking about it. Ms. Montesanti had commented about the mental health challenges that we were facing in northern Alberta, and we see that in our community as well. Anyone who hears a siren in the community — I have seen people instantly burst into tears and they are taken right back to that moment. Being told you have to leave your house for two weeks, we were out of our community and did not know what was left and what we were going to come home to. It was quite difficult.
I don’t wish this on anyone, but unfortunately, we are seeing an increase in this, and it’s not going to go away any time soon. I think the stories are going to continue, and the work that we’re going to be doing together is so important and key as we move forward.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Simons: Thank you to our two Alberta witnesses for getting up very early in the morning Alberta time to be with us.
Ms. Westerlund, I want to start with you. We heard from witnesses earlier in our testimony who were from Indigenous communities who spoke very powerfully about how helpless they felt when they were told that their trained firefighters were not allowed to participate. They felt alienated from helping their own communities.
I wonder if you could speak a little bit about the situation of rural municipalities and how much autonomy you feel you have to respond to fires as opposed to people at a provincial command centre telling you what you can and cannot do.
Ms. Westerlund: It’s difficult to say. We experienced similar stories in my community of Brazeau County. People who work in the oil and gas industry who are highly trained around wildfires and fire protection were turned around at the frontlines as well. I think there has been a lot of work done between municipalities and the province regarding how we’re going to address matters when people are qualified and we’re turning them away.
It’s difficult in those situations. I’m not trying to defend what happened, but give a little bit of context. As an elected official — I was actually deputy reeve at the time of the fire. Our reeve was in the hospital having heart surgery, so I was in the centre of it. The issue is that you don’t have time to verify the credentials, and if you allow somebody into that type of scenario and you haven’t done the background checks properly and it turns out that they do not have the qualifications and something happens, dare I say it becomes an insurance issue and a lawsuit.
I know from our communities and talking with rural municipalities, we’ve been encouraging municipalities — including mine — to take steps to reach out to industry and to those individuals in the community who have those types of credentials and that background to make sure that we have up-to-date contact information and that their credentials are up to date within our office. When this does — dare I say and I will say it — happens again, we’re going to be a lot more prepared the next time around, and hopefully we won’t be hearing any of those stories where people who are qualified to help, are turned away.
Senator Simons: Wasn’t that so much I meant as the question of jurisdiction. I understand that the RMA had taken issue with some of the provincial legislation that encroached. I wonder if you talk a little bit about that.
Ms. Westerlund: Yes, some of the new legislation does. It gives them sweeping powers to step in. We’re also a little bit confused with the legislation proposals because, in effect, they actually had the power before and they had the power to do it then, and they do.
What we were hoping for out of the legislation —
Senator Simons: The power to do what, precisely?
Ms. Westerlund: To step in and basically take over the command centre within your community. For instance, at the beginning of the fire in my community, Brazeau County and Drayton Valley firefighters were in control. We were running the control centre, but the fire got too big for our manpower. I made comments that in a lot of our municipalities has rural volunteer firefighters.
We were a little bit confused with the legislation because the power to step in and take over the command centre for fires was actually already there. We’re more concerned about what the end result is. We were confused because we knew they had the power. It’s what now, and what is going to happen with that sweeping power? We are pushing that hard it needs to be a partnership and a collaborative approach when you’re dealing with these fires and these communities. We often say that local knowledge of the area is key, and when you have somebody who is not from the community and who doesn’t understand the road system, it can be a bit of a challenge.
Senator Simons: I’d love to have a question for Dr. Montesanti on the second round, if possible.
Senator Sorensen: It’s very nice to see you, Ms. Westerlund. I have much respect for the work of RMA and, of course, our municipal councils.
Understanding that having to engage with other levels of government for funding or support for communities — in the municipal world, we say as children of the province going on bended knee with our hand out on a regular basis — I know it is not easy or quick. As an advocacy group and a networking group for rural municipalities, I think you were touching on some of the suggestions. I was going to ask about a long-term strategy, but maybe elaborate a little bit more on the work you are doing. I couldn’t tell if it was mostly working for advocacy to the province on what to do about wildfires, or if there is an element in there that is going to be used as a tool for your members.
Ms. Westerlund: It is definitely a combination of all of that information. I agree with you about going on bended knee to the province and to the federal government looking for money. Obviously, front and centre for us is protecting infrastructure within our community. Some of those asks, obviously, on the funding side of things is to have access to funding to better protect the infrastructure that we have in the communities.
The other piece I mentioned is having some of the access to the data that actually already exists. The federal government has access to that data. Being able to access that data would help to better plan how we’re going to address some of these issues within the communities.
For example, I’ve actually sat with — I’ll use a private company — Weyerhaeuser Canada. I think a few of you from Alberta are familiar with them. I sat with their forest protection management advisory group as an elected official and — dare I say — 18 years ago I did that work. They were calling for wide-sweeping logging activities around my community which, in all honesty, probably would have prevented the severity of the fire that we had.
We’re looking for all that information. We’ve cast the net wide, and we’re going to work on it from there. I think the biggest thing for us from the federal government, obviously, is the funding piece and the access to the data that we need to better plan our communities around the future.
Senator Sorensen: Thanks very much. Are you working with Dr. Beverly at the University of Alberta, by any chance?
Ms. Westerlund: Not that I know of.
Senator Sorensen: I’m going to have my office reach out to you. She was a witness last week, and then I had lunch with her and the mayor of Banff after the committee meeting. In terms of data and mapping, et cetera, it is very interesting work that she has been doing for 25 years. I think it would be very interesting for you to connect with her.
Ms. Westerlund: Wonderful, that would be great.
Senator Sorensen: We’ll reach out, Ms. Westerlund.
Ms. Westerlund: Thank you.
Senator McBean: I guess I’m going to go to Ms. Westerlund in the same direction as Senator Simons.
We’ve been hearing witnesses before us talk about a need. Some say it would be great for there to be a federal wildfire response team that could jump into situations and triage as they go, depending on what’s going on. We’ve also heard others say it would be better to provide increased training and support to local wildfire firefighters to the Indigenous populations. It was interesting to hear from you that one of the things holding them back was credentials.
Where would you allocate resources? Would you think the best federal response to proactively supporting wildfire response would be to have a team that moves around as needed or to increase support, including equipment, more locally that can respond in a more timely way?
Ms. Westerlund: From our perspective, definitely the increased funding for training, equipment and access in that avenue.
In being a part of RMA, we actually own our very own reciprocal insurance company. This is probably a piece that you guys were not aware of. We insure many of these communities through a private insurance company.
That being said, we actually have access to a specialized wildfire team. They were heavily utilized in Jasper’s wildfire and were incredibly successful in protecting municipally owned infrastructure. That in itself becomes a bit of a struggle too, because you have a specialized team within a community protecting certain assets in a community. You can understand the difficulty and the perception of that. We faced it a little bit of push back from the public.
To be honest with you, on the rural municipalities side and our members, we have access to some of those specialized teams already, especially if they have insurance through our program. Honestly, the increase in funding, training, equipment and being able to support our local firefighters and our local businesses that already exist would probably be where your money would be best spent in our communities.
