THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, November 21, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 9 a.m. [ET] to examine and report on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries, as well as rural and Indigenous communities, throughout the country.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Good morning, everyone. It’s a wet and dreary day out there.
Before we begin, I’d like to remind you about the rules of using our earpieces and microphones. Please note the preventive pleasures in place to protect the health and safety of all our participants, including our interpreters and the folks who do the transcriptions. Thank you for your cooperation.
I’d like to begin by welcoming members of the committee, our witnesses and those watching on the World Wide Web. I want to welcome the people in the room today, particularly from the town of Banff, Her Worship, Mayor Corrie DiManno and Chief Executive Officer, Kelly Gibson. Welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you today.
My name is Rob Black, senator from Ontario, and I chair this committee. I would like to ask senators around the table to introduce themselves.
Senator Simons: Paula Simons, Alberta. I come from Treaty 6 territory.
Senator McNair: John McNair. I’m from New Brunswick. Welcome.
Senator McBean: Good morning. Marnie McBean from Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Burey: Good morning. Sharon Burey, senator for Ontario.
[Translation]
Senator Petitclerc: Chantal Petitclerc, Quebec.
[English]
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Banff National Park, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Richards: Dave Richards, New Brunswick.
Senator Muggli: Tracy Muggli, Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory and traditional homeland of the Métis.
The Chair: Today the committee continues its study on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agricultural industries. We have two panels today. For our first panel, we welcome, as individuals, Jen Beverly, Associate Professor, Wildland Fire, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta; Mike Flannigan, British Columbia Innovation, Research Chair for Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science, Thompson Rivers University. He is joining us on video conference. In person, William J. de Groot, Fire Management Specialist, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Welcome to each of you. Thank you for being with us.
With that, the floor is yours, Dr. Beverly.
Jen Beverly, Associate Professor, Wildland Fire, Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, as an individual: Thank you. Good morning, honourable senators. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I live and work on territorial lands of First Nations and Métis in Treaty 6 territory.
I am an associate professor specializing in wildland fire at the University of Alberta. I’m also a former wildland firefighter and a former federal government research scientist.
I have been studying wildfires in Canada since the nineties and have witnessed profound changes in wildfire activity, their impacts and the narratives that frame them. I published the first study documenting wildfire evacuations nationally. At the time, we concluded that few Canadians were being directly impacted. That was 2011. In less than 15 years, we’ve experienced an abrupt shift. Last year, more Canadians were evacuated than in the three decades covered by my study.
When a single fire season like 2023 impacts multiple regions of the country that vary by forest type, management intensity and land use, we know that large-scale climactic processes are at play. The spike in area burned last year was not predicted by any study, expert or model and shows that fire activity can be amplified in ways that we currently do not fully understand.
In Alberta, highly unusual large lightning fires in the spring figured prominently last year. These kinds of abrupt changes in fire regimes are redefining our understanding of what is possible under a warming climate. We can no longer rely on the data of the past to anticipate and prepare for the future.
In the aftermath of a destructive fire, it can seem easy to identify contributing factors. This is called hindsight bias. It creates a false sense of certainty about our ability to predict and mitigate these events. Weather forecasts are not reliable beyond about a week. Even on a day that we know extreme fire behaviour is possible, we can’t predict precisely where lightning is going to strike or which way the wind will be blowing when it does, and we don’t know if a community or other valued area will lie in the fire’s path.
The land area where these random events can unfold is immense. We’ve identified 149 million hectares in Canada with extreme fire exposure. For perspective, that is equivalent to the entire land area of the province of Quebec. Almost 65 million hectares of that area is within long-term tenure areas. For comparison, we harvest about 1% of that area per year. Proposed solutions, like fuel management, cultural and prescribed burning, changes to forest and land management practices hold promise and may be suitable and effective in many locations, but not everywhere.
Even if we focus very narrowly on the lands occupied by people and focus on mitigating the hazardous fuels responsible for extreme exposure in those areas, we would need to treat about 4 million hectares with FireSmart treatments that would cost an estimated $20 billion, and there’s no guarantee that those treatments will be effective under extreme conditions.
The mismatch between the scope of the problem and the scale at which fuel mitigation can be implemented cannot be reconciled. Even with targeted, aggressive action now, widespread benefits will take decades. Decades of mitigation and preparedness planning is credited with saving much of the Town of Jasper, but that doesn’t avert displacement of residents or the approaching $1 billion in insured losses, let alone, the suppression of expenditures.
At its best, mitigation complements fire response; it does not replace it. Enhancements in fire response could make a difference in terms of evacuations, smoke impact and damages. This includes increasing local firefighting resources and capacity, supporting operational innovations like nighttime firefighting, escalating strategic prevention detection preparedness and response planning, especially supporting triage decisions to ensure resources are dispatched to the fires that pose the greatest threat and ultimately preparing for the inevitability of evacuations.
