THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 31, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 10:01 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries, as well as rural and Indigenous communities, throughout the country.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone, and Happy Halloween. Before we begin, I will remind you how best to handle the earpieces and the microphones in order to protect those who work behind us, including our translators, interpreters, et cetera. So carry on as we have, and if you are not using them, set them down on the table and unplug them. I do appreciate your cooperation.
I want to begin by welcoming members of the committee, our witness and those who are watching this meeting on the World Wide Web. My name is Rob Black, a senator from Ontario, and I chair this committee.
Before we hear from our witness, I would like to start by asking the senators to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Good morning. I’m Senator Paula Simons. I come from Alberta, and I come from Treaty 6 territory. Tansi.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar from Quebec.
[English]
Senator McNair: Good morning. I’m John McNair from New Brunswick.
Senator Burey: Welcome. Sharon Burey, senator for Ontario.
Senator Muggli: Good morning. Tracy Muggli, senator for Saskatchewan, from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Banff National Park, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Marshall: Elizabeth Marshall, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Senator Richards: David Richards from New Brunswick.
The Chair: Today, the committee will continue its study on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries.
Today, we welcome, from the Municipality of Jasper, Mayor Richard Ireland, who is joining us by video conference.
Welcome, Mayor Ireland, and thank you for being with us. We do appreciate the time you are giving us today. You will have five minutes for your presentation. When you have about a minute left, I will hold up my hand. When you see two hands, it is time to wrap it up.
With that, Mayor Ireland, the floor is yours.
Richard Ireland, Mayor, Municipality of Jasper: Good morning, senators. I am honoured to share with you this morning my observations regarding the strategies employed by the Municipality of Jasper in concert and collaboration with Parks Canada to prepare for the eventuality, indeed the inevitability, of wildfire — an increasing risk for every forested community across Canada.
In Jasper, we have long recognized that threat. More than two decades ago, with Parks Canada, we began to FireSmart in and around our community. On the landscape, that can include creating firebreaks; reducing fuel loads either by hand, mechanically or by prescribed burns; installing waterlines and sprinkler systems; and planning defensive perimeters, strategies and tactics.
Within communities, it can include treatments to the wildland-urban interface and deeper into the community, again, to reduce fuel loads and remove combustibles, as well as to install protections like waterlines and sprinklers. It can involve landscaping and maintenance around individual homes — everything from replacing cedar shakes and other roofing and siding treatments with more fire-resistant materials, to removing shrubs and bushes from against the house, as well as cleaning leaves and debris from under decks, moving woodpiles and fences away from structures and installing roof sprinklers.
It can also include municipal investment in equipment and training for firefighters.
In Jasper, by working together with Parks Canada and accessing provincial grant funding where possible, we did all of that, including conducting multiple prescribed burns over many years.
Recently, Jasper has been described as probably the most FireSmart community in Canada. While certainly a source of pride, we recognize that this status is partly the result of so few communities being focused, as we have been, on that objective. We did, though, work intentionally and systematically to achieve an increasingly high standard of safeguarding our community. In addition to specific FireSmarting activities, we conducted joint annual training exercises. We crafted protection plans, response plans, evacuation plans and re-entry plans. We exercised a partial mock evacuation of part of our community about six weeks before this fire. Those training exercises absolutely enhanced the ability of our interagency teams to respond collaboratively and effectively when the time came.
Beyond that, we conducted awareness and information sessions for our residents. Every spring, we held a FireSmart week where trained professionals would provide individual homeowners with advice regarding best practices for FireSmarting their own homes. We preached preparedness, and it worked. We safely evacuated approximately 25,000 residents and visitors within the course of about five hours. Approximately 44 hours after the evacuation order had been issued, the largest and probably the most intense wildfire that our national park has seen in over a century hit the town.
We lost 30% of our structures, leaving approximately 40% of our population homeless. Yet, despite the devastation, despite the loss and despite the heartbreak, our experience was a success. Because of the awareness of the threat, because of our commitment to preparations on the landscape and in the town, because of investments including joint training between and among organizations, and because of the professionalism, valour and sacrifice of wildland and structural fire protection crews, 25,000 people were safely evacuated, while 70% of our structures and all of our critical infrastructure were saved.
Tragically, that success came at the cost of the life of one wildland firefighter — a cost we hope may never again be incurred by any family or any community.