Senator Muggli: Good morning. I have a question for Ms. Montesanti. I’m curious what your thoughts are around mental health response and whether in the midst of an event there might be some value in standing up a mental health incident command structure specifically to deal with immediate concerns and maybe then some follow-on to create an ongoing plan. Having been in this situation before in a traumatic event, I know it was very helpful to set up a specific mental health incident command structure so we could ensure we didn’t leave anyone behind. I’m curious to hear your thoughts about that.
Ms. Montesanti: Thank you for that question. Certainly, having an approach or strategy to address those immediate impacts is needed. Those have been conversations that I’ve been having with Indigenous community partners and tribunal councils up in Wood Buffalo.
Where the investments have gone, because of the immediacy of the crisis, a lot of the resources and attention are dealing with the immediate impacts of damage to infrastructure, loss of homes and the evacuation plan, and mental health and the impacts on health and mental health has not been a priority from the onset.
The research that we’ve been doing has shown that the mental health impacts linger well beyond the wildfire or the disaster itself. Some of the data that we found in Wood Buffalo is that the impacts were lingering almost up to 10 years post-wildfire. If we were to have a mental health incident command centre, the response to that also needs to go beyond just the immediate assessment of the immediate impacts and providing those additional resources and supports at the onset and acknowledging that sometimes mental health impacts do not show until many years after. It’s kind of like the flight or fight response.
Families are trying to deal with getting their family safe, dealing with the insurance companies in terms of rebuilding their home and then moving back to their home after the evacuation and adjusting to the new normal.
That is where we’ve seen gaps with respect to where those resources are allocated, and it is not just the 2016 wildfire, but we have seen it in other examples as well.
Senator Muggli: Certainly, grief and loss are not things that are always instantaneous. You are right. In fact, I’m sure that many of these communities have increased suicide rates as well.
Regarding the displacement process, I’m from Saskatchewan, and Saskatoon often receives displacements from fires and floods from the North. We have always had significant issues around mental health and addictions but also acute care and home care-related needs for people being displaced.
What are your thoughts on working with or preparing receiving communities? Maybe that is where some of the mental health incident command needs to be. I am interested in your thoughts about that. We can start with Ms. Westerlund.
Ms. Westerlund: Thank you for that. This is maybe some of the positives and a bit of bright light in what we’re discussing today. The City of Edmonton received many of the evacuees from my community. I have to extend a huge thank you to that community.
They were well prepared. The mental health workers were available.
The issue that we find and face is not everyone went to Edmonton, obviously. It is trying to track down and figure out where everybody is and make sure that they have access to those resources.
I agree. There is work to be done with those communities who are receiving evacuees to ensure that those systems are in place and people are where they need to be. There is some difficulty with that too. As I said, when you are dealing with 10,000 people, trying to figure out where everyone is and the best way to get that help out there is difficult.
Senator Petitclerc: I, too, wish to explore the mental health challenges following fire. I will continue with that aspect.
First, thank you for being here.
I have a question for Ms. Montesanti, and it is a specific question. It seems to me that mental health impacts or trauma following wildfire would be specific. I am not sure if you have that answer for me. Do the mental health professionals need to build a specific expertise or competency to address a post-fire mental health approach? If so, are we helping them to be prepared to help with that specific trauma?
Ms. Montesanti: Thank you for that question. Yes, I think that mental health therapists are equipped to address the mental health concerns. The resident, at the onset of a wildfire, may not know or be in tune with the stress they are experiencing. But a mental health therapist will be able to provide that support, ask the right questions and gain a better understanding of how they can support them at the onset and provide coping strategies or mechanisms that those residents can carry with them going forward.
That support can relate to trauma-related support, helping them to understand what that experience has been, especially for residents who, perhaps, have been witnessing their place of residence or other businesses in their community burn down. The stress itself is going to have impacts in the weeks or months to come. A mental health therapist can help those residents with coping strategies or mechanisms they can take with them to address.
To your point, it is complicated. It is hard to understand how an individual might experience that trauma, grief and stress. It varies from one individual to another. Like most mental health supports it needs to be tailored to the individual’s unique situation and experience.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. I am asking because I know for some specific situations mental health experts will specialize. That is where my question came from.
Along the same lines, is it your view that individuals will go to mental health? How good are we at organizing? My question for Ms. Westerlund is: How good are we in organizing so that the mental health experts actually go to the community? Do we go to the schools? Do we go to the community centres? Should we do that? Is it more of a one-on-one approach where someone will reach out for help?
Ms. Montesanti: Following the Fort McMurray wildfire in the municipality of Wood Buffalo, Alberta Health Services funded mental health therapists to go to the communities. They were there for two days a week. Again, the services were sporadic and not consistent.
We heard about concerns from communities with respect to that, that it was not enough time to build a relationship or trust with a mental health therapist. There were mental health therapists going into schools to connect with youth or children as well. To answer your question, yes.
As to where they go, primary care plays an important role there too. During the Jasper wildfire, there was a health care crisis happening in Hinton. Hinton was a community that was supporting and taking in evacuees, but there was a shortage and lack of trained health care professionals, including primary care providers.
That is a point I wanted to raise in terms of how the backdrop of this is access to health services.
Ms. Westerlund: I will echo what Ms. Montesanti is saying. We hear the same thing, the struggles on both sides. It will be a combination of those mental health workers going into the communities and schools, as well as just being available for the phone call or when to pick up.
It will be key and important in moving forward. I agree with Ms. Montesanti. Last year, in May, we were still having the same struggles trying to get enough mental health workers in the right areas. As I said, you have your community members spread out as well over a wide area. It is a struggle, something that needs to be addressed. I do not think that any of us today has the answer to how to fix this, other than we are going to have to keep working on it.
Senator Burey: Good morning, everyone. Thank you so much for being here and for sharing your experiences and expertise.
We are on the mental health train. I will continue in that light.
Knowing we will have more disasters, whether it be wildfires, infectious agents, pandemics, anything you can think of, we know that the psychological effects are long term, as Dr. Montesanti talked about. They can last for a long time.
Last week, we heard that they are compounded so that the number of traumatic events that you have makes it worse.
Systemwide, looking at how we can, at the federal level, provide leadership — this question is about federal leadership in providing best practices, evidence-based, therapists, standards — we heard about digital strategies with text messaging and education.
What is the role of federal leadership in this mental health strategy? Can you comment or share your understanding or wishes for this? That question is to both of our witnesses.
Ms. Montesanti: Thank you for that question. I wish to acknowledge what you highlighted what we often hear residents and communities talk about this as trauma on top of trauma.
With Indigenous communities in particular, what is important to acknowledge is that there were and are pre-existing health, social inequities and past historical trauma, and that is what contributes to Indigenous residents’ experience of disaster evacuation and displacement.
In the immediacy of a disaster like a wildfire, we can invest in greater access to mental health supports and resources that are available, but those do not necessarily address those pre-existing health and social inequities that relate to what we would refer to as the social determinants of health.
It is important to recognize that, even if we were to provide additional resources and access to mental health services in three to five years post disaster, we have to be mindful that once those resources are removed or the contracts run out, those communities are then going back to those pre-existing conditions. Understanding that within that social and historical context is important.
In terms of what the federal government can do, I highlighted some of the jurisdictional complexities around coordination and allocation of resources. That is such an important piece in terms of the relationship between the federal government, provincial health authorities and accessing and providing those resources given the federal government’s responsibilities for health for Indigenous First Nations, particularly in the context of the example that I highlighted. There is an opportunity there to explore where the federal government can play a role in providing those resources.