Canada’s diverse communities and landscapes demand equally diverse solutions. Wildfire management can, and should, look very different from place to place even within a given management area. Efforts to force top-down national standards, approaches and directions are likely to fail, especially if driven by status quo thinking. What is needed is funding to support decentralized planning processes that foster local, custom-designed innovation and action. Removing funding barriers for researchers like myself, who work closely with communities to develop simple, practical tools for immediate use, could further expedite action. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you. Dr. Flannigan, you’re next. The floor is yours.
Mike Flannigan, British Columbia Innovation, Research Chair for Predictive Services, Emergency Management and Fire Science, Thompson Rivers University, as an individual: Mr. Chair and members of the committee, thank you for inviting me.
I’m honoured to be joining you today. I am in Kamloops, the traditional and unceded territory of the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc people.
Fire management is challenging. It is becoming more challenging due to the increase of wildfires in Canada. Three per cent of the fires burn 97% of the area burned. Much of this happens on a relatively small number of days with extreme conditions, dry fuels and hot, dry, windy weather.
In the record-smashing 2023 fire season, 4% of Canada’s forests were burned. A warmer world means more extreme weather, including fire weather and more extreme fires. Catastrophic losses exceed $8 billion in Canada thus far in 2024, and these losses include the devastating Jasper fire. The federal government’s Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements expenditures have been increasing, including those associated with wildfires.
What can we do to be better prepared for the future fire seasons? FireSmart needs to be mandatory in high-risk locations, otherwise, the reign of burning embers that can travel kilometres will find homes or businesses to burn. FireSmart in tandem with structural protection sprinklers in place can reduce our losses to wildfire.
Enhanced early warning systems. We know when extreme fire weather is coming, and we have a good idea where to expect new fires. We need to get more resources to those locations ahead of time and not after the fact. Even when conditions are extreme, aggressive initial attack while the fire is still small can be successful.
One approach to explore would be to develop a quick-deploy national wildfire fighting force that would work hand in glove with existing fire management agencies. This could include a national firefighting air fleet as well as ground firefighting crews. Instead of copying what other countries are doing already in emergency management, we could be leaders by acting before the disaster strikes. We need a FEMA-type agency in Canada to deal with disasters such as wildfires.
Prevention and mitigation. Human-caused fires are preventable. The number of human-caused fires has been decreasing in Canada because of things like fire bans and education. Managing the vegetation and fuels around communities can help reduce the likelihood of catastrophic fires. Wildfires and other potential disasters are multi-faceted issues and will need a multi-pronged approach. There is no quick fix. This is our new reality. We must learn to live with fire.
There are many challenges, but we should explore options to be better prepared to meet the current and feature extreme wildfires. We have the knowledge and expertise in Canada to be world leaders in this field. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Flannigan. To be fair, there was about 15 seconds when your feed froze earlier. We appreciate the transcripts you sent us earlier. Thank you.
Now Mr. de Groot.
William J. de Groot, Fire Management Specialist, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for inviting the Food and Agriculture Organization, or FAO, and the Global Fire Management Hub to speak to you as part of this Senate committee study on Canadian wildfires. It is an honour to be here.
I present today on behalf of FAO and the Fire Hub with contributions from my FAO colleagues, Drs. Lara Steil, and Peter Moore. I am familiar with the Canadian fire situation, as I worked as a fire scientist with the Canadian Forest Service of Natural Resources Canada for 35 years. Prior to that, I worked for six years as a firefighter in northern Ontario.
Hopefully, FAO participation today will provide perspective on Canada’s experience in the context of increasing global wild land fire threat.
Every year, about 1.1 million fires burn about 400 million hectares of vegetation on the planet. Most of the area burn occurs as grasslands, shrublands and savannahs. Up to 70 million hectares of the world’s forests burn every year.
In Canada, there are about 8,000 fires that burn roughly 2.5 million hectares of forest. Those are pre-2023 statistics.
Canada has about 10% of the world’s forest and 3.5% of the world’s forest fire. That statistic is an advantageous position to be in. As we have seen, it does not exclude us from the growing threat of wildfire that is occurring worldwide.
Like many other fire-prone countries, Canada has experienced numerous wildfire disaster events in the past two decades.
The Canadian fire regime is a very challenging one of large, high-intensity crown fires, similarly found in other global regions.
Canada is very successful in fire suppression, so only a small percentage of fires escape initial attack and threaten values at risk. To improve on that success record is difficult to do because most of those uncontrolled fires, or wildfires, are burning under extreme weather and fuel conditions that are beyond the limits of suppression capability.
As in many other countries, this threshold of fire control is frequently surpassed every year in Canada. For that reason, we will never be able to control all fire, regardless of the suppression resources we have available.