The financial cost to the response, the recovery and the rebuilding of our vital visitor economy is staggering, well over $1 billion. I am convinced that we can do better to prepare for, respond to and recover from the inevitable onslaught of nature. I support this committee and its quest to do so. I invite you to use Jasper’s experience as a case study, and I look forward to answering any questions you may have.
The Chair: Thank you, Mayor Ireland. We will proceed to questions from senators now.
Senator Simons: Thank you, Mayor Ireland, for speaking with us. I am from Edmonton. I spent many happy days in Jasper as a child and then as a parent with my own family. It is a town and a park that have such a special meaning to the people of Edmonton because of that geographic connection that we have. We consider it our bedroom community. Like many Edmontonians, I watched in horror and in tears as the fire came closer and closer to places that have so many special memories for me.
I want to understand to what extent the mountain pine beetle die-off played a role in the fire. It has been one of the challenges of climate change. It is not just that the hot weather makes fires more likely; it’s also that warmer winters have meant that we’re not getting the kills of mountain pine beetles that we used to get. Was there a lot of deadfall from the mountain pine beetles that played a role in this fire?
Mr. Ireland: I am perhaps unqualified to answer specifically, but I thank you for the question, senator. Certainly, the mountain pine beetle was more than just topical. The infestation that hit Jasper National Park more than a decade ago was intensive. It affected trees throughout the entire national park and into the province.
My understanding of the science — and, again, I am careful because I’m not a scientist — is that the height of vulnerability from the mountain pine beetles was decreasing. In the early years, when the trees were freshly dead and they were still covered in those dead red needles, they were like candles on the landscape. As those needles began to fall off and accumulate in the duff around the base of the trees, my understanding is that the risk reduced.
Mr. Michael Flannigan has written extensively on this, and it is people like him on whom I rely. His opinion appears to be, at this stage, although mountain pine beetles were a contributing factor, they were not a major factor in the intensity or the cause of the wildfires this past summer.
Senator Simons: You deserve congratulations for having FireSmarted the community and for conducting the evacuation drills. But this was the drill of all drills that you had to go through — it was not a drill. What steps are you taking as a community to assess your own response to the fire and to see where you succeeded, where you perhaps didn’t do quite as well and what lessons you could learn to prepare yourselves in case there is a next time?
Mr. Ireland: Our intent is certainly to join with Parks Canada in an after-action review. I have heard some comments that this is under way at the federal level. I have to confess: Our crews are still trying to return some sense of normality to the town, so we’ve not been able to engage in the after-action review that we intend to do.
As you can appreciate, there is still debris on the ground here. We are still trying to collect ourselves and get our feet on the ground. But, absolutely, we fully intend to collaborate with Parks Canada and any other agency that wants to look at the response and the actions ahead of time to prepare for this wildfire.
We understand there are lessons to be learned, not just by Jasper but also by people across the country. We are fully prepared to engage in that. It is just an exercise that we have not yet had an opportunity to delve into.
Senator Simons: I have one more question which is not so much germane to the fire but to the aftermath. With the winter ski season coming up, many people are wondering when would be the appropriate time to return. People may be afraid, as they don’t want to overwhelm the community by coming before you’re ready, but they also don’t want to contribute to your economic woes by not coming at all. So when should we start booking?
Mr. Ireland: You should have started already, senator, and I thank you for the question. Our offering is obviously limited, so call ahead and plan ahead, but we are welcoming visitors now. We absolutely understand the need to recover our economy, and it’s based on visitation.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
Senator Sorensen: Good morning, Mayor Ireland. Thank you for joining us today. I was in Jasper a few weeks ago, and I have reflected on that visit. I want to say to my colleagues that amidst the devastation, three things were really notable: The first was how much of the town was, in fact, saved. The second was the regrowth in the forest. It is fascinating how quickly those green shoots start to come up post-fire. Third, I want to comment on the optimism of Jasperites, which is what we call them. It was an emotional visit; let’s leave it at that.
That said, Your Worship, today — three months later — I am interested to know what you would say is currently the biggest challenge for the community.
Mr. Ireland: Without question, the biggest challenge we face right now is interim or temporary housing in order to get our residents through to the rebuild and the restoration of our visitor economy. Every aspect of our recovery depends upon housing. At a personal level, we still have so much of our community dispersed across the country because there is simply no place for them here. To rebuild their lives, they need housing.