More importantly, the communities need to have that. We need to acknowledge community sovereignty and their rights in designing their own community health and wellness plans following a disaster.
Senator Burey: Do you have a comment, Ms. Westerlund?
Ms. Westerlund: Building on what Ms. Montesanti commented on about making sure if we are going down this route that the funding or resources are provided to the communities, it is important that we know that municipalities want to walk hand in hand with federal and provincial support. That notion that we need somebody to come in and save us, I do not think that is what we are looking for. We know our communities best. Each community differs in what we need and how we are going to address this moving forward.
Senator McNair: Thank you to both witnesses for being here today.
Ms. Westerlund, you mentioned the access to the specialized wildfire firefighting team because of your insurer, or that is what I understood it to be. Can you elaborate on that more? I’m curious to know where they were derived from. Were they within the province, private sector? Were they outside of the province and brought in?
You also said there was pushback from the public when they were dedicated, I assume, to save certain assets, infrastructure, things like that. I assume a bit of a pushback is a mild description of what it really would have been at the time.
Ms. Westerlund: Our specialized wildfire team comes out of the U.S. Our insurance company, we deal in the world on a global standard. Through our board and insurance on that side of things, this team comes up from the U.S. We’re in the midst of stabilizing them in a specialized team permanently here in Alberta. Actually, we do have the attention of the provincial government on this as well. They are heavily looking into bringing a team in as well with that type of training.
Not that I want to sugarcoat things, but I do. For the issue and the perception out there, I will use the Jasper example. They did come in. We were facing about $115 million liability, so that was infrastructure that our insurance company insured. This team came in. I just had the numbers as of yesterday. We have suffered about $11.5 million loss just on the infrastructure side. To give you context, we did not lose in Jasper, we lost different pieces; that could be a water treatment facility, the wastewater treatment facility.
The public perception out there was that we had this specialized team coating municipally owned assets in a foam, and questions were raised well, if they are doing that, why are they not foaming and saving houses?
Unfortunately, there are harsh realities when you are dealing with a fire and disaster of this scale. There is a hierarchy. Life is first, infrastructure is next, and homes kind of shuffles down the list of importance of how we are going to fight fires. When you are facing a decision whether to save the town hall or a neighbourhood, those are decisions that you are facing.
The harsh reality is we will protect the water treatment facility, the wastewater treatment facility and the town hall first because trying to get those assets back online when the fire has gone through and you are trying to rebuild — we learned lessons obviously from the Fort McMurray wildfire.
Yes, there are difficult decisions to be made, for sure. Trying to communicate that clearly with the public is difficult. It is difficult to communicate those types of issues and challenges at the time of the fire.
It goes back to that whole mental health piece. I am even struggling to talk about — I have suffered it firsthand. It has been a year and it is still difficult, making that decision, protecting the water treatment facility or your house and your friends and family’s homes in your community; it is difficult.
The Chair: Moving on to second round, Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: I did not get an opportunity to talk to Dr. Montesanti the first time around.
During the Fort McMurray evacuation, I covered it as a journalist. I made a trip to the Al Rashid Mosque which was functioning as a shelter. There were families arriving from Fort McMurray who had been refugees from Syria and Iraq, and they were doubly traumatized because it brought back all of their refugee trauma, being bombed and seeing the fire. But when they got to the mosque, they met people who spoke Arabic, who had food that they recognized, and even I could see as a layperson that was a huge help for their mental health.
When I think about some of the remote Indigenous communities that have to be evacuated — this is something that Chief Conroy Sewepagaham from Little Red River Cree Nation has said to me privately — it is traumatic for Indigenous folk who come from a sheltered — “sheltered” is not the right word — from a traditional, rural community to suddenly be evacuated to a larger urban centre where there may be language barriers, cultural barriers or racism they feel.
Can you talk about how that plays into the long-term mental health consequences, not just the shock of evacuating from a fire, but the culture shock of being placed in a community where they have no context?
Ms. Montesanti: Thank you, Senator Simons. We had seen that following the Fort McMurray wildfire in our work with Indigenous communities. We had seen this with Indigenous youth in particular. When we were engaged with Indigenous youth who were evacuated to Edmonton, our qualitative research highlighted that they felt completely disconnected from their family. Some of the families were separated. They were not all together. That contributed to their feeling of being disconnected and feeling isolated.
The evacuation centres were not necessarily comfortable places for them to be. We heard a lot with respect to evacuation, where they are evacuated to, and whether these were spaces they felt safe in.
On the other side, we did hear that sometimes those can be spaces for a sense of community, connecting with others who have that shared experience, and that offers an opportunity to connect with those residents and allow the residents who evacuated to feel that they are not alone. That was important when we looked at resilience and what resilience-promoting factors are and hearing directly from the residents themselves, what helped them to cope and promote a sense of strength and resilience during the evacuation and returning home. That sense of community and connecting with their community was really important.
With our work with Indigenous communities, it was about a year following the wildfire when we had gathered at the Friendship Centre in Fort McMurray and had welcomed Indigenous residents within the urban centre to join us for a sharing circle, a meal and have an opportunity to connect with other evacuees and share their experience. It was quite startling for me to hear many of them say this was the first time they were asked what their stories and experiences were. This was almost a year after the wildfire. They felt a sense of appreciation for being able to share their story, even if it was difficult and traumatic to relive. One of the things that was highlighted was that sense of community. People were connecting over that shared experience.
Senator McBean: Thank you. Sticking with resilience, I will go back again to Ms. Westerlund. You mentioned that the firefighting response needed to prioritize, triage and protect some of the infrastructure. Looking at the resilience of infrastructure but also of the personal and private homes, on the infrastructure, what steps could and should be taken to protect the critical rural infrastructure, such as power lines, water supplies and emergency shelters? On the private housing side, the Housing Accelerator Fund has agreements between the federal government and municipalities. It is looking to build and, I would hope, rebuild houses quickly. Should that program be used to add smoke safe and fire safe priorities in the agreements?
Ms. Westerlund: I will start with your last question and then work my way back. Absolutely. There is a huge need for that. It would be money well spent within our communities if we looked at tailoring the funding for that as well.
Bumping back to protection of infrastructure, waterlines and power lines, I will hit on the power lines first. That is interesting. If you are aware, our power system in Alberta is significantly different than any other parts of the country. It is actually all privatized. Municipalities and the province are working with those privately owned companies that own power lines — that critical infrastructure — on the power line side of things. Those companies, to be honest, they are in my council chambers. They were just here a month ago talking about what they are doing to protect their assets as well. If there were hurdles faced with the municipality, such as brushing or clearing, we were working through that and clearing the permitting process so that could happen more quickly so they can get in there.
This was part of my opening comments, but we are asking for funding specifically to help us protect our infrastructure, not during the fire but before. That could be access to funding for fireproofing buildings and facilities, it could be simply funding provided to help with clearing the brush and doing the landscaping that needs to be done around some of the key, critical infrastructure as well.
Senator McBean: You said that one of the things in the firefighting response was the local knowledge about the highways and what not to come in. In the same way that you wanted access to a mapping of where fire loads and fuel loads were, would it be helpful to create province-wide or federal-wide maps for prioritizing roads so that as firefighting responders come in, there is an existing map that can be communally used for triaging response?