What is the solution to this growing global problem? The first step is to accept we now live in a world of greater wildfire risk, in large part due to the effects of human-induced climate and land-use change. We have no choice but to learn to live with fire.
Around the world, countries are embracing integrated fire management, which is a holistic approach that combines fire prevention, preparedness, suppression and recovery with ecological and social considerations.
For example, in countries like Australia, Brazil, Portugal and Spain, community involvement and prescribed burning programs have proven effective in reducing fuel loads and mitigating large-scale wildfires. Key lessons include investing in proactive prevention measures such as reducing hazardous fuels, promoting fire resilient communities and incorporating traditional knowledge, especially from Indigenous peoples who have long used fire as a tool to manage landscapes sustainably.
To adapt to changing fire regimes, the focus of current fire‑management programs must shift from a suppression priority to comprehensive risk reduction, a fire-resilient infrastructure and improved landscape management, emphasizing prevention, early warning, preparedness and public participation.
International cooperation will also play a critical role in addressing the global wildfire crisis. Canada has a long and active history in the global fire community, dating back to international fire research collaborations by the Dominion Forest Service a century ago. For that reason, Canada is viewed as an international leader in forest fire research and management.
Today, Canada already strongly supports the Global Fire Management Hub which brings together the global fire community, assists countries to implement integrated fire management and facilitates the international exchange of fire knowledge, data and expertise.
The Fire Hub will help countries around the world make the transition from suppression-based programs to those focused on prevention, risk mitigation, early warning and resiliency. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you to our witnesses. We’ll proceed with questions from our senators.
Senators, you have five minutes each for your question or questions and the answers.
Senator Simons: Dr. Beverly, you raise an interesting point. We heard about the Jasper wildfire, because it affected the Town of Jasper, which everyone in Canada knows and loves.
We heard a little less about the Little Red River Cree Nation fire, but it still received news coverage because people had to be evacuated.
What we don’t hear about are the fires that burn out of control in the Far North that don’t threaten human habitation but nonetheless are releasing all kinds of carbon into the atmosphere.
Can you give us a sense in Alberta — not in a granular way, but in general — what percentage of wildfire is burning out of control and untouched because it’s not affecting human beings directly?
Ms. Beverly: Specifically in Alberta, which has a policy of excluding fires across the entire province. There’s always situations where, for example, if there are limited resources, they have to triage fires. Some fires are then selected for a limited and possibly no response. It’s primarily due to lack of resources.
In the past, there have been some ecological zones, but currently there aren’t any of those. An attempt is made to put the fire out, or assess it, and they may make a decision to let it burn. It’s not possible to describe that as a percentage. It varies from year to year depending on circumstances.
Senator Simons: There are a good number of them?
Ms. Beverly: In Alberta, less so than, for example, in the Northwest Territories. Alberta, throughout the North, we have a lot of industrial activities. There are camps. There are oil, gas and forestry operations. Even though there may not be communities or populated areas, there are still people and resources. There is active suppression across the province.
There are some designated areas. For example, on the east slope of the Rockies, there are some designated management areas where a different fire-management plan has been put in place to allow for a “let burn” or managed fire scenario. Much of Alberta is subject to suppression due to the activities in the North.
Senator Simons: This begs an interesting question.
We throw many resources into stopping the fires that could kill and destroy nodes of human habitation — not just in Alberta and the Northwest Territories, but in northern Quebec and northern Ontario. There would be all kinds of areas you couldn’t get to without extraordinary cost and risk for little economic return.
I’ll ask Mr. de Groot. What do you think we ought to be doing when we have fires that are burning out of control, which can’t realistically be fought by our conventional methods, but are nonetheless creating havoc? Canada had so much carbon emission from fires last year, eclipsing all of the efforts we were making to fight greenhouse gases in other areas.
Mr. de Groot: I understand the problem that you’re describing. I view it as follows: We have these islands of high values at risk that are floating in a sea of fuel, and from time to time, it becomes highly flammable. The problem is, how do you protect that?
You’re right, in the North, a lot of fires are observed. It doesn’t mean they’re not managed; they’re being watched. When they approach centres where there are people and communities, action is taken at that point for sure.
However, there is a lot of fire that is observed. The reason for that — as you mentioned — is that it’s very expensive to fight fire. You can fight fire there, but it doesn’t make any sense because it’s just nature taking its course. We can’t remove all fire. It’s actually good to have some of that fire on the landscape so that it breaks up the fuel as well. There are many advantages to letting it burn in a monitored way.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you all for being here with us today. Dr. Beverly, I’m going to start with you as well. You said in a recent assessment of the Alberta 2023 wildfires — and we heard you say it today — that the amplification of the area burned that year was inconsistent with the historical record of extreme fire years in our province, and it was not predicted by any prior studies, experts or models. You have also commented, saying that operational fires records and mapping — I’m quite interested in the mapping conversation — are outdated, I assume, because landscapes and rivers have changed.