For the social restoration of our community, we need those people back in town, and, again, that’s housing. For the recovery of our visitor economy, it is our residents who provide the necessary labour force to our visitor economy. We can’t really restart our visitor economy without getting our residents back in housing. Without question, in my view, interim and temporary housing to get us through to the rebuild is the most critical challenge that we face right now.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you, and I want to thank you as well for restating, as has been stated many times, how the municipality — with Parks Canada — has prepared over the last decade and more. I appreciate you reiterating that, but, to your point, we could be using this experience perhaps as a case study, or maybe I would use the term “lessons learned.”
What would you say to other municipalities, based on what you did? Not everybody lives in a forested community. Not everybody has Parks Canada at their back. What were some of the key things you did? Is it the mock disasters? We have certainly done those in Banff many times, where we literally evacuated the town to see how long it would take. You mentioned things like your land use policies and building materials, et cetera. What would be your best advice to other municipalities?
Mr. Ireland: In terms of preparing for what I have described as the inevitability of wildfire, it’s certainly about recognizing that the threat comes first — with Parks Canada, we were way ahead on that — and then taking actions on the landscape and in the community, particularly the wildland-urban interface where the fire hits the town. It’s about preparing structural fire protection crews in the towns with the equipment that they need to fight a wildfire that’s coming into town.
Then we have the interagency cooperation. We went instantly to unified command. That is the municipality and Parks Canada working together under incident command but in a unified setting to deal with the response. We developed those relationships over a number of years in all of the training exercises that we did jointly and with Alberta. The Alberta Emergency Management Agency was in the room at the time. We developed a team approach where people were comfortable in advance with the response that they were going to get from their partners. That level of collaboration will be vital for any community that has to deal with wildfire. There is no chance to do this on your own, so collaboration is essential.
Senator Sorensen: It is nice to see you.
Mr. Ireland: Thank you, senator.
Senator Burey: Mayor Ireland, thank you so much for your hard work. I can’t imagine what it has been like for you and your community, but our positive thoughts and resources from all over Canada are with you.
My question is about the mental health of firefighters. Firefighters face dangerous and high-stress situations almost every day to protect Canadians. Of course, this can cause anxiety, PTSD and difficulties reintegrating into society, especially at the end of a wildfire season. According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, first responders are twice as likely to suffer PTSD than other Canadians.
Has your community had such a response, paying particular attention to the mental health of firefighters?
Mr. Ireland: Thank you very much for that question, senator. It is a critical concern, and it is one that we have attempted to address in advance and again now following the fire. In addition to all of the regular personal protective equipment that we offer to our firefighters, we also have a mental and physical health component so that they can be assessed regularly and in advance of any event such as this.
Following that, we work with a local physician to ensure that all the relevant supports are available to firefighters. That includes one-on-one mental health therapy sessions which are made available. Group sessions are available. There are mental health sessions for families and friends of firefighters because they, too, are impacted by the trauma of all this. Of course, there is a corporate health and safety plan with psychological needs built into that.
It is a bit of a challenge in that our structural fire protection crews are primarily volunteers here. There is a bit of a difference between employee programs that we could get for employees and those that are offered to volunteers, but we are working to continually enhance those opportunities for aids to the volunteer crew.
Of course, we continue to look at that in terms of raising awareness. The reality is that many of our volunteers are younger individuals who are keen to assist their community, but they need some encouragement sometimes to understand that it is time to reach out for help.
We are doing what we can to get the message to them that supports are available. They are strong and brave individuals. Getting help sometimes requires strength and bravery, and we are encouraging them that the supports are available, but they have to avail themselves of them. That seems to be one of the critical tasks that falls to us to convince them to take advantage of those supports.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for that answer. In one of our previous committee meetings, we heard from an Indigenous community where there were, of course, volunteer firefighters. One of the recommendations was to support these volunteer firefighters — especially perhaps in a community like Jasper, knowing that they will be called on — with funding, a salary of some sort or a sort of support stipend. What are your thoughts on that?
Mr. Ireland: We have always done that. We’ve had funding available for our volunteer brigade. Amazingly, the brigade has chosen, over a great number of years, to not take that personally but to hold that in a trust fund and use it for community purposes. It is really amazing the way they are connected to community in that sense.
Now, given the fire, eight of our volunteers and paid staff lost their own homes in this fire, so our volunteer crew is decimated. We have gone now to contracting other brigades to come in to assist with structural fire protection and to have them on call in the community. But, again, that requires funding and on-call pay, and we’re absolutely comfortable with that. We understand that firefighters, even volunteers, need to be compensated.