Ms. Westerlund: Absolutely, that would be welcomed funding and mapping system. A uniqueness in my community, Brazeau County, to be honest, is that we are heavy in the oil and gas industry. It is remote. We have rural and remote up north, too. We have road systems that are privately owned by industry, and it is getting those maps layered together, and it is key and important for local knowledge in our areas. Our local individuals know where those roads are, where they lead, and sometimes we also get the public back there as well.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Muggli: I certainly appreciate the comments that Ms. Westerlund made regarding the difficulty in talking about these things, because it comes back and it is emotional. I find myself experiencing the same thing thinking about the response to the Humboldt Broncos bus crash, or the La Loche school shooting. As you said, the experience is not only enduring but a reflection of previous functioning in a community, and that is exactly what we saw in the tragedies that I was involved with.
What happened prior to that is many school divisions and mental health folks had training in traumatic event systems and were able to respond with the same orientation of trauma response and cultural responsiveness. Now the Saskatoon municipal government is taking training with their leadership to try to learn how to respond to these traumatic events. What are your thoughts about leadership training to be able to respond better to trauma that people are experiencing in leading communities through that?
Ms. Westerlund: I’m very open to that. I think you have hit something key. As an elected official myself, I do not have the training nor the background to deal with issues of this magnitude. You can probably see by some of the expressions on my face that I wear what I feel sometimes. It is difficult.
That type of training would be welcomed. I sometimes forget or I have seen the public, our residents and people, forget that we are human too. We are feeling the effects, we are also out of our homes and this is affecting our family too. That would be welcomed in the communities to look at that type of training and to prepare us as well.
I was not trained, but how many hands I held or the people I held crying in my arms, then not being able to ask — it is a difficult thing as an elected official and being a leader. You want to answer questions right away to help people, and to then be put into a situation where you are literally helpless. I’m getting emotional now. It is a community I was raised in, and I’m raising my family in it. When people see that emotion in you, it helps them a little bit as well because they realize it is impacting everyone. You have nailed something there.
The other thing I would not miss is that we have to remember about mental health and the health of our frontline workers as well. Those are our firefighters, our boots on the ground. Not only that but, our staff from the municipalities who are also involved in all of this.
Senator Muggli: Thank you. I appreciate the emotion attached to that. Thank you.
Senator McNair: I agree with Senator Muggli that I appreciate the emotional aspect of this. Ms. Westerlund, when you talk about seeing people burst into tears when they hear a siren, it puts it into perspective. Obviously, recovery is a long-term process. Is there a good news story out there about any community that is getting it right, or is it too soon to say that?
Ms. Westerlund: Ms. Montesanti could add as well, but I think it is too soon to say. I think that Ms. Montesanti said it well; some people do not show their emotion right away. Sometimes this pops up five, eight or ten years later. The unfortunate part — especially being in rural communities — is that it is going to be the cumulative effects of not one disaster. I would be remiss if I did not comment on this. Generally, when you have had a wildfire, floods follow. It is going to be that stacking of disaster after disaster, and we are already seeing the flooding issues following some of these communities and fires recently.
I do not think we have it right yet. I do not know if we are going to get it right in the future. What we have to do is put our best foot forward and work through it. It will be difficult to tackle. We cannot let up the momentum that we are gaining on it because, as I said, I do not think that we have felt the full effects of it yet. Even ten years later after Fort McMurray, I still do not know if we know the full effect.
Senator McNair: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Montesanti and Ms. Westerlund. Thank you for your testimony today.
Your testimony, your insight and your passion are very much appreciated. We appreciate them and we look forward to sharing with you our report, which we’ll ensure you see when it’s finished.
For our second panel, we welcome the following witnesses who are all joining us by video conference: as an individual, Dr. Lori Daniels, Koerner Chair in Wildfire Coexistence, Forestry, University of British Columbia; from the Fur Institute of Canada, Doug Chiasson, Executive Director; from the National Cattle Feeders’ Association, Andrea Van Iterson, Member and Owner, Westwold View Farms; and Stacey Meunier, Member and Owner of Meunier Livestock.
Welcome, witnesses, and thank you for being with us. You have five minutes for your presentations. I will signal when your time is running out. When you see one hand up, that means you have about a minute left. It’s time to wrap up quickly when you see two hands. With that, the floor is yours, Dr. Daniels.
Lori Daniels, Koerner Chair in Wildfire Coexistence, Forestry, University of British Columbia, as an individual: Good morning. Thank you, everyone, for the invitation to join you.
My name is Dr. Lori Daniels. I am a professor of forest ecology and the Koerner Chair of Wildfire Coexistence in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. I respectfully acknowledge that I work and I am present today on the unceded ancestral lands of the Musqueam Nation.
For the past 25 years, I have studied historical fire regimes, changes in forests after wildfire and proactive forest and fire management in the diverse forests of Western Canada. Thank you for this opportunity to share insights on the causes and consequences of contemporary wildfires and the urgent need for strategies that allow both our ecosystems and communities to become more resilient.
We live in an era of megafires. In 2023, wildfires burned over 15 million hectares of land across Canada, shattering previous records both nationally and regionally. The wildfires drove over a quarter of a million evacuees from their homes with a disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples and communities. We emitted over 410 megatonnes of smoke and carbon into the atmosphere, tripling previous records.
In my home province of British Columbia, a decade of escalating wildfires have caused immense social and ecological damage. Over 7 million hectares, which is more than twice the size of Vancouver Island, have burned, disrupting agriculture and forestry, and contributing to cascading disturbances like land slides and floods with resulting socio-economic costs in the tens of billions of dollars. These extreme wildfires are being driven by the combined effects of global warming and a century of land management and land use changes as well as naive developments in these very fire-prone environments.
We describe this as the “triple fire paradox” that explains both cause and consequence. Wildfire is a unique agent of disaster. While fire threatens homes, lives and values and needs to be suppressed in some locations, fire is also an essential ecosystem function, and it’s part of the solution to mitigate the catastrophic wildfires and, for us, as a society, to adapt to climate change. This principle underlies the triple fire paradox.
First, by attempting for many decades to protect our fire-adapted ecosystems through control and suppression, we have actually increased the amount of fuels contributing to contemporary wildfire impacts.
Second, to restore diverse fire across our ecosystems is part of the solution.
Third, respecting Indigenous knowledge and revitalizing Indigenous fire stewardship are also key.
Transformative changes are urgently needed. We need to diversify our approaches and amplify the pace and scale at which our management actions are being taken and recognize that specific strategies are complex — as complex as the ecosystems that we have across our nation. Proactive action requires support from all levels of government, including the federal government.
I wanted to provide a few strategies that we could consider.
The first is to invest equally in proactive management to mitigate future wildfire impacts in addition to emergency response. Currently, we spend much more on the emergency response, and we under invest in proactive mitigation so that we’re not getting the benefits for Canadians.
We need to invest in FireSmart programs at home and community levels, expanding education and actions to become more resilient to wildfire.
We need to support Indigenous initiatives that address the disproportionate impacts of wildfires and evacuations on Indigenous people, communities and territories.
We need to adjust landscape fire management to reduce the negative consequences of the catastrophic wildfires and restore ecosystem resilience. This requires fundamental shifts in the way that we think about forest management in order to sustain the forestry sector.
We need to support innovative bioeconomy and bioenergy sectors that would overcome the economic barriers that are currently slowing the proactive mitigation that could be taking place, the treatments around communities that are much needed.
Providing long-term sustained funding for both science experiments and trials that develop and test the ecosystem-specific management is needed to reduce our risk of catastrophic wildfire. Recent funding through NRCan has been very helpful.
These transformative actions are needed to mitigate climate change, adapt forest management and proactively prepare for wildfire impacts on our Canadian ecosystems and communities.
Thank you for your attention.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Mr. Chiasson, please.
Doug Chiasson, Executive Director, Fur Institute of Canada: Good morning, senators. My name is Doug Chiasson, and I am the director of the Fur Institute of Canada, or FIC. The FIC is the country’s lead expert on humane trap research and furbearer conservation and is the official trap testing agency for the Government of Canada and all the provincial and territorial governments. We also manage Canada’s obligations under the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards with the EU and the Russian Federation. We are mandated to provide accurate and credible information relating to the economic, social, cultural and environmental issues surrounding the harvesting of fur in Canada, and we act as the national voice of Canada’s fur sector.
Canada is home to tens of thousands of trappers from coast-to-coast-to-coast. These trappers target an incredible diversity of furbearers from wetland semi-aquatics like beavers and otters to forest dwellers to like fishers and martens, to canines like wolves and lynx, and many others in between.
Trapping is one of the few industries which works in concert with the natural rhythm of the forest. Fire is an essential part of the lifecycle of a healthy forest. Healthy forests are essential to producing healthy furbearer populations, which then support trappers and the international fur market, which holds Canadian furs in incredibly high regard.
Wildfires can have a very real impact on trappers, particularly as we see changing patterns of wildfire and growth and increases in frequency of intense high-temperature fires as a result of climate change and changes to forest management.
Fires can destroy important trapping infrastructure, including forest roads and trappers’ cabins. This can lead to mid- to long-term inaccessibility for trappers to their traplines, as well as the cost of rebuilding cabins and the intangible cost of loss of items of sentimental or cultural value on their traplines.
Some organizations like the Cree Trappers’ Association in northern Quebec have organized their own insurance programs to reduce costs to members of wildfires, but those are still reliant on large southern insurance companies, which may decide that the risk of insuring trapline cabins is too high.
In a 2020 report on climate change impacts on Yukon trappers, over 50% of trappers in the Yukon said that forest fire had impacted their trapline in the preceding 10 years; twenty per cent of trappers said their ability to trap was impacted in the following seasons; and 23% lost property to fire.
For families in remote, rural and Indigenous communities, that can be a significant impact on their income, potentially for many years.
When I spoke to my board of directors about testifying at this committee, one of my directors told me that last summer he lost six of the seven traplines that he has trapped since he was a child.
Beyond the impacts on trappers, there are also impacts on the forests and furbearers themselves. Some species of furbearers, such as coyotes, are highly adaptable, but others have particular preferences. Lynx are rarely found in forest stands under 20 years old and rarely in completely mature stands. Marten, in particular, can be hard hit by fire as they prefer forests with overstory over 100 years old. Others, like fishers, use different types of forest at different times, denning and mature forests but ranging into earlier successional forest for foraging.
In that same 2020 report, 50% of Yukon trappers noted it would take five to ten or more years for species on their traplines to recover after a fire.
Trapping and furbearer management are, for the most part, a provincial jurisdiction. That being said, the federal government could do much more to support the sector as it does make up an important part of the forest economy.
The Canadian Forest Service, despite being mandated as the national and international voice for Canada’s forest sector, acts as the voice for Canada’s forest tree sector. Non-timber forest products, such as furs, are a growing part of the global conversation around biodiversity conservation and livelihoods. The Forest Service could, through the Fur Institute of Canada and academic partners, fund better science to underpin evidence-based decision making on fire management and its effect on furbearers and the economic benefits of trapping. This could be patterned on the model of support through which its counterpart, the Canadian Wildlife Service, funds the FIC to support Canada’s obligations under the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards. Supporting efforts to promote use and wearing of fur in Canada would also help provide better prices to trappers, allowing them to better withstand economic impacts of wildfire.
Current programming is very much focused on export markets with very little, if any, funding available to promote Canadian products here in Canada.
Thank you for your time and consideration. I’m happy to answer any questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. And now jointly, Ms. Van Iterson and Ms. Meunier, you have five minutes together.
Stacey Meunier, Member and Owner of Meunier Livestock and Member, National Cattle Feeders’ Association: Thank you. The National Cattle Feeders’ Association appreciates the opportunity to share our experiences with recent wildfires both in B.C. and in Alberta. While the National Cattle Feeders’ Association represents cattle feeders from across Canada, Canadian feedlots vary in size from 1,000 to 30,000-plus animals.
My experience in Alberta: I own and operate Meunier Livestock in Barrhead, Alberta. In May of 2023, our farm experienced the devastating impacts of wildfire.
During the wildfire, we moved cattle multiple times to ensure their safety. All 2,300 head of cattle that we had near the fire survived, but if the wind had changed direction, it would have been a far different story.
Some smaller farms in our area were able to transport cattle out of the evacuation zone, but it was not physically possible for us to haul that many heads of cattle away from the fire.
In addition, at that time, many of our cows were calving, so hauling them was not an option.
In an effort to protect grazing land and livestock, we fought the fire on our property with our own labour, tools, water trucks and tractors, and, eventually, we hired contractors to assist us.
The local fire department was also fighting the fire, and without their effort, it would have been much worse. However, the fire department did not understand our farm’s topography and they sent equipment into our lands and made fire breaks randomly throughout our ranch.
The cleanup and repair of these fire breaks have been extensive, and since the land is so fragile, it will take many years for it to recover. Some of it will never be the same.
Funding support after the fire was limited, and not timely.
In June of 2023, our feedlot near Niton Junction, Alberta was in a fire evacuation zone due to the Edson fire. Fire marshals would not allow us to access the feedlot so we were forced to find alternate routes into the feedlot to care for the 12,000 animals there. The feedlot was not directly impacted by the fire, but there was considerable stress during that time trying to get our staff into the feedlot so they could care for the animals.
Some recommendations I have, based on my experience, is that local fire departments need training in wildfire management, which is far different than the structured training that many of them have.
Local authorities need to leverage the knowledge that we have as farmers on the topography and the knowledge we have to determine how to effectively approach a fire.
Livestock need to be cared for during an emergency or they will die. Leaving a farm or ranch for more than 12 hours is just not an option.
In the approach, evacuation zones should be able to form accounting of people who have entered that zone to care for animals versus farmers needing to go around blockades and break the law so we can care for our livestock.
Andrea Van Iterson, Member and Owner, Westwold View Farms, National Cattle Feeders’ Association:
Good morning and thank you for allowing us to share out stories today. I live in a small community in the North Okanagan region of B.C. where we have felt the strong impacts from wildfires and their aftermath.
In 2021, our farm was affected by the White Rock Lake wildfire which destroyed approximately 83,000 hectares of land. While my family came away virtually unscathed, many in our community lost their houses, livestock, timber and grazing areas.
While we were facing the ramifications of a fire burning near our home community, another fire in Osoyoos forced us to evacuate cattle that were on the range in that area. The evacuation process was difficult, not only from an operational and strategic standpoint, but also from a mentally and emotionally draining perspective.
We were fortunate to evacuate these cattle to our own feedlot which, at the time, was well away from the fire. Unfortunately, once we had moved the cattle to our home feedlot, a local fire became a direct risk to our farm. We made the decision to shelter in place with approximately 1,100 head of cattle in our care. To put this in perspective, we would have needed over 20 livestock trailers to evacuate these animals. And that simply would not have been possible for multiple reasons, mainly because we could not find another area to house these animals, and the task of finding the trucks would be impossible.
In 2023, we were again impacted by the Rossmoore Lake wildfire where we had over 500 head of cattle that required evacuation. This event required us to rely on neighbours and community members to assist in locating cattle to bring all but seven to safety. During both fires, our families were forced not only with the challenges of the impacts of the fire, but from the regulatory burden, miscommunication at many levels of government and being left to recover from these disasters.
Some recommendations that my community and myself would have are to: increase cohesiveness in regulations and communication between all levels of government which would include input and action from individuals that have been directly impacted from wildfires; formulate a process that recognizes the validity of sheltering in place for some livestock producers and to assist these producers with protection; re-evaluate the assistance packages available to producers who face a financial burden from a fire event; and create strategies that depend on local knowledge when fires are first discovered and during all firefighting attempts.
Again, thank you for the opportunity to share our experiences with you. We welcome any questions that you might have.
The Chair: Thank you very much, witnesses. We’ll proceed with questions from senators. Again, I remind you senators, you have five minutes for your questions and answers. I’ll turn it over to the deputy chair.
Senator Simons: I have so many questions I want to ask of everybody, but I’m going to start with our two feedlot operators.
Are there any insurance programs that offer any kind of backstop? I’m trying to imagine if you have to evacuate 10,000 or 20,000 head on an emergency basis, that’s next to impossible. Is there any kind of insurance or restitution program available?
Ms. Van Iterson: I’m happy to speak to that. There are programs available. There are many levels of risk management that we can access. Most of that needs to be put in place before these events happen. So while we can purchase a price insurance program, this would not be helpful during these types of events because it is a market-driven program. If we lose our cattle, we don’t get to benefit from that.
We can, obviously, purchase farm insurances so structures and that kind of thing would be covered, but as far as the livestock themselves, no, not in B.C. that I’m aware of. We can also apply for a program called AgriStability which is like a whole farm insurance. The unfortunate thing about AgriStability is you need to physically lose animals, which we don’t want to do in any case. We would have to physically lose feed, and the timeliness of the program is not enough to help us when we need it. So right now, my AgriStability personally is being worked on from the 2022 year. If that was a year that we lost enough animals or feed in a fire, I would still not have compensation from that. So we do not have any programs that help us out in a timely way.
Senator Simons: Ms. Meunier, I don’t know if you have anything to add to that. If not, I have a secondary question which is: For a typical feedlot, I don’t think of animals on a range, but obviously sometimes in both your operations, it sounds as if they would be. Can you talk to us a little bit about how hard it is to evacuate cattle that are on a range versus cattle that are contained in a feedlot?
Ms. Meunier: In both cases it’s rather difficult. Of course, on the range we’d have to go and gather them, and depending on where the fire is or how the fire is progressing, that can be impossible to do.
We can’t put people’s lives at risk to gather cattle, so that is very difficult. But then we have to think about the scale. So even to evacuate a feedlot, we’re talking about many trucks. To be able to get those trucks in a timely manner and then have another place available to take that many head is basically impossible in most cases.
Our experience is the smaller farms with 50 head of cattle, they were able to move those cattle. Still, a very stressful experience for them and stressful for the animals as well.
Senator Simons: Has there been an incident in Canada — I certainly don’t recall reading about one — where a cattle operator lost not 17 cows, but 1,000 cows, or 10,000 cows? Are have we just been lucky so far that it hasn’t happened?
Ms. Meunier: As far as I know, we’re just lucky that it hasn’t happened. We have been able so far to protect the feedlots, do the risk management around them, fire breaking and that sort of thing, so we haven’t had that experience yet as far as I know.
Senator Sorensen: Thanks everyone for being here. Senator Simons really touched on what I wanted to ask the witnesses from the cattle world. I’ve just never thought about this, and so that’s why we’re here and why we’re doing this study. Your recommendations make perfect sense, but it just never occurred to me about moving livestock in these situations.
I’m a little bit overwhelmed, and this was just something that we picked up on which is not about actually being in the fire, but the Canadian Cattle Association has shared the idea of targeted grazing as a way to decrease the fuel load near communities. Is that something you’re aware of? Is it a good idea? Does it make sense?
Ms. Van Iterson: I can definitely speak to that. We have quite a few targeted grazing projects that have happened in the province of B.C. and they’re very successful. We’re removing the fast-moving fuel from beneath the forest stands and that’s slowing down the fire spread. Obviously, it’s not stopping because there is still timber there in an area like B.C., but we’re removing the dead, dry grasses that will light much faster. It’s just another area of forestry management that we could do a much better job of.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you for that. Again, my hat’s off to your testimony because it was interesting and a bit shocking.
I have a question for Dr. Daniels. I probably haven’t given you a lot of time to answer but maybe you can fit this in now, or if anybody else asks a question, you can fit it in then. Can you expand further on the triple-fire paradox? I found that interesting in your report.
Ms. Daniels: Thank you for the question. Fire suppression has contributed in part to the intensity, size and the lack of ability to control the fires we are now experiencing. Because we’ve been very effective at putting out fires, we have removed a large proportion of fires from the landscape. In my lifetime in B.C., 92% of fires have been put out, which means I have only experienced and witnessed the top 8% of fires that exceeded fire suppression capability under hot, dry, windy conditions.
The fires that we are suppressing are often the cooler-weather fires, the lower-intensity fires, that would have acted to reduce the fuels to create heterogeneity on the landscape and creates landscapes stand individual patches of forest right up to the landscape scale to be more diverse and resilient to fire.
It is an unintended consequence of that fire suppression activity that we have actually altered fuels and created landscapes that are more vulnerable. That is a major contributing factor. Reintroducing fire or fire surrogates, doing fuel-mitigation treatments especially around communities and using prescribed or cultural fire, grazing or other innovative techniques to be able to continue to maintain low fuel loads is an essential part of our proactive mitigation.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you.
Senator McBean: Dr. Daniels, can you share with us your experience on what advancements in wildfire prediction and monitoring have been most promising and how they can be implemented effectively across diverse and remote regions in Canada?
Ms. Daniels: Thank you. Our ability to detect fires using both remote sensing techniques like satellites and other techniques are amazing advancements that are increasing our ability to detect and make decisions about fire response. Again, fire suppression close to communities and near valuable and critical infrastructure, whether it be communication or transportation networks, has been and remains very important.
Being able to detect fires and then to have triaged the landscape in advance, to think about places where fire could be reintroduced to the ecosystems and where fire can contribute to ecosystem function to give us that diversity to begin to alter and restore fuel structures and the composition that makes our ecosystems’ biodiversity and fire suppression more effective when we do need to have fire suppression is critical.
Those detection capabilities to predict and to think about the conditions under which those ignitions are occurring and what type of fire might result bring us back to fire weather and behaviour. Those detection and prediction skills are essential.
One of the ways in which we still need improvement in Canada is better mapping of our fuel types and having a better understanding of the amount of fuel and its distribution. That is one factor in fire behaviour we have strong control over, but it is one that we do not have strong data sets on, which would allow us to know exactly what fuel loads or forest types are out on the landscape. That hinders our ability to accurately predict and understand what fire behaviour, rates of spread and results might occur.
Senator McBean: Ms. Meunier, I found your testimony interesting about the need to allow staff and people into where there had been evacuation zones for the feedlots. If you could put on both hats, how would you manage that? How would you manage to allow some people into a zone that has been deemed unsafe but where there is a requirement for keeping that livestock? How would you manage to allow some people in when you are telling other people not to go into an evacuation zone?
Ms. Meunier: It is a very difficult thing to do. We were fortunate in our case with our wildfire near Cherhill. Our local peace officer gathered names as we came and took the time to understand why we wanted in. Then, he allowed us in, so we were able to care for our livestock and take care of things while we were there. Not everyone will take that time and attention. I agree; there needs to be some kind of formal accounting because many people want in during those times and they shouldn’t be there. It can be a dangerous time.
I do not have the exact way to do it, but there needs to be a way to account for people who are there and keep them safe, to allow us to shelter in place, as Ms. Van Iterson said, and take care of our animals and to have the authorities know we’re there and why.
Senator McBean: So something like a plan so everyone has two names of people who would be responsible for certain things, would you think this would be helpful?
Ms. Meunier: It absolutely would be. Our local pipelines have those plans in place ahead of time. Something similar could be done for the agriculture industry.
Senator McNair: To all witnesses, thank you for being here today and for your testimony. To the National Cattle Feeders’ Association representatives, I wanted to point out that our chair is wearing a tie in your honour today, so we are happy to have you here.
My question is for Mr. Chaisson.
Mr. Chaisson, in a letter to this committee, the Fur Institute of Canada, through you as executive director, stated:
Canada’s trapping industry, and the fur trade it supplies, though not strictly an agricultural or forestry industry, are important parts of Canada’s forest economy.
Could you expand on that a bit by explaining what economic role trapping plays in Canada’s forest economy and touch on how the trapping industry supports rural and Indigenous communities throughout Canada?
Mr. Chiasson: Absolutely. Thank you, senator, for the question.
Canada’s fur trade, such as it is today, is widespread across the country. Canada is unique in the world in as much as we are a world-leading producer of wild fur and farmed fur and a world-leading producer in seal skin as well.
Particularly in rural and remote communities and particularly in remote Indigenous communities, fur harvesting is one of the few activities that exists that sits at the nexus of traditional economies and the global market economy that is a way for folks in communities to participate in some way in the global market economy while reinforcing cultural and social traditions as well. Particularly in remote communities, this can be a very significant economic driver, both from the value of furs trapped, as well as from supporting local artisans in creating fur garments and fur accessories.
As an example, in a fur harvesters’ auction in North Bay in June, which is North America’s last remaining wild-fur auction, the top lot western bobcat went for $2,640. That is the price for one bobcat. For folks who are in areas where there is a significant number of fur bearers, particularly significant numbers of higher value fur bearers, this can be a significant portion of their annual income that they use to support their families.
Senator McNair: Mr. Chaisson, you mentioned the fact that the federal government could do much more. One thing that you indicated was funding to promote fur products within Canada. What else do you think they could be doing?
Mr. Chiasson: Beyond the funding support, which I would put as a very distant number one with number two being pretty far down the page, we certainly make efforts here at the institute. We are a unique organization. We were created by government, but we are not government. Provincial and territorial governments are members of my organization and sit on my board, but we are a non-governmental organization.
We have a contribution to our core operations from Environment and Climate Change Canada as well as the different provincial and territorial departments. That core contribution has not increased since 1987. Certainly, with changes to inflation and changes to purchasing power, that core operating contribution does not provide the same level of support as it did in 1987.
Senator Muggli: Thank you for being with us today. Like Senator Sorensen, I haven’t thought of this a lot either. I am thinking about the anxiety for trappers, cattle farmers, and what the National Cattle Feeders’ Association folks said about communication.
Do you have concerns or thoughts about telecommunication towers? Are they in the right places? Do we need them in different places? Do you need more? Is that a concern for you?
Ms. Van Iterson: Yes. I was barely able to get on the call today because our rural internet is so poor. We lost multiple cell phone towers in our area during the fires. Obviously, it is quite mountainous in my region, so reconstructing them is really hard. We lost power for multiple days. A lot of our B.C. Hydro infrastructure is still wooden. It was a long, long task to repair that. I think we were without power for ten days ourselves, and others for quite a bit longer. Definitely, telecommunications is a huge issue, and we rely on them so much in modern days.
Senator Muggli: Thank you. Does anyone else wish to respond to that? Do you have ideas of how we might approach ensuring reliable telecommunications during these incidents?
Ms. Daniels: The telecommunications component is really essential. Getting messages to communities about when and how they are on evacuation alert or if they have an evacuation order, where are they to evacuate and how to prepare for that all requires a strong communication network? As has already been discussed, it is a serious problem in rural and remote communities across our nation where that communication network is often weak and not as well supported as our urban areas and, more importantly, put at risk during wildfire season.
Senator Burey: Thank you to our witnesses. I wish to follow up on Senator Sorensen’s question about the triple fire paradox. I would like to hear more about it, particularly about the land use management and naive development. Can you expand on that so our committee will know more about those issues?
Ms. Daniels: Absolutely. What we are seeing as our population grows is, of course, that communities are growing as well. In many areas, we have urban and suburban developments well into the wildland-urban interface, which is the zone between wild lands that are often fire prone and our urban developments. We see new neighbourhoods and homes being developed often naively in that the road design, access in or out, ingress or egress in the case of an emergency, are not always carefully planned out. A classic example would be beautiful cul-de-sacs on a steep mountain slope where. They are building these beautiful neighbourhoods on steep slopes up into mountainous terrain or into forested terrain where people want the privacy and the beauty of nature around them, not realizing that they are also building into a risky, fire-prone environment.
This is where the principle of FireSmart, both at the homeowner and community scales, becomes essential. Altering building codes and thinking about ways in which we can enhance community design as well as building design would be excellent ways in which we can make homeowners and communities safer, especially with fires increasing in occurrence and its impacts into the future due to climate change.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. We are moving to the second round with Senator Simons.
Senator Simons: Thank you. I hope to get to the witnesses I did not get to speak with on first round.
Dr. Daniels, I’m intrigued that the chair you hold is a chair in wildfire coexistence. It occurs to me that so much of our discourse around wildfires is framed in military metaphors. We “fight;” we’re on the “frontline.” I have heard people say this about cancer. If you frame it that way, it changes the way you think about the disease.
Can you talk about the psychological paradigm shift that might need to happen for us to understand that wildfires are going to be with us now on a scale that we did not anticipate 20 years ago and that this coexistence is going to be the new normal?
Ms. Daniels: Absolutely. We are facing a new normal both in terms of climate and climate mediated disturbances such as fire. Part of our adaptation strategy has to be to come up with ways in which we can adapt and be better prepared.
This can work across all levels and scales of management, whether it is those individual homeowners with those fire smart principles; thinking about the community scale, assessing the fuels around communities; thinking about ways in which we can mitigate those fuels through proactive forest management, thinning from below, leaving the shaded trees for wildlife and biodiversity; creating shaded environments that are also less fire prone and maintaining those through cultural or prescribed burn; and also using grazers and other innovations. Cross-disciplinary ways in which we can maintain low fuel loads in those vulnerable zones around homes and communities is critical.
On rethinking our forest management, we have worked on a paradigm where our forest management, the type of harvesting and regeneration of our forests, were designed to try to emulate high severity fires, thinking that was the only or dominant type of fire within our ecosystems. This was, again, driven by our perceptions about fire, reinforced by the fire suppression paradigm, the command and control that we have existed in throughout our lifetimes. Fire is simply more diverse than just the damaging agent. It is part of the solution and part of the tools in the toolbox moving forward, but it does require public education and improved understanding.
We are learning from Indigenous communities Indigenous fire stewardship. There is strong evidence in oral histories, supported by western science, of how pervasive the use of fire was in our historical landscapes. Understanding that and respecting that knowledge, we are finding, is a huge part of the solution. It gives us a long-term perspective by working with Indigenous collaborators and a different view of our landscapes.
I encourage people, if you have not had a chance to do so, please take a look online for the Mountain Legacy Project. It is historical photographs of the mountainous forests of western Canada taken a century ago and repeat photography today. It will show you over and over again that landscapes like Jasper, like British Columbia, like our national parks, our mountainous landscapes have changed tremendously over the last century with more and more conifer trees, more continuous conifer trees contributing fuels and making us vulnerable. Understanding those changes gives us opportunities and guidelines for innovative ecological and cultural restoration by engaging Indigenous people in that solution. Thank you.
Senator Simons: he way you talked about the way that different animals preferred different locations before and after fire was fascinating. You also talked about the fact that fires are a naturally occurring cycle that these forests need. Are you seeing increases in certain kinds of catches of certain animals in the wake of fire, or does it cause such disruption that your members are not able to get out and do their harvests?
Mr. Chiasson: Thank you, senator. I had this put to me the best way that I can describe by the co-host of my podcast yesterday who is a trapper in B.C. They said that “fire is good for dogs and bad for cats.” Areas affected by fire will see increased numbers particularly of coyotes and wolves because they use the open territory to run down large prey more effectively. There is also a higher rodent population which support coyotes in particular, and that habitat is generally not as friendly to lynx. It is certainly something that folks see as fire changes the landscape.
Senator Simons: How about weaselly things, what do they like?
Mr. Chiasson: Weaselly things, unfortunately, are very diverse depending upon where on the weaselly thing spectrum we are. If we are talking about fishers like the one behind me, they have varied uses for different kinds of forests, they really need mixed forests. Looking at things like marten, they require very old overstory at the very least. We have a great diversity of mustelids — weaselly things — here in Canada.
The Chair: Everyone has heard it here now — “weaselly things.”
Senator McBean: This is for the farmers. Are you worried at all that insurance company will no longer provide certain coverage around fire with the increasing amount and intensity of the fires? Knowing that regulating insurance is a shared provincial and federal jurisdiction, do you think that the federal government should be proactively ensuring coverage for wildfire? We heard from the previous panel that floods tend to follow. So, wildfire and floods are not pulled back or increased in these situations.
Ms. Meunier: It is absolutely a concern. As it is, it is hard to insure a farm. We have a lot of capital investment, and it is a high-risk business. As it is, it is hard to insure us.
My experience after our wildfire was that we had many people tell us to use our insurance. We did have wildfire insurance, but the maximum amount that we could claim was $10,000. When I inquired whether we could have had a higher level, I was told no, that it actually does not exist. We were not able to purchase wildfire insurance, so all of the expenses we had were out of pocket until there was some ad hoc programs that came along afterwards, but not in a timely manner.
Ms. Van Iterson: I had a very similar experience. Obviously, we have had a lot of flood and fire in the last five years in British Columbia, and we have rapidly increasing insurance rates. I imagine that is probably an issue across the country. As Ms. Meunier said, it is very hard to insure farms. Now, when our insurance policies come up for underwriting, it is under a much closer lens that they are looking at our policies. It is a bit stressful waiting to see what they will insure, what limits they will give us and what kinds of deductibles we will face when we do reinsure.
Senator McBean: Thank you.
Senator Richards: Mr. Chaisson, I wondered how the international community today is reacting to fur bearing animals and trapping. Are you having problems selling your wares overseas or in the United States? Is it still a profitable market for the average trapper? Taking that into consideration, the idea of fur-bearing animals lost in fires, I wonder how devastating all of this is to your industry, sir.
Mr. Chiasson: Thank you, senator. I will break your question into two parts.
In the fur trade, we are always facing attempts to ban trade in fur. There were a few efforts in the United States recently in the city of Denver and as well as in Washington, D.C. Thankfully, the proposition to ban fur sales in Denver was voted down by the voters in Denver, and the proposal in Washington continues to get kicked further and further down the road. We are also facing attempts to ban the trade of fur in Switzerland, and there is a private member’s bill in the House of Commons in the U.K. that would ban import of fur into the U.K.
I will not say that Switzerland or the U.K. is our largest market by any means, but there is, certainly, a piecemeal attack against the fur industry. If they can knock one more country down, anti-fur groups can say that now 17 countries have banned fur. Right now, the only country with an absolute blanket ban on fur sales with the exception of religious items is Israel. We are seeing attempts in Switzerland and in the U.K. I am sure we will see attempts in the European Union in the years to come as well.
We are not afraid of our record on the humane harvest of wild fur bearers. The Fur Institute of Canada is the world leader in trap testing and certification, and we advise the trap testing programs in many European nations. They come to us looking for advice. We work very closely with our American counterparts at the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies.
The other piece that is difficult for us is the overall international trade picture, writ large. We were very hard hit by COVID-19 and the impacts that had for us in both manufacturing and consumer markets in China and Korea in particular, and also the ongoing war in Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia. Russia was our second-largest market. Russia was our largest market for certain items, particularly raccoon. The raccoon market has taken an enormous hit since the sanctions were instituted against Russia. We are certainly not asking that those sanctions be lifted, but other industries that are sanction-exposed were provided with compensation or funding to help market their products in other markets. Unfortunately, for us in the fur trade, we did not necessarily get the same amount of attention once those sanctions were applied, so we have not been able to go and push raccoon — which is an amazing fur, for the record — to Canadian, American or European consumers because we simply do not have enough of our own-source funds to be able to undertake that.
Senator Richards: The second part of my question was: Do you know what the impact of the wildfires is on the animals you are trapping? Even a broad umbrellaed picture of what that might be happening to the animals that your trappers are trapping in the Yukon, northern Alberta, or anywhere in Canada?
Mr. Chiasson: Senator, I would say that is exactly the kind of support that we would look for from the Canadian Forest Service and others to be able to support that kind of research, because we simply do not have enough own-source funds. The fur trade is driven by trappers, small-scale, and small- and medium-sized enterprises, for the most part, here in Canada. So we do not necessarily have own-source funds to undertake that kind of broad-scale research.
Senator Richards: Thank you.
The Chair: Witnesses, thank you very much for your participation today. Your testimony and insight are very much appreciated.
I want to thank the committee members. It is great to have you here today. Your questions are always insightful and thoughtful, and I appreciate that.
I want to take a moment to thank the staff who support our committee, the folks in our offices and the folks behind us looking after the interpretation, the transcription, the committee-room attendant, multimedia services, the broadcasting, recording, ISD, and, of course, Alex, our page.
(The committee adjourned.)