First of all, it was, at the very least, sobering — but also quite scary — to hear quite a bit of the testimony today. If you could talk a little bit more about preparing and trying to know what’s coming when, I’d appreciate it, but you didn’t sound very optimistic.
Ms. Beverly: In my work on risk assessment, years ago, I was using what would be called “probabilistic models.” We were trying to model fires in complicated ways, including the weather, the ignitions and all of it, and we found that those probabilistic predictions didn’t work very well when we compared them to what played out. As a result of that uncertainty, stochasticity and randomness in the way these events happen, I can’t tell you what the weather is going to be on July 15 next year, or which way the wind will be blowing at any point in the country. It is very difficult to proactively predict.
How do you prepare for it? You shift from that predictive mindset, and you move to what’s possible. The models I’ve been developing in recent years, and the tools we’re developing for communities and agencies, are all about looking at the “what-if” scenarios of what’s possible. If you’re basing it on past data, last year, there were fires on the outskirts of Halifax. If you were basing it on historical data and what’s likely, you would say that’s not very likely, but that’s not helpful to prepare. It can happen. It’s possible in many places where we haven’t seen fires in recent years. There are many communities that may not feel like they’re threatened because there hasn’t been fire activity in, for example, Western Canada, but it’s possible.
It’s shifting to that scenario-based approach to preparedness. Going through “what-if” scenarios can reveal vulnerabilities that may not have been apparent, and then you can start to address those.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you very much. Mr. Flannigan, I’ll go to you. We heard you say that the knowledge and expertise in Canada to be world leaders in prevention and mitigation of wildfires is possible. I’m going to ask if you could expand on that vision. I know you gave us some comments. We’re always interested to know what actions can be taken by various levels of government in order to make that happen. You mentioned other countries and that we can be a leader, but are there practices in other countries that we should be looking at as well for Canada?
Mr. Flannigan: Yes. Thank you for the question. This year, Alberta and British Columbia pre-emptively ordered additional resources because they saw extreme fire weather coming a week in advance. This is great. California has something called the Quick Reaction Force, but it’s still reactive. We can be proactive. We actually know the weather fairly well most of the time, 7 to 10 days in advance. We know where the extreme weather is coming. We have models of fire currents although they need more research. Canada has been a world leader in fire for a long time, and now we’re increasing expenditures on fire research to bring us back to punching above our weight.
Senator Sorensen: Very quickly, if you look at federal, provincial and municipal, everybody has to do what they can. Based on some of our guests, it often falls to the municipalities to do what they can to prevent and prepare. Please talk about all levels of government.
Mr. Flannigan: Governance is an issue, absolutely. Fire management is the responsibility of a landowner. That’s sometimes the province, sometimes the territory and sometimes the municipalities. They have to work together, hand in glove. Otherwise, we will have problems. At times, we do have problems. It’s often communication and unified command. We hear these words all the time, and those are often issues. Those are areas that we still need to work on, to this day, in 2024.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you.
Senator Richards: Thank you for being here. To our witnesses, I’ll just go around the circle again, because I have the same type of questions as probably everyone else. What do we do to help mitigate this? As heroic as our firefighters are, there is a patchwork response because of our lack of ability to predict the occurrence, as Ms. Beverly just said.
How would our national fire management framework work and how effective could it be if it had a central command? You mentioned this, Mr. Flannigan, so perhaps either one of you could comment on that.
Mr. Flannigan: If you’d like, I’ll start. It’s an idea we can explore. Right now, Canada does not have a federal emergency management agency. We have small sections like Joint Task Force 2, or JTF 2, which is a quick reaction, but, once again, it’s reactive, not proactive. By having a national group of firefighters who are well trained and quick to deploy, moving them to those locations ahead of time to work with municipalities, communities, fire management agencies, provincial, we can be better prepared. Am I saying it’s going to solve all our problems? Absolutely not, but if it prevents one Lytton, one Fort McMurray, one Slave Lake, one Jasper, one Barrington Lake — the list goes on and on, and will continue to go on and on, until we address this.
Ms. Beverly: One of my recommendations is to increase local firefighting resources and capacity. The agencies that are currently responsible for those activities can tell you best what they need to do better. I haven’t heard any of the agencies that I interact with saying that they need a national body to step in and do it for them. We have heard that they need more local resources.
When you look at the initial attack process, that’s an immediate response. When fire agencies become overwhelmed, their local resources are overwhelmed, and then they have big fires, and you can bring in people internationally and from other parts of the country to help, but you’ve already lost the fires. I would push for local expansion of resources and consulting with the agencies.
Senator Richards: Thanks very much.
Senator Muggli: Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being with us today. I’m not sure who might be able to answer this question. I’ll start with you, Dr. