THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 1, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 6:30 p.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 Paula Simons (Deputy Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Deputy Chair: I’m Senator Paula Simons, and I’ll be acting as chair of this committee hearing tonight.
Before we begin, I would like to ask all senators and other in-person participants to consult the cards on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents. That basically means if you’re wearing the headset, don’t lean too close to the microphone. That will protect the hearing of our interpreters and of other participants.
I’d like to begin by welcoming members of the committee and our witnesses, as well as those watching this meeting on the web.
[Translation]
Welcome, everyone, and welcome to all Canadians watching us on sencanada.ca.
[English]
My name is Paula Simons, as I said. I am a senator from Alberta, from Treaty 6 territory, and I’m the deputy chair of this committee. I would like to ask the senators around the table to introduce themselves.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne from Quebec.
[English]
Senator McNair: John McNair from New Brunswick.
Senator Burey: Sharon Burey, senator from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar from Quebec.
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc from Quebec.
[English]
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Marshall: Elizabeth Marshall, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Richards: David Richards, New Brunswick.
The Deputy Chair: Today, the committee continues its study on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and on the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries.
Our witnesses are Jennifer Baltzer, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change at Wilfrid Laurier University, who is with us in the room; Sonja Leverkus, Professor, Ecosystem Scientist and Prescribed Fire Specialist with Shifting Mosaics Consulting and Northern Fire WoRx Corporation and with the University of Alberta, who is joining us by video conference; Jack Thiessen, Rancher, Grass Manager, Prescribed Fire Manager at Thiessen Bros. Ranch, also joining us by video conference; and here in the room, Brian Wiens, Managing Director at Canada Wildfire (Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science). Welcome to all four of you and thank you for being with us both in person and online.
You will each have five minutes for your opening presentations. I will signal that your time is running out by raising one hand when you have one minute left and both hands when you have no minutes left.
The floor is yours, Dr. Baltzer, to start this evening.
Jennifer Baltzer, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change, Wilfrid Laurier University, as an individual: Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee, for the invitation to speak with you today.
I am honoured to have the opportunity to join you to discuss the important topics that you have identified for your study, topics that impact all Canadians.
My name is Jennifer Baltzer. I am the Canada Research Chair in Forests and Global Change at Wilfrid Laurier University. For more than 25 years, I have been working to understand the impacts of climate change on forests globally. My current focus is on climate-warming-induced disturbances, including wildfire, how these disturbances are changing, and what this means for Canada’s forests and the people who rely on them. I work in Canada’s northern boreal forests, which are warming at some of the most rapid rates on the planet. Today, I am highlighting some of the research results relating to the intensification of fire activity in Canada’s forests.
A key thing that I want to highlight is how important wildfire is to Canada’s forests. Canada is dominated by boreal forests, which have incredible adaptations to thrive in the face of regular wildfire. Fire is a natural part of these ecosystems and is essential for their functioning and renewal, as well as the maintenance of the biodiversity that supports livelihoods and cultures across Canada.
The key challenge is that Canada’s climate has been warming at twice the global rate. In Canada’s North, it is even faster, at three to four times the global rate. This means hotter and drier conditions in Canada’s forests, which increases forest flammability.
Extreme conditions, like we saw in 2023, led to extraordinarily widespread and intense wildfires that moved across the landscape faster than we have seen in the past. Wetlands and young forests, which we could previously rely on as natural firebreaks, did not consistently provide this service owing to extreme drought and fire weather. An exceptional number of fires smouldered through the winter months, reigniting early in 2024. We can expect these conditions to become more normal as the climate continues to warm and dry. This changing fire activity puts communities and ecosystems at risk, as we saw in the 2023 and again in the 2024 fire season.
Serious action on emissions reductions in Canada and globally is what is urgently needed to slow the changes to Canada’s wildfire activity. More fire in Canada’s forests is locked in for some time due to inertia in the warming climate system, but we need to work harder to change this. The 2023 wildfires in Alberta and Quebec and the multi-year extreme wildfires in B.C. have all been directly attributed to climate warming. These connections are irrefutable.
A number we hear about a lot in the context of climate warming is 1.5 °C. During the summer of 2023, the planet was 1.5 °C warmer than pre-industrial levels for the first time. The resulting wildfire season in Canada was not something we were expecting until at least the middle of the century. The summer of 2023 provided a bit of a crystal ball for what the future holds under the best-case warming scenario. Strong climate action must become a real priority.
Globally, the boreal stores approximately twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. About 90% of this carbon is in the soil. A key concern is whether the boreal forest will continue to serve as a globally important carbon sink in the face of intensifying wildfires. Carbon released from the 2023 Canadian wildfires was approximately four times the annual national emissions in Canada. The sheer quantity of carbon released is extraordinary during these large fire years.
Another challenge is whether the old carbon that has been locked away for hundreds or even thousands of years will stay locked away. We call this “legacy carbon,” and short-interval fires, like we saw in 2023, lead to a loss of this legacy carbon, further undermining the strength of the boreal carbon sink. What this means is that heightened fire activity is changing the critical carbon storage function of Canada’s forests. This positive feedback loop between warming and fire is a major concern.
It is not just greenhouse gas emissions that are creating challenges. We all remember the blanket of smoke that covered much of the country throughout the summer of 2023. It is not just people and animals this impacts. Crops and forests rely on sunlight for growth. Wildfire smoke releases various chemicals that impact the productivity and even the ability of these plants to survive, so we have negative impacts of wildfire smoke and associated emissions on crop and forest productivity. This usually goes hand in hand with drought and heat, which further creates negative impacts.
A major issue we’re seeing with recent wildfires is changes in the ways forests are recovering. Both severe burning and short-interval fires alter forest-regeneration processes. We now regularly see shifts from conifers to broadleaf trees, for example, spruce to aspen, or forests failing to recover and shifting to shrublands or grasslands. These changes have major implications for the services the land provides, such as water quality, carbon storage and wildlife habitat. These land cover changes also affect forest industry, whether owing to additional costs of silvicultural interventions, where fire alters the desired forest-recovery trajectory, or the need for major shifts in forest sector operations to rely more on species that thrive in the face of fire.
Although climate change mitigation is the long-term solution, in the short term, management interventions such as stand thinning, prescribed fire and the reintroduction of Indigenous fire practices could all help to reduce fuel loads — not everywhere, given the vastness of Canada’s forests, but in critical locations. Some of these interventions require considerable education and outreach to ensure public awareness of and support for the critical role of fire in protecting the values in these forests. Other suggested adaptations include the incorporation of precautionary reserves into forest management planning to account for the unpredictability of long-term timber supply in the face of increasing wildfire while simultaneously enhancing other ecosystem services of importance.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: We now turn to Dr. Leverkus.
Sonja Leverkus, Professor, Ecosystem Scientist and Prescribed Fire Specialist, Shifting Mosaics Consulting and Northern Fire WoRx Corporation, University of Alberta, as an individual: Good afternoon, senators. Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts on fire with you today.
My name is Sonja Leverkus, and I am speaking with you from Fort Nelson in northeast B.C., on Treaty 8 and Kaska lands, where we all share responsible stewardship together. I hold a PhD in fire, supported by numerous professional designations from prescribed fire specialist and burn boss to crew leader. I also run a Type 3 wildland fire crew.
My crew, who are primarily Indigenous, and I have been training Canadians in wildland fire for almost a decade. This past spring, we trained 150 ranchers and Indigenous people. We have developed a significant wildland fire program across northeast British Columbia, including wildland fire structural protection units supported by training and fire research with partners from the Peace River Forage Association, amongst others, like my colleague Jack Thiessen.
On May 10, 2024, at 3 p.m., the Parker Lake Fire G90267 started and continues to burn within five minutes from my house here. I led the first northeast B.C. rural incident management team and stayed to defend with about 40 community members when others evacuated out of our community. Not only do I bring you wildland fire science and research, but I also bring you boots-on-the-ground experience and knowledge.
I believe you have invited me to appear in front of you today to provide testimony on the growing issues of wildfires in Canada. I do not believe I need to provide a lecture on the number of wildfires, the smoke pushing into all of our lungs, the extended periods of fire and that fires here in my community have been burning for more than one and a half years. I would prefer to focus on what we can do together and what, perhaps, you might be able to do, and how that looks for Canadians.
I bring forward the following six key points, from the ground up:
First, speaking of crews, currently, Type 3 contract crews are not guaranteed employment. This means we need to be trained, geared up, present and accounted for throughout the summer without knowing if we will be deployed, typically until the afternoon or evening before we are requested to be on the fire line. In B.C. alone, there are more than 1,200 contract crew firefighters like us. Guaranteed employment would make a huge difference for rural and remote wildland firefighters.
In terms of training, government training documents ought to be available to certified instructors like me, who can teach and train Canadians and who can improve the curriculum as we deliver the training. Continued funding for remote and rural communities is very important.
In terms of equipment, it’s important to properly fund wildland fire equipment for remote and rural communities across the country. Include in this funding maintenance, repair and replacement. Jack Thiessen and I are happy to talk about this later. Provide proper masks that we can wear to avoid getting sick, ensure clean air spaces for rural communities during wildfires and provide incentives for purchasing home air filters. Ensure we continue to have electricity/significant backup system for power generation in times of heavy smoke and downed, burned-out or still-burning power lines.
My fourth point is around rural incident management teams, or IMTs. Collaborate with, provide funding for and join the effort of the development of rural IMTs across the country, using northeast B.C. as a case study. Empower these rural IMTs to work with and under the direction of provincial/territorial resources to ensure safe, efficient and appropriate response in the wildland-urban interface and across the landscape, using tactics and operations led by the provinces and territories.
Fifth, in terms of fire-absorbent landscapes, fund and empower — through approvals of prescribed fire burn plans where authorizations are necessary — the application of good fire across the landscape and, where appropriate, landscape-level fuel breaks and guards around rural communities and values at risk, which include foresight of cultural, ecological, industrial and hydrological values. Do not get in the way of the people who are collaborating to put good fire out on the land.
My final point is the ruralization of wildland fire. We are shifting into our fourth year of drought here in the North. The fire that is less than 25 kilometres to the north of my house will likely continue to burn all winter again, as we heard Dr. Baltzer say. As proven this year in my community, local crew and local community can greatly support the emergency response effort, and we are not afraid to stay and defend. I am talking about rural incident management teams who work with provincial and territorial governments to achieve great success in protecting our communities and loved ones.
There are not enough humans to deal with the wildfires that we currently have and that we will continue to bear witness to in Canada in this, the “Pyrocene.” We, the people of the North, have demonstrated what is possible as we dug deep together this year.
With funding, certification in safe operations, recognition and inclusion of the people, applying good fire to the land at the right time and getting us geared up with support from our aerial teams, I do believe that we can be better prepared for what will inevitably arrive at our doorsteps if not in the next couple weeks then in the next few months or the 2025 year of fire.
Mahsi’cho. Wuujo asaana laa.
The Deputy Chair: Perfect timing. Thank you.
Mr. Thiessen, we’ll give the floor to you for five minutes.
Jack Thiessen, Rancher, Grass Manager, Prescribed Fire Manager, Thiessen Bros. Ranch, as an individual: Honourable members of the Senate, it is a great honour and a privilege to be able to speak to you about the stewardship of this great land that God has given us to steward.
I ranch along the Blueberry River at mile 81 on the Alaska Highway on the way up to Fort Nelson, one hour northwest of Fort St. John, B.C. I was born here and now manage the ranch that was pioneered and passed down through generations. The ranch runs about 1,100 head of cattle on about 14,000 acres of land.
We use prescribed fire to manage invasive woody plants, to increase grass quantity and quality and to mitigate wildfires on our landscape. Our burn plan is to burn about 800 to 1,000 acres a year, in the spring. We strive to burn early in the year, while there is still frost in the ground or at least the duff layer is wet so that we don’t burn the duff layer or our grass roots. Our goal is to provide high-quality plant-based protein, naturally processed through our cows. Grass is what makes that happen.
Our burning has been an intricate part of managing our land base, and that has been passed down to us by the First Nations and generations of ranchers before me. It has also been key in not only mitigating wildfires but stopping them as well.
In 2016 and 2023, we had major wildfires that threatened our ranch and homestead, and when the fire crossed the river from Crown land onto our land, we were able to stop those fires because of management, along with the Forest Service.
The grazing program we have at our place has also been essential in reducing and managing fuel loads.
In 2023, we had done some prescribed burning earlier in the year. That was able to help us put places where we could move cattle; when the fire got intense, we were able to put cattle onto those prescribed burn areas that were starting to come back in grass and provided a really good buffer for us. The wildfires had started a few weeks earlier, and while the fires could be stopped before they reached this area of burned ground, we were counting on it as a firebreak if needed and also a safe place for equipment and cows. We also had cows in different fields and portions of land where we had decreased the fuel load by grazing and via some natural firebreaks through burning as well.
Wildfires have their effect and impact. For us, the cost is huge in fighting these fires, and the time spent is exhausting. When a fire is burning wild, the conditions are extreme. When we can burn at a time when we can control the fire, we can manage it. When we do a prescribed fire, we try to leave at least a two-inch stubble on our grass roots because burning grass roots and upper duff layer destroys our soil.
When a fire is burning wild, the conditions are extreme, thus burning the trees, the grass and, most devastatingly for us as ranchers, the topsoil and the grass roots. That sets up the landscape for erosion. The amount of natural resources that are wasted in a wildfire is tremendous.
There are some things I would like to bring forward that I think we can do. As ranchers, I believe that we can bring forward something to Canadians that can be of great help: cattle on the landscape. We can drastically reduce the number of wildfires and their intensity, particularly in the areas of agriculture, by using prescribed fire and grazing. With the virtual fencing now available to us, we can put cattle on the landscape and drastically reduce the fuel load for mitigating wildfires.
Thank you for this opportunity to speak.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you very much. We use the term “grassroots” in politics so much that I think we forget sometimes that they’re an actual thing. Thank you so much.
Mr. Wiens, over to you.
Brian Wiens, Managing Director, Canada Wildfire (Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science): Thank you so much. I am honoured to participate in this meeting today and am encouraged by the work of this committee. It is a privilege to be a part of this committee’s proceedings.
Having recently moved to Ontario from Alberta, I live and work on land steeped in the rich history of the First Nations in southern Ontario and the Niagara Peninsula, where I live, which include the Hatiwendaronk, the Haudenosaunee and the Anishinaabe, including the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.
To give you some context, Canada Wildfire relies upon partnerships between academia and operations to train students by conducting priority research and helping transfer those discoveries to the next stage. This includes managing research funds, supporting planning, organizing training, coordinating seminars, social media and a variety of other publication opportunities.
I started as an undergraduate working as a weather technician for the Alberta Forest Service, which led me to a career with the Meteorological Service of Canada under Environment and Climate Change Canada.
The last five years that I worked for the federal government, I was a director with the Canadian Forest Service, or CFS, and played a key role in the development of the memorandum to cabinet and Treasury Board submission that showed up as the 2019 budget commitment for wildland fire science.
In 2020, I took over the leadership of the Canadian Partnership for Wildland Fire Science, which we have abbreviated to Canada Wildfire just because it rolls off the tongue a little bit better. This included managing a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, or NSERC, strategic research network.
I want to start off with a little bit of good news, and I think it’s important to note that we’ve made it to October, and the fire season is winding down. There are just over 400 active fires in Canada right now, some of them, apparently, still in northeastern British Columbia. Fifty-six of those remain classed as out of control. The rest are either being held or are considered under control. This means that we have longer, cooler nights, higher humidity and lower chances of lightning.
One of the aspects that does not get an awful lot of press is the importance of fire professionals in support of the front line. The front line is absolutely essential, and we rely incredibly heavily on them. This includes fire analysts, incident management teams and operational logistics coordinators. Their work is founded in fire and operations science and uses the knowledge developed by academia in conjunction with their experience to improve their capacity in doing their jobs. This group is in growing demand at the same time that many of them are nearing the end of their careers. Initiatives like the Canada Wildfire NSERC Strategic Network is part of a growing community of academic researchers who are developing a new cadre of fire professionals.
The other piece of good news is that many governments are recognizing the significance of changes in landscape fire in an era of changing climate. This has shown up in investments from the federal government and a number of provincial governments to try and address some of these issues.
There is also some not-so-good news. The first piece — at the risk of being a little bit repetitive — is that there is no silver bullet. A whole range of, ideally, coordinated activities need to be continued and expanded in some areas.
The other thing is that there is so much activity — which is good — that it actually has created a situation where the discoveries and the applications do not always arrive in a timely manner to users. Knowledge exchange and management are growing in awareness, and people are aware of it, but, too often, there are insufficient resources committed to making sure that the information is produced, translated and delivered to the people who can use it and put it into the next step of the process.
Then, again — it is a bit of a repetitive point — climate change will continue to exacerbate the challenges with landscape fire, which is going to lead to increased demands for response, prevention and mitigation.
Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you all very much. That was fascinating testimony.
Because we have collapsed two panels into one tonight, we have an extended time for questions. I’m going to ask for each senator’s question-and-answer exchange to be five minutes, but we will undoubtedly have room for a second round, so despair not.
Senator McNair: Thank you to the people who are here tonight giving testimony. Thank you for the impact you’re having on trying to understand climate change and also, I think, for being very much on the active, participatory side of the equation.