Senator Burey: Thank you very much.
Senator Marshall: Thank you, Mayor Ireland, for being here today. I’m interested in the post-event review that you briefly mentioned in your opening remarks. I was trying to find something online, and I was surprised that there is nothing there. Do you have any other information on it? I am an auditor by profession, so we’re used to going in after the fact to take a look at what happened and offer some suggestions for improvement or whatever. Could you give us a little bit more information on the post-event review, if you have any?
Mr. Ireland: Again, what I have is limited. In discussions with Parks Canada, my understanding is that although an after-action review is a wise course, it’s not legislated, but it is recognized as a best practice.
A week or two ago, I happened to be in Ottawa and sat through your session with Vice-President Andrew Campbell from Parks Canada. I understood from his testimony that an after-action review is either under way or about to be under way. I will have to converse again with Parks Canada senior officials to understand where that’s going to happen and how it is going to unfold. I certainly support that. I think it is necessary to review any action like this. Although I do call this a success and it was a success, it doesn’t mean that we couldn’t find other improvements. That’s the benefit of an after-action review. Again, I’m not sure that it is legislated anywhere, but it appears to be a best practice, and we are absolutely committed to best practice.
Senator Marshall: The concern that I would have from the community’s perspective is that if Parks Canada is overseeing the review, I would think that your community should participate in the terms of reference. You should not have the review carried out or done to you, but rather be an active participant. I’m not aware of any legislation that requires it, but it would be a good idea. And it’s also a good idea for your community to get involved in it up front before Parks Canada gets the terms of reference carried out. There might be something in there that you might not agree with. I think you should be an active participant.
I live in a rural community in Newfoundland and Labrador, and, of course, there is a lot of wooded area there. One of the issues that sometimes comes up in my community is the adequacy of the road network if there is an emergency or an evacuation last minute and whether the road infrastructure can accommodate the evacuation. Can you elaborate on that from the perspective of your community: What happened during the fire, and was there an adequate road network? Or do you see that as something that would be looked at in the post-event review?
Mr. Ireland: Again, thank you, senator. In fairness, I have to say the road network was adequate because we got everybody out safely. That’s not to say it was not without significant challenges. There is one major highway that runs essentially east-west through Jasper and one road that runs south down toward Banff. There are three exit points from town: Basically, it’s north — but that’s essentially east — west or south. Two of those exit routes were blocked by fire. There was no possibility to go south. There was very limited possibility to go north. West was available, and most of the evacuation took place to the west to the small town of Valemount in B.C., which accommodated 16,000 evacuees, and that’s a town of 1,000 people.
We are limited by topography. I can’t see another road being built in or out of Jasper, so that’s what we have to face, and other communities will have to face those topographical limitations as well, I expect.
Senator Marshall: Thank you. It’s a good topic for a post-event review.
Senator McNair: Mayor Ireland, welcome back to this committee. I say that because I think you were in the room on October 22 as a member of the audience watching the testimony from Parks Canada, Health Canada and Environment and Climate Change Canada.
You mentioned that we should use Jasper as a case study; I agree. I think we are doing that, and we probably should be using Jasper as a case study of what to do right.
You talked about this: Two decades ago, you started your FireSmart program and moved along that significantly, and you worked with all the agencies involved. You did everything that could be done in advance to prepare for a wildfire of this magnitude. Is there any doubt or question in your mind that if you had not started that journey when you did and as efficiently as you did, then the loss for Jasper would be significantly more extreme?
Mr. Ireland: Thank you, senator. There’s no doubt in my mind whatsoever. Had we not done that work in advance on the landscape, as well as training our crews and FireSmarting the community, then the loss would have been greater than it was. That’s not to say necessarily that we couldn’t have found ways that we might have improved in those two decades of work, but, absolutely, without that work in advance, the training and, quite frankly, the skill of those engaged in the firefighting, we could easily have lost a significantly larger portion or all of the town. It was that close.
Senator McNair: Just to cover the degree of preparedness of Jasper, you referenced Andrew Campbell with Parks Canada. He testified here that Jasper was one of the top — if not the top — FireSmart towns in Canada, and that’s significant. But in your opening comments, you talked about being able to do better to prepare, and I am curious if you could elaborate a bit on that. It may be in your response to Senator Sorensen, but I am curious to hear what else you think Jasper could have done.
Mr. Ireland: Again, when I said, “We could do better,” I was speaking nationally as a country. Communities across this country face the same threat that Jasper faced. We recognize that threat. We are a remote community locked in a forested mountain environment. We knew the escape routes were limited, as was previously suggested, so it was a really serious concern for us, but we were aware of that threat and we took action.
An after-action review might indicate that we could have done some things better, and I absolutely accept that could be an outcome of this, and that’s a useful learning. On the other hand, had we done nothing, the devastation would have been so much greater.
My suggestion is that, as a country, every community that is in a forested position like ours and is vulnerable ought to assess the risk and then start taking the actions in that community that are appropriate. Given all of those other circumstances — access routes, egress routes and the rest of it, and also the nature of the forest — I think that we can do better as a country. This is a perfect opportunity to learn those lessons from Jasper. I share with you that it is a case study of what to do right, but that is not to say that we were perfect. If we can find ways to be better and share those with other Canadians, I think we can find another silver lining in the loss that we have suffered in Jasper.
Senator McNair: Thank you.
Senator Richards: It’s nice to see you again, Mayor Ireland. I’m following up on Senator McNair’s question because it was almost the same. I think of the loss of life in California a couple of years ago, which was just terrible; it was when they had a devastating fire in a wooded confine. People weren’t able to escape, whole families were lost and it was devastating. I commend you on the ability to evacuate the town when it needed to be.
I’m wondering about the after-action review: If the burn or firebreak had been greater, would that have helped? Or was the fire just too massive and there was no one way to control it?
Mr. Ireland: Thank you, senator. It’s hard to know. Again, I will defer to experts on that. There was talk about how great the separation might be if there were to be a firebreak around town. There are existing firebreaks, and we are still threatened from the west. This fire came from the south, but we are threatened from the west. There will be discussion over the winter, I’m sure, as to how extensive that western firebreak should be now. The experts are better able to give opinions on that than me. I rely on those evaluations from the forestry and fire experts.
Again, that is one of the learnings that I think will come from this after-action review. It is such a difficult question because in a national park, of course, there are other expectations from the Canadian public about what they come to see in a national park, and it is not clear-cut. Yet that seems to be where some people suggest the answer might lie.
Senator Richards: I have one more quick question. Did the firebreaks and the prevention measures surround and cover the whole town, or were there those outside the breaks and the prevention measures that were burned?
Mr. Ireland: There were some properties remote from town that may not have been within the same protective boundary. There was a hostel at Athabasca Falls, which is 30 kilometres away, and it suffered damage. There is a Parks Canada caribou recovery station being constructed about 30 kilometres away, and that suffered damage; it’s far beyond any protections that were around the town. As the circle closes in closer to town, there were still some accommodation units that would have been outside those protected areas.
Senator Richards: Thank you. I commend you for the work you did. Thank you very much.
Mr. Ireland: Thank you.
Senator Muggli: Thank you for being with us today. I really appreciate it. I wanted to share an experience that I had as the lead for mental health response following the Humboldt Broncos tragedy and following up on the mental health comments. Your loss is also so much about grief support, and that will have an impact for months and years to come for some people.
Something that we found very useful in that tragedy was having a follow-on incident command for mental health specifically. I was with the health authority at the time, but the municipality partnered with the health authority to make sure that we always had some kind of presence that would be available.
I think the key questions to ask are the following: Who might we be forgetting? Who might be experiencing something that we’re not thinking about? In the case of the Humboldt Broncos tragedy, we had to think about all bus drivers and every kid getting on a bus and what that experience might be. We had to think about people who might have some pre-existing challenges who might be triggered by this situation.
I mostly want to share that the mental health situation will not end when you get houses rebuilt or when you welcome people back into the community. It will be long-lasting. I would encourage any partnerships that you’re able to develop with the health authority or providers in general going forward. Thank you.
Mr. Ireland: Thank you.
The Chair: Do you want to respond, Mayor Ireland, to that comment?
Mr. Ireland: Only to issue my thanks for the sensitivity of it. Yes, the trauma is widespread and we focus, rightly so, on the firefighters. It was an absolute firestorm that they faced, and so many of them were volunteers, and I credit them. Volunteers came from across the province to help our local crew, so the trauma goes far beyond our own community. There are people across the province who came to help out, and they too are going to be suffering the mental health impacts. It will be lasting, and I agree with the senator that getting people back in houses won’t take away that sense of trauma. I appreciate her remarks, and we’ll continue to work at this over the years.
Senator Muggli: As a follow-up, be careful about the people who might want to enter your community as do-gooders and who might claim to have skills to help your community with mental health response. That was something we also grappled with in Humboldt. People were coming from all over the place with questionable skills and caravans — it was pretty interesting. Be cautious around that and ensure that you vet whomever it is who is claiming to have expertise to help your community in that way.
Mr. Ireland: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: I’ll start by thanking you for the resilience you’ve shown as mayor of the municipality. Congratulations. You’ve also been congratulated by other witnesses who’ve come here, including Parks Canada, for using FireSmart, the program you talked about earlier, which is Intelli-feu in French.
I’d like to talk about government programs. The government has announced other urban planning and land use programs to enable municipalities to build cities that are more resilient to climate change, to develop man-made reservoirs and reconfigure cities to some extent over the coming decades.
Can you please talk to us about those government programs and Environment and Climate Change Canada’s $500-million-plus announcement for the Green Municipal Fund to create climate resilient communities? Do you think that we, as senators working on a report and on our mandate today, should consider the possibility of having even more programs? Do you have thoughts about what municipalities need to build the cities of tomorrow?
[English]
Mr. Ireland: Thank you, senator. That’s very insightful. I appreciate that.
Because we are now looking at a rebuild of so many of our homes and structures in the community, the challenge is the interplay between the regulatory environment which we can control and the insurance environment. Just yesterday, Parks Canada unveiled a new land use policy for the town of Jasper to allow a rebuild to happen, which will be a more resilient community and will enable homes to be built differently. We will increase some densities as well which addresses a different issue that we’ve had in Jasper for decades.
The trouble is this: With this new regulatory framework, the problem we have is that people — even with guaranteed replacement costs on their insurance policies to rebuild like for like — will have to reach into their own pockets to build the enhancements which are necessary for a more resilient community. That is just the nature of the insurance industry. You get to replace what you had. You don’t necessarily get betterment. We want to encourage betterment, but that is where there is a bit of a conflict.
If there were programs or opportunities to engage the insurance industry in the policies of government to help spur the rebuild of more resilient communities, I think that would go a long way certainly for Jasper but also for any other community that might face this issue, because to make a home more resilient, it does cost additional funds. Right now, our homeowners simply don’t have access to those sorts of resources.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Thank you very much.
[English]
Senator Simons: I have questions that follow up on what Senator Oudar and Senator Muggli have said.
In the first place, we have just passed legislation that was sponsored by our colleague Senator Karen Sorensen to give Jasper planning authority in a way it’s never had before. Can you tell us what those powers are going to mean for your capacity to rebuild a more fire-resilient community?
Mr. Ireland: Absolutely, and subject to those comments I just made, we will be able to implement a regulatory framework that allows for a quicker and more resilient rebuild, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the homeowner has the capacity to achieve those goals.
I thank the Senate and Senator Sorensen for sponsoring Bill C-76 and getting it through; it’s now in place. As I indicated to the previous senator’s question, yesterday the new policy framework was announced by Parks Canada. That’s a framework that was developed in close collaboration with our own municipal team. That will set the new framework. That will be the policy that forms our new municipal bylaw that will be in force, and then we can start to implement that.
In the meantime, Parks Canada continues to be in charge of issuing development permits, but under a new regime, that was co-developed with the community. It will be seamless. It will take probably another couple of months for us to take full control of the land use planning operation, but in the meantime, it is moving exactly as we hoped it would. We appreciate that.
Again, though, the regulatory framework is one thing. Giving individual building owners the opportunity to access the new resilient standard is another matter.
Senator Simons: Senator Muggli raised a very astute point about self-appointed saviours who tend to show up at disasters, sometimes with the best of intentions, but not always with the most useful of skills or even the capacity to be coordinated with other things. I know that was a challenge for you in a different way when the fires were happening, as people arrived to help but weren’t necessarily — no matter how well intentioned — to be folded into the plans as they were evolving. I know that there’s also been a lot of back-seat firefighting, if I can put it that way, where a lot of people are Monday-morning quarterbacking what happened in Jasper.
As mayor, how do you deal with people who sincerely want to help, but who aren’t always willing to hear that this is not the time for them?
Mr. Ireland: It’s a fair question. Thank you, senator. I appreciated a similar question directed to Parks Canada when I was in the audience a couple of weeks ago.
It is a challenge. It’s not necessarily directly my challenge. Certainly, during the response, we had unified command that was a combination, of course, of the municipality and Parks Canada. Those are operationally focused people with an objective, and they control that setting. You’re absolutely right; well-intentioned people offered to help, but unified command had to understand how the program was going to unfold to meet the objectives that they had.
It was a dangerous landscape, with fire all over the place. People could not just show up and insert themselves. They had to be deployed with full knowledge of where everyone would be. Every logistical consideration is required.
Now, again, you suggest other people offering to help. My focus is on the recovery of our community. So much of this back-seat driving is detrimental to our community. It can wait until another day. Right now, I have to think of the mental health and well-being of my community.
Senator Simons: Thank you so much.
Senator Marshall: Mayor Ireland, I wanted to go back to this post-event review because I’m concerned about it. I’ve participated in many post-event reviews, including on some municipalities. It’s very important that the Municipality of Jasper get in on the ground floor and that you participate in drafting the terms of reference. If you’re not there at the table, there will be issues that might end up in the terms of reference that you don’t agree with, and there might be some things you want included in the terms of reference.
I know if I were a resident of Jasper, I would want somebody from the municipality to be an upfront participant and not to wait for Parks Canada to come out with the terms of reference, but really to get in on the ground floor. That’s more of a comment. As I said, I participated in a lot of post-event reviews, and it’s a risky proposition if you’re not there on the ground floor.
Mr. Ireland: I appreciate that suggestion, and I take that to heart. I would much prefer that there were a regulatory framework for this. One of the things we have seen, as was just indicated, is a rush to judgment by people who are not experts. I would like to see a framework where it is objective based on science and good evidence, not on opinion and conjecture.
Senator Marshall: Yes.
Mr. Ireland: I fully agree that’s where we should be headed.
Senator Marshall: I think the municipality should play a more active role starting now. Thank you for your comments.
Senator Simons: One of the challenges we’ve seen in communities coping with disasters is that there has been conspiracy theory-driven lack of trust in some pockets of some communities. We saw this in the United States when hurricanes hit and people refused to evacuate, or even after the hurricane hit, people refused to accept rescue workers in because they had been poisoned to think that there was something bad happening.
You had to get 25,000 people out of the park on the one road that could take them. Did you have any challenges with getting information to people who needed to have that information? Were there media vectors that worked for you? Or were there people whose distrust of government is so extreme that they refused to respond to the orders to evacuate?
Mr. Ireland: Senator, on reflection and recognizing that I, in fact, was not on the ground in the community during the evacuation, my understanding is that it was an emergency alert system that we have. We have always encouraged all of our residents to be on that emergency alert system, and we use the provincial alert system as well. Parks Canada encourages their visitors, but I have to say that they must have done a phenomenal job going through campgrounds to alert people on a case-by-case basis, because I’m sure many of those people may not have been linked into the alert and may have been out of range. They did spectacular work to communicate that message. My understanding is there was a degree of confusion, but it was more about the severity and the likelihood of the fire and when it might approach, which, in fact, probably spurred people’s motivation to evacuate.
There were a few people, as there always are, who disregarded the evacuation order, but that was tens of people, not hundreds or more. The RCMP went door to door after the evacuation to ensure that nobody had inadvertently been left behind. We had the Vulnerable Persons Registry so that those who needed assistance could call in and get that assistance. As you know, the evacuation was totally successful in the sense that nobody suffered injury and certainly not worse than that.
It is a concern. Trust is always a huge issue in any political endeavour, particularly an evacuation, but here I think we had sufficient trust that it unfolded remarkably well.
Senator Simons: Thank you so much again.
Mr. Ireland: My pleasure.
The Chair: Mayor Ireland, thank you very much for joining us today and for joining us a couple of weeks ago as well. Your testimony and insight are very much appreciated. Please know that our thoughts are with you now and going forward. Ultimately, I hope the report that will come out of this study will ultimately benefit Jasper and other communities and municipalities that may, in fact, be under attack with a fire in the future. Thanks very much.
I want to thank our committee members. Your insightful questions and comments are always tremendous. I want to take a moment to also thank the staff who support us behind us and our page. Let’s give them a big hand. Without their help, we couldn’t do what we do here at these meetings, so thanks very much.
(The committee adjourned.)