So much has been said by each of you, but I’ll start with Dr. Baltzer. You talked about the 2023 wildfire season being the worst in our country’s history, and you talked about four times the total emissions. In one of your articles, I read that a recent study shows that the wildfires produced more carbon emissions than the burning of fossils in all but three countries in the world — India, China and the U.S.
I understand that your work is focused on the ecological foundations, and you have said that there has been a loss of ecological resilience, which makes it very clear — to me, at least — what you’re talking about. In the last few years, following the continuing burning of the holdover fires — you stay away from the term “zombie fires” now; it’s “holdover fires” that we are to use, but they never burn out completely, and Dr. Leverkus also talked about this — I think you studied the long-term effect on forest ecosystems, the water cycle, which we studied on the soil samples, wildlife habitat, which we understand, but also the carbon footprint or the carbon storage.
Can you tell us a little bit more about these holdover fires? Is there a way to deal with them? Are there prevention or mitigation techniques, or do they just continue to burn indefinitely, as Dr. Leverkus said is going on in her area?
Ms. Baltzer: Thank you for that question, and I think it really depends on the conditions in the next year and the snow pack that happens in the winter between two fire seasons. In much of Western Canada last winter, we had a fairly low snow pack, so there’s not as much moisture going into the soil.
There are a lot of factors that come into play in how long those fires will continue to smoulder. Certainly, last summer there were fires still — I work mostly in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, and there were fires smouldering on the landscape in the Northwest Territories that never reignited in the spring but continued to smoulder through the summer. Dr. Leverkus mentioned similar sorts of things. If conditions stay dry, there is the potential for these multi-year, overwintering fires, certainly.
In terms of what to do about them, I think what we saw after 2023 is that where there were overwintering fires near communities, there were similar kinds of approaches as we see with most fires across Canada in that if there were holdover fires potentially impacting communities, there was work that was done through the winter to action those fires. Many of these we don’t even detect because they’re smouldering under the snow, and we don’t have tools to be able to detect that smoke coming up through the snow, necessarily. There are many overwintering fires that we wouldn’t be able to detect, or they’re in places that are too remote for it to be logistically reasonable to go in and do anything about them.
Does that answer your question?
Senator McNair: It does. Thank you.
The problem with them, from what I understand from your article, is that the regeneration doesn’t occur because of the constant burning, or that’s one of the issues that happens.
Ms. Baltzer: One potential issue is that we see changes in the way those forests are regenerating. Our analysis from overwintering sites that we visited in the Northwest Territories and Alaska indicates that it encourages the kinds of forest compositional shifts — not necessarily wholesale recruitment failure, but a shift from, say, spruce to aspen, so it reinforces that shift from coniferous to deciduous forests that we see happening across much of North America.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: I’m trying to understand this. I’m going to ask you my questions in French. I mainly have questions on prevention. What kinds of preventive action can we take? I’m especially trying to understand what you call prescribed burning. I hope I translated that correctly. Mr. Thiessen, you mentioned prescribed burning. Since I’m not an expert, I’m trying to understand how this works. Can you try to isolate an area, and what would be the consequences of doing that from a prevention perspective?
That question is for Mr. Thiessen, if he wishes to expand a little on the topic, but our other witnesses may answer it as well.
[English]
Mr. Thiessen: I can speak to that in some way, and, perhaps, Dr. Leverkus could as well.
When we use prescribed fire, what we end up doing is removing fuel load. I can speak, in particular, in regard to our community and the things that we have done. This area here has been known for burning for many years. We have three Native reservations here, and they used burning long before we ever got here, and they had a lot of open grasslands that they burned continually to increase wildlife habitat and also for the safety of their communities. My parents, when they came into this area, followed that same example that had been set for them.
What it does when we remove these fuel loads — and I can give you the illustration that in both 2016 and 2023, we had extreme wildfire behaviour here. In 2023, in particular, it was even worse. When fire jumped across onto the lands that had been managed with prescribed burning, while some of those areas still burned, they burned probably at only 25% of the intensity that was happening where there was no management of grass or of any residues. We were able, along with the Forest Service, to put these fires out and actually stop them from continuing to burn.
I think we can do the same thing with grazing cattle where there is grass and where we want to maintain a grass cover. If we can even take off 50% to 70% of the grass so that we only have about a four- to six-inch stubble left, we will greatly reduce the intensity of the fire, even if there is a fire.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you. That’s helpful.
We have the climate crisis — as you said, that is not going away — and we have to decide how we are going to react to a fire and how we are going to try to prevent it. I am trying to get a picture of the different ways. I understand that each province and climate is different. Mostly, I am trying to get a sense of how much we can help by preventing versus responding?
Do we know that?
Ms. Baltzer: A massive challenge in this country is the scale of the forests that we have to manage.
Where I work, for example, in the Northwest Territories, there are no roads in most places, so being able to get in and manage forests is not possible. Those are activities that can happen in places that are identified as being particularly important. It has been discussed among the folks I work with that maybe it is possible that we think about places that are particularly high carbon stocks, and those are places where we might target some management interventions to try to keep carbon in the ground or help support communities by reducing fuel loads around communities so that when a big fire year happens, the fire slows as it approaches communities.
Those are the kinds of proactive approaches we can take.
Senator Marshall: My question is for Professor Baltzer.
When there is a fire, what kind of analysis is done? I know climate change contributes to wildfires, but is there some sort of analysis carried out to say, “So much of it was climate change; so much of it was because the spruce budworm was in there eating the trees, and they should have been cut down”?
What sort of post mortem is done on forest fires, because that would give you some insight, I would think, into what we should be doing to protect our forest? Are you able to respond to that issue?
Ms. Baltzer: Particularly on managed lands or areas where we can map things like pest outbreaks, we know where forest management is happening, and we know where fire is happening, so we are able to evaluate those different drivers and assess how important those different pieces were in determining outcomes.
Senator Marshall: How finely can you do it? Can you say that 44% was climate change, and 16% was the spruce budworm? Are you able to do it down to that level, or is it more general?
Ms. Baltzer: You can talk about how much each of those factors contributed, and you can put numbers on it. There are typically huge variances around that as well, and so that is a challenge. There is a lot of uncertainty because it depends on the region, the conditions, the fire conditions. There are all sorts of factors, so it is not going to be a one-size-fits-all.
Senator Marshall: You also mentioned in your opening remarks the impact that smoke has. I was out in Newfoundland and Labrador, and we saw the smoke from British Columbia.
Is there a post mortem also done of the impact of the smoke?
Ms. Baltzer: Do you mean on people, on animals or on plants?
Senator Marshall: Both.
Ms. Baltzer: That area is a little bit outside of my expertise, the human and wildlife impacts. There are many people working on those kinds of challenges.
Senator Marshall: Maybe we will have witnesses.
This question is for Mr. Wiens.
You said something in your opening remarks — I don’t remember exactly — but are you able to speak to the water bombers? Do you know anything about the state of the water bombers that are used in forest fire suppression and how that works and whether they are up to the standards they should be?
Mr. Wiens: I can make an introductory remark, but my guess is that Dr. Leverkus will be in a better position to give a definitive answer.
Water bombers are very high-profile, and they are very dramatic. They are also very expensive, and they are applicable in a pretty narrow range of places. Once a fire gets going very intensely, there is no way to deliver enough water to have much impact on it. They are incredibly effective for a specific range of problems. Sometimes they are effective because the public sees we’re doing something, but sometimes it is just a complete waste of money.
That is for context. The ones that we have in Canada — and, certainly, Canada has been a leader in both developing the technology and in applying it — are in pretty good shape. Some of them are getting older, but there has been quite a bit of rejuvenation and quite a bit of rebuilding of the actual — particularly the avionics on the aircraft have changed so much over the last 50 years.
The Deputy Chair: I want to give Dr. Leverkus a chance to answer this question, too.
Ms. Leverkus: We call them “tankers,” not “bombers.” I am not the expert, but I think if you were to ask this question of the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, or CIFFC, they would be able to respond, as well as the provincial and territorial agencies.
I echo that the tanker program in Canada is very significant, especially for those of us in remote and rural locations. We were very fortunate to have such strong aerial support in the last few years in the Northwest Territories, Yukon, northern Alberta and northern British Columbia.
It is a very good question, and I do know that there are quite a few research institutions that are looking at tanker programs, tanker efficacy, movement and distance to tanker bases — so how far the tanker has to go to the fire — and their refuelling practices.
I would suggest this could be answered really well by somebody from CIFFC and the provincial and territorial agencies.
Senator Marshall: Thank you very much.
Senator McBean: Professor Leverkus, I heard you say that we need to be applying good fire at the right time. It seems to be that what we’re learning — we had a chance a while ago to hear a webinar on fire. A gentleman named Edward Struzik spoke. He showed pictures of Jasper in 1919 and then again in 1996. In 1919, it was grasslands, and there were different types of trees. It was quite open. Then Smokey the Bear comes along, and we have no fires, none of this “right fire at the right time.” We have no fires. The picture in 1996 was super dense with trees, and we were told it was really homogenous.
I imagine that the 1990s forest — is that also boreal forest? Anyway, with the 1990s forests, I would imagine they are huge carbon sinks. We have a lot in there. Now fire is coming along and telling us we’ve been big dummies with all of this fire here.
What I also heard said — I think Professor Baltzer said it — is there are more fires locked in for some time, so I am trying to figure out if this is just nature resetting it, and we have to let it happen a little bit, and what we need to do is mitigation. Is the carbon being released because we “cheated” and held it in there? I am trying to figure out how big people are: Do we get to fix this?
Ms. Baltzer: Was that a question for me or Dr. Leverkus?
Senator McBean: Either one of you.
Ms. Baltzer: Dr. Leverkus, do you want to start?
Ms. Leverkus: Sure, yes. Thank you very much, Senator McBean, for that question.
The way that I think is that carbon today is different than carbon tomorrow is different than carbon yesterday, perhaps. When we have a fire go through an area, that releases carbon, but shortly thereafter there is a significant amount of carbon that goes into the soil that produces grass that Jack’s cattle and other wildlife will want to eat. When I think about carbon and the carbon cycle, I am thinking about the full cycle, not the day of the fire coming through and the carbon going up into the atmosphere.
Your question about how big people are — we are in the time, in the boreal forest in Canada, in the fire cycle looking back over the last 8,000-plus years where we’re going to have big fires. We’re in the Pyrocene; that is the time in Earth’s history dominated by fire.
So is this a surprise what we have going on around us in the boreal forest? I do not think it’s a surprise because I think we are in that fire cycle in history. Dr. Baltzer would be able to speak better than me on carbon, though.
You did comment on Jasper in the 1990s, the grasslands and how open it was. What I would say is that the work that Jack and I do, as well as other colleagues in Canada, to either restore open rangeland or open grasslands or promote a shifting mosaic — the spatial distribution of fire across big landscapes — is really important. What I see here in Fort Nelson is a biome shift. I see the area around me going through a transition, as Dr. Baltzer referenced, so I will pass the torch over to her.
Ms. Baltzer: Thank you.
Certainly, what you described in Jasper, where there was fire suppression — presumably use of fire on the landscape to keep those landscapes open, and then fire suppression that led to a really dense, high-biomass forest — that is a challenging problem from a fire perspective, and it suggests a big impact of people in that context.
There are lots of parts of Canada where there has been some fire management but not nearly as much. I will speak to the places where I work in the North where fire management has had much less of a footprint. There has been fire suppression, but it is much less. These are some of the most carbon-rich places on the planet, and it is not in the trees. If you go up there, there are these puny little trees. You look at them, and they do not look like they are doing very well — in fact, they are fine — but all of this carbon is in the soil; about 90% of the carbon is in the soil. Part of that carbon storage process in the boreal forest is that a fire burns through and burns away some of the carbon that was accumulated in the soil in that previous fire-free interval, but not all of it. Then you accumulate some more. It is like a lasagna: You have layers of new carbon going on top of old carbon and piling up. This is how these boreal forests that have these tiny little trees are able to keep pace with tropical forests in terms of carbon storage on the land. It is this below-ground mechanism.
We’re starting to dig into that. That is where the challenge comes from, from my perspective — the fire has changed in ways that we are not just burning through some of the new carbon that was laid down but eating into those older stockpiles and taking from the piggy bank or dipping into your reserves. Compounding with that, particularly in carbon-rich northern places, is that these are often permafrost soils. Fire plays with ice, of course, so you have fires that burn through on permafrost landscapes, which leads to the thawing of permafrost and allows that carbon frozen in place and really locked away to become accessible to various decomposition processes. It was locked away from the atmosphere, and it no longer necessarily will be.
It is multiple problems when we are thinking of some of the most carbon-rich places in Canada’s forests, which are often not places with big trees.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Thanks to all the witnesses for the work that’s being done to inform us as we pursue our mandate as a Senate committee that has to prepare a report on so many aspects.
I want to ask you about the impacts that forest fires have on the public. My question is for you perhaps, Ms. Baltzer, but the other witnesses may answer it as well if they wish.
I read the Health Canada report on air and water quality. The report on the impacts of forest fire smoke on human health came out in May 2024. You do get the impression from the report that smoke impacts mortality, respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity rates and mental health.
A surprising finding that I’d like to hear you address is that it also impacts reproduction and development. I’m more particularly interested in the situation of women, and I’d like to hear what you have to say about the observations that we have of those impacts, particularly on pregnant women, and what also contributes to low postnatal birth weights. What are the harmful effects on increased maternal stress when forest fires occur in the second or third trimester of pregnancy?
It’s disturbing to see all these effects when you read the study. As you read further, you realize that various populations are unfairly affected by forest fires. Rural and Indigenous communities, in particular, are disproportionately impacted.
More specifically, I would like to hear what you have to say on those specific points, if one of the witnesses has more information on research that has been conducted on impacts on reproduction and development.
[English]
Ms. Baltzer: Thank you for that question. Unfortunately, I am by no means an expert on human health.
There are many people working on these questions of how air quality impacted human health, particularly, emergency doctors. It might be something that this committee wants to think about — to have some of those emergency doctors who have been compiling data on the sorts of impacts that we observed on human health come and speak to this panel if that is a part of the committee’s evaluation.
My comments about smoke had more to do with impacts on agricultural and forest productivity. If you would like me to speak about that, I’m certainly happy to. I’m afraid I cannot really answer your question, or it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: In your presentation, you discussed the impacts that forest fires have on human health. That’s perhaps what kindled my interest in the subject; no pun intended.
[English]
Ms. Baltzer: I am sorry that was a bit misleading. I was trying to identify the fact that we acknowledge these impacts on people and animals and, sometimes, overlook the impacts that smoke can have on the vegetation, like crops and forests. I was thinking about those aspects and the reduction in productivity that we often see in association with reduced light levels. Various chemical compounds released with wildfire smoke can impact the plants’ ability to grow and produce food and forestry supplies for us.
Ms. Leverkus: Following up on what Dr. Baltzer said, Dr. Sarah Henderson has done a lot of the research. She has a couple of publications that would speak to the senator’s questions well. She is from the Environmental Health Services at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control. I would highly recommend that you ask her. I have been to many conferences where she has presented. She is very knowledgeable and could answer these questions well. That would be her expertise.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Baltzer: Dr. Courtney Howard would be excellent in that as well.
The Deputy Chair: And where is Dr. Howard based?
Ms. Baltzer: I can give you that information in a moment. I can’t think of her affiliation right now.
Senator Richards: Thank you for being here. Mr. Wiens, you said that the season is over. October 7 will be the two hundredth anniversary of the largest fire in North America, the Great Miramichi Fire, which burned 10,000 square miles in ten hours — so we are still not out of the woods — and 250 people died, First Nations and Whites. It was a horrendous thing.
Half the problem is that we live in the woods. Three quarters of the Canadian population lives in the woods. Fire is devastating. When they live there, they are going to be devastated by it. I am not trying to lessen anything that you are saying. I am just saying that that is where we live. That is where Jasper was. That is where other cities and towns are, so it is a problem that is going to continue, is what I am trying to say.
My question is for Mr. Thiessen: What do we do for a short-term solution besides culling dead wood and doing burns? What else can we do? Do you have any suggestions about that?
Mr. Thiessen: The solutions that I bring to the table are, in particular, prescribed fire and, of course, grass management with cattle.
Let me speak to you a little bit about prescribed fire in my experience. I grew up where I reside right now. In those early days, our climate was definitely somewhat different. We were in a wetter situation. When I would have been 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, my dad filled our pockets with matches and glued sandpaper to the top of the saddle horn, and we rode up and down tributaries that were natural grasslands, and we lit them on fire. As I said in my presentation, we did that early in the year, when we would leave about a two- to four-inch stubble of grass. None of the duff layer was burned. What it did was it drastically reduced fuel levels.
We also used heavy coniferous stands. The spruce stands were our fireguard. We could never get the spruce to burn because of the higher moisture level. Then, we were burning in May. I think if we could burn earlier, in March or in April, we could have very small, low-risk fires that would drastically reduce the opportunity for a fire to get away, and we could still use some of our spruce stands as firebreaks.
There are other mechanical things that we can use. We have done some of those things on a small scale, like select logging. I have done some horse logging, where we went in and removed many of the dead or mature trees and left the other ones. That works as well, particularly on a smaller scale. As some have already said, we live in a massive, great land. There are a lot of acres.
Senator Richards: I agree. I am asking for a solution like everyone else. It will be hard to come by. It is not that I don’t think that there is global warming. I certainly think it exists. It is self-evident that it does.
The problem is where we live as Canadians. That is an ongoing problem that will not be rectified unless we move away. I grew up in an area where there were always forest fires. I fought two of them when I was 18 and 19, and I have seen them in Doaktown and Caraquet. Those are small areas where I grew up, and every year there seems to be at least one or two. I do not know how successful we are going to be at lessening them. I hope we are. I have not seen it yet.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Thank you very much; that’s fascinating. As you correctly said, there’s no single solution if we want to make progress. Continuing on what Senator Petitclerc said, I’d like to understand whether prescribed burns are only for large grazing lands where there’s a lot of grass or whether they are simply prescribed in forests in order to burn trees. Do we have any percentages? People talk about all kinds of things across Canada without knowing what methods are being used, without knowing what works or doesn’t work. Do we have an idea? Is prescribed burning really something that happens in large forests or only in agricultural areas, as Mr. Thiessen told us?
Would you please explain to me in simple terms why prescribed burning is a method for preventing forest fires? I understand that it shortens the grass in forests, but apart from that…. I’m trying to understand, but it’s a bit difficult.
[English]
Mr. Wiens: Perhaps I’ll start with a response, and then we will get details from others.
One of the things that is important to think about is that fires have always occurred in the forests, and I will use the Northwest Territories as an example of an area that has had very little prevention or forest management for years and years. If you go back through history, there is a reburn cycle where you’ll see trees that have scars. You go through the rings — we call them “tree cookies” — and you have scars that show up, say, every 20 or 30 years. There are these scars. The tree continues to grow, but what has happened is a lot of the tiny fuels, maybe the size of my little finger or a little bigger, get burned out, but it is a fire that is modest in intensity, so it doesn’t kill the trees.
That’s one of the kinds of fire we try to replicate when we’re doing prescribed fire in an area that has done that. I don’t have percentages of what that would actually split down to. The big word that we use for all those options is “fuel management.” That includes burning that understory. That includes grassland burning. That would include mechanical thinning, that is, going in there with chainsaws or equipment and reducing either the number of big trees or even a lot of the understory and grinding that up into a mulch, because it changes the whole fire behaviour.
There are a few other complications with that, but there are a bunch of ways. The big goal is not necessarily to eliminate fire but, hopefully, to make it manageable.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Does it work, and does anyone have an idea of how widespread it is? Is it the way to reduce the intensity of fires across Canada, or are there other things?
Mr. Wiens: I would say it’s a way, and then I will pass the torch to someone else who wants to give more detail.
The Deputy Chair: I wouldn’t use “torch” in this context. “Baton” is safer. Dr. Leverkus, would you like to tackle that one?
Ms. Leverkus: Yes, I definitely would. Thank you for this question.
I think when we talk about prescribed fire, there are places such as where Jack burns on his private land and on Crown land on his range tenure and where there are really large, what we call, prescribed fire units, so places that are designated across the landscape where we apply fire in the springtime and in the fall. There are prescribed fire programs where people are doing that through a very long, planned process. Then there are ignition operations.
When we talk about suppression in the summer months, in the face of wildfires, ignition operations happen to burn out fuel ahead of a big wildfire that might be coming toward a community, so it is applied fire to the land through wildfire suppression as well.
As to your question whether it is just on grasslands or if it occurs in the forests as well, I don’t think that lighting the entire boreal forest up is what we’re talking about when we’re talking about prescribed fire, but there are a lot of places where we can burn on the forested landscape, on places where there is open grass already. So I would not say that we’re limited. I would not suggest to do it in the black spruce stand that has a lot of bogs; that would not necessarily be a place that we would want to target because it might not meet as many objectivities as we would have.
When we talk about prescribed fire, there is always a plan. There are objectives. There are weather and different indices and different conditions, as well as mapping.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do I still have some time?
The Deputy Chair: No, no more time; you will have to wait for your next turn.
[English]
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here and educating us on this very important topic. I’m going to home in on the response side of things. I heard comments about human resources, training, knowledge translation and funding.
A recent polling from Abacus Data suggested that three in four Canadians support the creation of a new national non-military wildfire fighting force that could be deployed across Canada, an idea which was proposed in 2023 by several wildfire experts.
Dr. Leverkus, you talked about the need for funding and ensuring that we have a guaranteed employment for the workforce available in local communities.
Do you agree with the creation of a specialized wildfire fighting force, whether it’s that specialized fighting force that was recommended or supporting in the various communities?
Mr. Wiens: I think Dr. Leverkus made an interesting point that I want to emphasize here, and that is that there were a lot of resources last year and this year that went underutilized. We have resources that we haven’t figured out how to use, and a lot of those are Indigenous resources. There are bureaucratic reasons that exist for moving people between provinces. Some of them are safety-based, and they’re not without rationale, but they are solvable, and they need to be solved. That would be a big step forward.
I’m probably more or less agnostic on whether a central agency would necessarily be better than the way we are sharing right now, but it is something we need to examine very carefully and figure out. We have X thousands of people who are underutilized every year in a fire. Is there a way to use those under the existing system, or do we need a new system to use them? That is where I would start the conversation.
I wouldn’t throw it out, but I’m not convinced it is the best answer. We might be able to use the systems we have in place that share people between provinces and between countries in an incredibly effective way. If we can realize access to some of those people who are just waiting for the call, that would be a real opportunity.
Ms. Leverkus: There are not enough humans in Canada, in my opinion, to fight the fires currently and in the future.
I don’t have a comment on the wildland fire army perspective. I do know that with Jack, we trained 150 ranchers and Indigenous people this spring, and they are geared up with structural protection units, which include hoses and pumps and all the equipment they would need to protect themselves. We only have two of these structural protection units, which are $220,000 each, but we were able to acquire funding together to purchase those, train all of the ranchers, and Jack did an amazing job rallying everyone together.
I think that is the future. When I think about living in a rural and remote community, the people here in Fort Nelson who stayed to defend this community when everyone else evacuated — and Jack has been in similar situations — I think it’s by empowering those of us who live in rural and remote places with training and gear and understanding the proper safety protocols. And then leading over to my other suggestion or desire, we could have rural incident management teams, so those of us willing to stay and defend, with the safety training and the gear, working right underneath the BC Wildfire Service or the Government of Alberta or the territorial government. We can be here as a huge support.
I think we have wonderful Type 1 resources. Those are the government firefighting crews. Type 2 and Type 3 are contract crews, just like my crew. We just don’t have enough people. For two months this year, we had 450 people here in the community of Fort Nelson, where there is only 2,000 who live here. We had 25 helicopters, and then at the end of July, everyone was gone to the south.
I’m not sure if anyone in the room has gone through that experience of almost losing your home and your livelihood and now staying to be present on that landscape when all the resources get reallocated. There is nothing wrong with reallocating the resources where there are more people and problems in the rest of the province, but that means those of us who stay in our homes still need to be resourced.
Mr. Thiessen: The whole thought of this wildfire army, while there is a good ring to it, there is also a concern for me because I think it’s best to have those people who are right there with boots on the ground right close to the fire.
We had an incident this summer where we had a fire in a bunch of black spruce at my neighbour’s place. It lit up. In this area, I think it’s the only area we have an operation called the smokejumpers. We were actually the first on the fire, but the smokejumpers also saw the fire, and they parachute out of the airplane.
There we were as ranchers and the smokejumpers from the Forest Service, and together we were able to contain that fire and put it out within five hours of its ignition. Those are the kinds of resources we have. If we can have people trained right there, with boots on the ground, we’re only three or four miles from the fire or right next door.
Those are the things that get us quick and fast suppressions. That is the key to the mitigation or to stopping these fires, in my mind, rather than allowing them to get to, let’s say, 50, 100 or 500 acres and then try to deal with it.
The Deputy Chair: Before we begin the second round, I’m going to ask a couple of quick questions, which is the chair’s prerogative.
I wish to start by asking Mr. Thiessen and Dr. Leverkus if you ever get pushback from people who say, “Get out of the way. You’re creating more danger by being here. We’re the pros, and you’re not as pro.”
Mr. Thiessen: Yes, I’ve had some pushback, I have. We as a family have had some pushback, but we have an excellent rapport with the wildfire managers and the team that’s in Fort St. John, the place where we live.
When I’ve had pushback, they’ve called the head of the wildfire there. Because we have such a good relationship, and we have done so much for the Forest Service, we always get a hands-up, a thumbs-up and get back to work.
The Deputy Chair: Dr. Leverkus?
Ms. Leverkus: Yes, but I would echo what Jack said. I have really wonderful relationships with BC Wildfire Service, with our zone wildfire officers and the fire centre and provincially.
We really proved ourselves this year, again pointing back to the fact that we’ve been training people for 10 years. We’re a wildfire crew. While I have many initials before and after my name, my boots are in the dirt, in the black and on the fire line. We’re working with all of the fire crews.
People understand that even while we are pushing and trying to shift paradigms of wildfire, wildland fire, in Canada, we walk the walk and talk the talk. I can’t say enough good things about the government folks we have worked with.
I will say it was a challenge this spring. My home was evacuated. The fire is literally five minutes from my house. It almost burned our community. There was structural loss. My crew and I spent 64 days fighting that fire five minutes from my house. There are other thoughts I could share after if there were more questions on that.
The Deputy Chair: I have a question for Mr. Thiessen and Dr. Baltzer. We just finished an enormous, comprehensive study of soil health in which I thought we had covered every possible angle. The one thing we never talked about is what happens when topsoil burns.
Could you talk to us about the long-term economic, agricultural cost to the land when farmland and ranch land topsoil burns? Mr. Thiessen, I’ll start with you, and then we can go to Dr. Baltzer if that’s in your wheelhouse as well.
Mr. Thiessen: I’ll speak to what I can speak to of it. I don’t come with science, in particular, but I do come with experience.
In 1953 — that was a little bit before my time — there was a large forest fire that burned through most of the area in which we reside, not on the place we ranch but in many of the neighbouring communities. It was in the middle of summer. It was an intensely hot fire. Most of the topsoil burned off. You can see the line where that line was in its productivity when us as pioneers and my parents as pioneers came into this country and opened this land up. It’s a clear line there.
The other thing I will say on that is that in 2023 we had some intense fire that burned a lot of topsoil. I rode through that on my horse looking for cows later. The wildfires also have a way of scattering our cows all over the landscape as they try to move away from fires. We were trying to gather these cattle up. All we had was two inches of rain. Already, because the topsoil was burnt, where we had never had erosion, we already had probably about 1.5 feet of erosion in some of these gullies where the topsoil is burnt. I think it is very environmentally destructive when our topsoil burns.
Also in regard to that, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Peace River Forage Association in our area have a test lot where we’ve been doing some burning. This is a three-year project that Dr. Leverkus is also involved in. They’re actually coming out tomorrow to do soil testing to see what the effects of fire have been on our soil.
We’re burning some places: some lightly, some hard. We’re doing different things. We’re getting some people involved who are taking in the science to see where this leads.
Ms. Baltzer: I would applaud Jack and Dr. Leverkus for the experimental work they’re doing. The answer probably is we don’t know enough about the impacts of those fires on agricultural lands.
Certainly in the forests I work in, where we see deep burning, this could have big impacts, particularly on aquatic ecosystems. You could have changes in the water chemistry that has impacts on the way the lakes and rivers function, sometimes for very short periods of time, and sometimes this can be longer term. There are interactions between the land and the water we need to think about as well when we’re thinking about the combustion of soil.
The Deputy Chair: Thank you. We came in right on time.
Senator McNair: Dr. Leverkus, a couple of things you said stood out for me; there were a number of things but two in particular. You said quite passionately — my colleague Senator McBean talked about it — you used the term “good fire” and you said, “Do not get in the way of people using good fire.”
The other thing you said a couple of times is, “We’re not afraid to stay and defend.”
I’m thinking about this study so far in front of this committee. We’ve heard from government officials, the Association of Fire Chiefs and the Red Cross, but it is primarily related to the response to the wildfires. This panel and the one before are helping us understand better the causes of the wildfires.
My question for each of you is this: What would you like us to take away from this study, or what should we specifically be including in our report? Dr. Leverkus, you listed four things eloquently in yours, and maybe that’s it, adding the “do not get in the way of people using good fire” as a fifth.
Dr. Baltzer?
Ms. Baltzer: Yes, thank you. From my perspective, a key thing that needs to be included in the report is a real emphasis on — I know we talk about not having a silver bullet, but the silver bullet is climate change mitigation — much more serious action toward meeting our greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals and working with other countries to more rapidly act on the climate emergency.
We’re at a point where we can’t wait any longer. From the perspective of wildfire on this landscape, we need to slow that warming down. That would be my number one point that needs to be emphasized in this. That is the big solution.
Senator McNair: The fix or the start?
Ms. Baltzer: To start to slow it. That would be my key takeaway, yes.
Senator McNair: Right.
Mr. Wiens: One of the things, and it has become perhaps a slogan, but it’s a whole-of-society problem, any one of these issues. A good example, in fact, is if you’re going to do prescribed burning, there is the physics, the actual physical process, how you are going to do it, but there is a big social aspect to the whole thing. The neighbours are not happy when you smoke them out.
Then you get into the whole issue of health. There is a really significant health impact associated with smoke. There are many studies going on with that.
I would say one of the things that are important is you have to socialize. Many of these things, if you’re going to chop down trees and burn the understory and do an awful lot of changes, there is also a strong social aspect to the whole thing. You have to sort of market it; you can’t just go in there and say, “This is the answer; we have to do it,” because otherwise people are really resistant.
Senator McNair: Thank you.
Dr. Leverkus, do you have anything to add?
Ms. Leverkus: Other than the points that I already brought forward — and I would like all of those to go into your report as a suggestion — I really think there is a good path forward working together, collaborating. I’m not saying that we want to be taking over the world, but there are people across this country who choose to live in remote and rural communities. We do that knowing there are risks involved. Many of us are willing and keen to participate and help. One of the big things is that as long as we can do that in a safe way that is under direction by provincial and territorial agencies, that is really a positive step forward.
I’ll hand it over to Jack.
Mr. Thiessen: One of the things I would like to come forward with or that I would like to see in your report is that I come at it from a slightly different standpoint than probably most people. I make my living from raising beef. I do think we can add a lot to it. In British Columbia, we have seen a reduction in cattle on the land, and we have seen a reduction of fire on the land. I would like to see both of those put forward in a way that this is something that isn’t going to save the world but is definitely going to make a difference in the area in which we can manage these things.
I mentioned virtual fencing. In the past, it has been difficult on some of these Crown land areas to use cattle for fuel load reduction where there is a lot of grass, but now, with that virtual fencing that’s just on the horizon — my son is working very diligently on that — we can protect some of these riparian zones, some of these special-needs areas, and some of the Indigenous people’s and First Nations’ concerns can be met with some of this virtual fencing. We can do a lot.
I’m grazing over 30,000 acres of land, so we can make a difference in a huge corridor. Our whole area is made up of large ranches. If we could put together a program whereby we could utilize virtual fencing to move and manage special areas and meet these environmental concerns that have been in the past about cattle on the land, I think we could do a lot.
The Deputy Chair: Some of us, I have to say, had the opportunity to visit a ranch in southern Alberta last summer where we saw virtual fencing — well, we didn’t see it, but we understood how it worked. Would it be helpful for those of you who were not with us on our trip to understand? By virtual fencing, you don’t need to put up physical barbed wire because this is an invisible fence that stops the cattle and allows you to do more intensive grazing in situ. It gives the cattle a little bit of a thrill.
Senator Petitclerc, you were in the middle of a really good conversation. I had to cut you short.
Senator Petitclerc: I think I did get that answer at another moment, or did you want to comment on — I’m not even sure I remember very well what my question was — I’m going to be transparent here.
But if you do remember, I’m happy to hear the answer.
Mr. Wiens: What I wrote down were some of the social aspects of prescribed burning and that kind of thing.
Senator Petitclerc: Yes.
Mr. Wiens: This will maybe answer a couple questions. One of the really interesting things is that if Dr. Henderson comes and talks to you, she will note the health impact — she’s an epidemiologist, so she’s looking at those signatures of who goes to the hospitals and emergency rooms — shows up really early with relatively modest smoke levels. If you go from here to here, you already have a health signature. When you go from here to here, the signature is weaker. It’s that first bit. Even relatively modest amounts of smoke have a significant health signature.
Smoke can cause transportation risks, for example. There were a good number of accidents in Alberta 30 or 40 years ago between Edmonton and Jasper where smoke created a fog — and in southern Manitoba. There have been a bunch of these where there were fatalities and serious accidents because visibility goes down in smoke.
So it is very complicated that way.
The other part of it, though, is that there are some strategies. Someone mentioned the whole idea of having proper ventilation and filtration in-house. That has been discussed within a number of communities: Can we create safe spaces for people to shelter not so much from the risk of actual heat from the fire but the smoke? Can we create community centres or that kind of thing that have sufficient heating and ventilation systems that actually remove the smoke? It can be done. It’s not super cheap, but it’s not super expensive. You can make pretty effective filters relatively easily.
All that is to say that it’s really nuanced, but there has to be a whole-of-society approach — at the risk of repeating that — but also making sure there is a really effective communication program in advance so you can sell the benefits and explain to people why things have been done to protect them and some things they can do.
Ms. Leverkus: I will try to be quick.
A question those of us in prescribed fire often ask others is, “How do you like your smoke?” Do you like it in short bouts in the fall and the spring, when we know there is good venting and the smoke will rise up and go elsewhere? Or do people like to be chewing and choking on smoke, like we do here in Fort Nelson all summer? So that is another question we often bring into this discussion.
You also asked how much we can help by preventing versus reacting and responding. In my opinion, I think prescribed fire is definitely the way of the future. Fire and grazing, like what Jack does — and many people throughout our country do with their livestock and wildlife — that’s a really important ecological process as well as a way to decrease the grass height. Grass equals fuel, so we have to think about that in two different ways.
I also think there are many examples that, perhaps in your report, could be looked at from British Columbia, Alberta and elsewhere in our country of many more people doing prescribed fires and putting fire on the land in a good way.
Do I think that’s going to resolve everything across our broad country? Maybe not, but I do think we also need to be prepared that we need to be more aggressive when we apply fire, and that’s going to mean that people will see the smoke, but it should only be in short windows as opposed to the entire summer.
Senator Petitclerc: Maybe my next question is for you, Ms. Baltzer.
It’s a simple question. We’ve been talking about preventing and responding. Are we doing any work as a country in terms of modelling into the future? I understand the mitigation of climate emergency would be the ideal situation, but when it comes to wildfires, are we modelling into the future and have some sort of a plan — academics, for sure, workforce maybe — or are we in reaction mode as a country?
Ms. Baltzer: I think this is probably a question that Mr. Wiens —
Senator Petitclerc: I’m also interested in knowing about investing in research. That’s why I asked you the question.
Ms. Baltzer: Thank you for that question.
So my immediate response is that there is an active development of what we refer to as ecological forecasting tools that bring in fire models and climate change models, our understanding of how the land cover is changing in response to these things. They all play together in these models to be able to provide forecasting to decision makers. Those tools are absolutely essential. The further development of those — the Canadian Forest Service — there are researchers there leading the development of that, in collaboration with academics across the country.
Senator Marshall: My question is for Mr. Thiessen. You were telling us what you do to look after your property or your land, so there must be adjacent landowners. Is everybody doing the same thing as you? If so, is there also adjacent land or land in the vicinity where there is nothing done?
You seem to have a good recipe, and I am just wondering who else is doing what you’re doing and if there’s land that nobody is doing anything with.
Mr. Thiessen: Yes. In our area, we do have a number of other neighbours. As we have seen more and more wildfires, I get more and more requests to come and help them do prescribed burns on their places to help fireproof or at least fire-mitigate their personal landscape. We have done more and more of this.
Yes, there is a significant amount of Crown land that is within our community that is scattered throughout. Those pieces are the pieces that we have seen now become very fire-attractive. We had some burn in 2016, and we had it burn again in 2023. Basically, those wildfires have turned that timbered land with beautiful, huge coniferous and deciduous landscape into complete grassland. I rode through there three days ago on my saddle horse and, literally, the grass was above my saddle horn. It was over six feet tall. Next spring, if we have a dry spring, it is bound to burn somehow. Somewhere there is going to be a lightning strike, and it will be out of control.
If this were burned as soon as the snow is gone — you can even burn with some snow on the ground; all you do is you take off that top layer — you drastically change the potential in the next four months.
Senator Marshall: Where you reside, how much is Crown land? Is it a small amount? Is it mostly other landowners who are farming, or is it a big area?
Mr. Thiessen: It is probably about 80% Crown land.
Senator Marshall: That much. Thank you. That is helpful.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: My question will be brief because I’d like to hear all four witnesses on this issue.
You have all talked about reduction. That brings me to the first point that Senator Petitclerc made, which was prevention.
In the documents that I’ve read — feel free to tell me whether it’s true — we’re told that 97% of fires are started by human causes. If I were to ask each of you to state a preventive measure that we should take into consideration, what would it be? Who would like to answer first regarding prevention? If you had to recommend that we examine one preventive factor, what would it be?
[English]
Mr. Wiens: I will start, and we can see where we go from there. Ninety per cent of the area burned in Canada comes from lightning fires because they tend to be remote and hard to get at. It depends on the season, but overall it is about a 50-50 mix between human-caused and natural-caused fires in Canada — maybe it’s 55-45, but very close to 50-50. It’s a good starting guess. In the spring, when there is less lightning, it is more people; in midsummer, when there is more lightning, there tend to be more naturally caused fires.
The other thing that is important to remember is that human-caused fires are not just people flipping cigarettes out the window. It is from all manner of human activity. It could be trains, transportation trucks, a dragging chain. It sometimes is negligence, where someone starts a fire and it gets away. It very rarely — although not zero — is, in fact, arson. Human-caused is a really big, broad category, but there are things we can do to reduce that. That is one of the ignition sources we can reduce. The thing is that most of those fires tend to be where people are, so they see them sooner and they are able to react sooner. Reacting quickly is part of the key to putting them out.
Mr. Thiessen: One of the things that we could see in this is education. What we have seen in the last 25 years that has changed quite drastically is our mentality around fire.
People light a campfire; it is all good; they have their thing. Something goes wrong, but they are taught and trained that they can do nothing about it. Let’s say that this fire is only five feet in diameter; a person can easily stomp that out with their feet or jacket in manageable fuel levels. A lot of times, people are taught that this is a fire and you cannot do it. I think that with some education even individuals out in the bush can make a difference. It won’t be a lot of fires, but it will be some fires, and any mitigation is good. Education is key in that realm.
Ms. Leverkus: I will say burn it, graze it, be ready for it with gear, and that gear is ground crew who are trained with pumps and hoses and aerial support — especially in our remote and rural places — with trained people. Burn it, graze it and be ready for it, because it is coming again.
Ms. Baltzer: To add to the education piece, when we think about some of the tools that we talked about for helping to manage fire on the landscape or helping to slow fire on the landscape, some of the tools like prescribed fires — Dr. Leverkus and Mr. Thiessen talk about how well these tools are embraced where they are living — there are many places where there is maybe a concern about those kinds of tools and their use on the landscape.
There is a big education piece for working to help support better understanding of the role of some of these management tools to help slow, if not prevent, fire from encroaching on communities, for example. A lot more work has to go into that. Often an under-resourced part of fire management is being able to communicate some of those things effectively to communities that are spread very thin.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a question that’s somewhat off the beaten path and that was inspired by Senator Richards, who said that we live in the woods. I have always believed that we are a privileged country for the purpose of addressing climate change precisely because we have trees, unlike other countries that have deserts or few trees. We hear you. It’s all quite dramatic. We’re talking about fires and what goes wrong. Doesn’t the fact that we have so many trees in our country afford us some security, at a time when the climate is warming to this degree? Is that becoming an even greater danger than not having trees?
[English]
Does that make sense? Did you get it? I know we can’t change. We have the country we have, but we are talking about it in such negative terms. It seems to me that if the planet becomes really hot, being under a tree would be a little better — that is where I am trying to find the balance.
Ms. Baltzer: You are absolutely correct. Having forests is an essential cooling component of the planet. They do a tremendous amount of work. Water leaves those forests, and it helps to cool the whole system. You are right. We know that. We know that in cities where you have more green space, there are cooler locations. You are absolutely correct; those forests are doing a really important job of helping to cool the planet.
The challenge is when those forests get very dry and it is very hot. We do have many forests. I do not think that anyone is suggesting that it would be better not to have those forests.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: No, we are not saying that.
Ms. Baltzer: The challenge is figuring out how to keep the communities safe and important assets safe when we are challenged with years like we saw in 2023 and we will increasingly see in the future. I do not know if that answers your question.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: It does.
Ms. Baltzer: Certainly, in countries that have far less forest than Canada, we see the same sorts of issues being faced. In many places in Europe, there is a tremendous amount of wildfire happening that is in systems that are not as forested as ours. There is an underlying climate change signature that is driving all of those fire-related patterns.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: I have a more specific question.
[Translation]
You say that tree types are changing with changes in climate and with fires and that we now have fewer conifers and more deciduous trees. I admit I’ve noticed that in forests that are closer to major cities. For example, there used to be a lot more conifers north of Montreal. So is the fact that the types of trees in forests are changing a bad thing?
[English]
Ms. Baltzer: That is a great question with a really important nuance in all of that. Different types of trees respond differently to fire. Conifers are typically pretty flammable. They have all kinds of lovely compounds in them that burn well. Some of them, like black spruce, have a lot of fuels going up. You see all the dead stems on the tree stumps. There are traits in those trees that help them to almost embrace fire.
A lot of the broadleaf species tend to fare a little better in the face of fire. Those tend to be less flammable for most of the year. Once they have leafed out, they tend to be less flammable than conifers. They will burn in a dry year. In 2023, we saw a lot of aspen stands burning, for example, but they do help to slow fire on the landscape, certainly, even if it does not completely stop it. They have a lot more water in their tissues and a lot less of these more flammable compounds.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: We see a lot of planting of pines. Should this not happen anymore?
Mr. Wiens: I was going to say that it is very common in replanting to basically have a monoculture, which is not normal, nor is it natural. A mix probably makes a lot more sense.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: So it’s bad?
Ms. Baltzer: I think there’s evidence that some of the forest management that has emphasized growing conifers can lead to situations where you do have a more flammable landscape than where you have species mixes. Thinking about that in the context of forest management is something that is worth considering. People are certainly talking about that. We are seeing increased use of things like aspen for fuel breaks on the landscape around communities. For example, around Whitehorse, they are doing that. They are planting aspen in big firebreaks around the city. This is something that is a topic of conversation.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: It is something that we have control over. We could change our ways of planting and reforestation.
Thank you very much.
Senator Richards: Thank you for being here.
You are right. A lot of times replanting is done with pine or whatever, thousands of acres of it, and it is not a good thing. They don’t take the same to the soil, and they burn quickly.
I wonder about the interconnectedness of the fire crews that come to Canada. Europe burned this summer: Greece burned. Portugal burned. Spain burned. Southern France burned. Crews from all over the world descended there, and they descended on Canada. I don’t know if they were in Jasper, but they were in B.C. from South Africa and Australia, and we go there.
How connected is that, or do you know how connected that is? Is this a government policy? Is this an individual policy on the part of the firefighters? How does that work?
Mr. Wiens: It is a bit of both, I think, is probably a good way to put it. Certainly, the academic communities are very well connected around the world — the Australians, the Europeans and the North Americans. We interact very regularly with each another and go to each other’s conferences and read each other’s papers. There is a lot of connection that way.
The exchange of the crews between countries has the additional benefit of creating friendships and relationships that then follow up in terms of you have firefighters in Australia who know firefighters in South Africa or something like that. The exchange of people also creates the exchange of ideas as well as creating relationships that go on. That is an unintended good consequence of doing that.
There is also a fairly intentional process. A good example is a study tour, which we haven’t done now for a number of years, between Australia, New Zealand and North America where they will actually collect a number of fire people, and they will do a tour of one of the countries. Canada, New Zealand and the United States will go down to Australia, and vice versa, at various points. They would tour around and see some of the main points.
There is very intentional activity to make sure that the exchange of ideas goes back and forth between the various countries.
Senator Richards: I know, and it is very admirable.
I am just thinking how an Aussie from north of Sydney would know how to fight a fire in northern B.C. It takes a certain specialized idea of how to operate in a forest in northern B.C. or in some place south of Brisbane. And how long would it take them to get acclimatized to this? Would you know? I am just asking that question.
Mr. Wiens: I know they do acclimatize fairly quickly. There are certainly some commonalities, but it does require a certain amount of adaptation. I have not actually been on the fire line myself, so I can’t really speak to that part of it.
Perhaps Dr. Leverkus has an opinion on that, but I know it worked a lot of times.
Ms. Leverkus: I can follow up.
I have worked with several Australian incident management teams, first in 2017 on Elephant Hill and the Tautri Complex fires in central British Columbia, and then we had an Australian incident management team — an approximately 20-person team from Australia — come in to Fort Nelson around the last week of July, first week of August. They were outstanding. They were clearly fire professionals from Australia. They came into the operations meetings, and they were phenomenal. They also had a significant amount of briefing on their way from Australia to Canada. They have information packages.
Yes, it is a different fuel type, so a different vegetation, which is what you are talking about, I think. But, actually, the boreal forest does behave fairly aggressively, like a lot of places in remote Australia.
I have always been very impressed when the Australian IMT came in. That is overhead; they are at a management level, and then there are crews like my crew and other government crews that they direct.
I do want to say a note about safety quickly because I think that this is something we have not talked about. I want to acknowledge the eight wildland firefighters whom we lost last year and the wildland firefighter whom we lost in Alberta this year, and I want to make sure that we are talking about “danger trees.”
I love trees as well. I agree trees are important for many things, but in our fourth year of drought here in the North, trees are really susceptible to falling over. We have now had several deaths on the fire lines while we have been fighting fire from trees that have fallen over. And even for crews that come up from other places, not understanding the level of drought that we’re in in the North, it takes a while to appreciate that even when you are walking in the green — not in the black — when you are in the green, unburnt area, there is still a lot of danger, and those trees fall over.
So, to one of the questions being what we think needs to be included in this report, I honestly think a discussion — one paragraph — about danger trees. There is a lot of information out there now after the last two years, but please keep danger trees and wildland firefighter safety also in your minds.
The Deputy Chair: I can see our analyst, Joanne, is making a note.
Senator McBean is the last senator on the list. There is time. If someone else has a short question, we can fit another couple in.
Senator McBean: It’s sounding a little bit like if you know the fuel, you will know the fire. I have two questions.
Mr. Thiessen, how much does it cost you to do prescribed fires on your property? What is the cost to you as a business owner?
Mr. Thiessen: I guess I haven’t actually calculated out my cost. We typically burn between 800 and 1,000 acres per year in our prescribed burn plan that is registered with the BC Wildfire Service.
Typically, in order to do that, it takes us probably about four or five days. I normally have about six people doing that. Our burn plans are typically done without water, although now we have resources through this funding we’ve been able to get, so we now have some pumps. Managing that is relatively cheap compared to heavy metal, that is equipment like Cats, tractors and diesel fuel. Any time that I can manage something without burning fossil fuels, it is money in my pocket and better for the environment.
Senator McBean: I am trying to figure out how a federal policy could support that. How would you say a federal government or policy could help support you with paying for those days?
Mr. Thiessen: Typically, most of us as producers are not actually looking for funding to do that. However, as we enter into the landscape of politics that is changing so drastically in regard to getting these permits — at this time in British Columbia they have still been very friendly toward giving us these permits — I think that we’re going end up where we are going to need someone classified as professional on this, and if we can at least have that individual paid for by the government, it would be beneficial. We’re probably looking at a cost of somewhere around $5 to $10 per acre when we do it in the way we do it.
Senator McBean: Dr. Leverkus, you gave us six points off the top, and I will go to two of them. Point 2 was training, and point 4 was rural incident management teams. How could the federal government support those? What would you want from the federal government on those?
Ms. Leverkus: Continued funding so that when we apply fire to the land, as you heard Jack say, he doesn’t use water. That is important for you to know that he is managing his fire without the use of water. Many people need water. Many people may need a helicopter. So we need funding programs that can allow for that. There are other funds that could be used as an example for where we had our funding from.
As to rural incident management teams through federal policy, I want to be clear that the rural incident management teams would be supporting the provincial and territorial governments, not taking over. There could be funding for training people in the incident command system, in wildland fire and fire behaviour. There would need to be a training component, funding for training, so that we can all speak the same language. When you get into wildland fire, it is more militant in the words that we use with each other to keep our structure, so we need funding for and setting up rural incident management teams.
This has not been talked about before in Canada. Having the federal government support these rural and remote communities to establish an incident management team would be the first step: funding us to be able to do our training, gearing us up and making sure that there is the connection that we are here to support the provincial and territorial governments and would take lead from them in the operations and tactics.
Senator McBean: Everybody wants funding, but what about the information and training? Do you find that your research and training are connecting to Professor Leverkus and in the rural areas? Is there some way that the government programs can make sure that information is getting out there?
Mr. Wiens: I would say that the answer is sometimes, but not as often as would be ideal. There is scope for prioritizing. In the larger picture, for example, the Tri-Council now requires knowledge exchange to be considered. It is still a token, but it is a start. Those requirements are national. They would apply to all kinds of research projects.
Senator McBean: What is the Tri-Council?
Mr. Wiens: That’s NSERC, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada; CIHR, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; and SSHRC, which is the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Senator McBean: Thank you.
Mr. Wiens: That is all run by one organization in Canada, and they have a common set of rules. The Canadian Forest Service, for example, has a growing program of doing that knowledge exchange.
There is a program under way right now that is waiting for a decision to establish an organization in Canada. Those are good steps in the right direction. They are not sufficient, but they are a great step in the right direction. That kind of funding is basically making sure that we have a way. We have tried to get internships where we get academics in association with the fire agency. Conceptually, that is easy to do. Logistically, getting insurance and those kinds of things get in the way. Those of us who aren’t really good at that, if we had support from somewhere else, that would be helpful as well. It is a relatively modest amount of resources, but having an agency that would help do that would be helpful.
Senator McBean: Thank you.
The Deputy Chair: I want to thank all four of our witnesses for their remarkable testimony today, especially to Mr. Thiessen and Dr. Leverkus, who have been out on the fire lines fighting to protect their own homes and properties. It has been extraordinary to hear not just the academic expertise at the table but also the personal stories. I would like to thank all of our committee members tonight for your active participation and thoughtful questions. They were beyond that.
I also want to take a moment to thank all the staff who support the work of this committee. Thank you to the interpreters, the Debates team transcribing this meeting, the committee room attendant, the Multimedia Services technician, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, the Information Services Directorate and our page.
(The committee adjourned.)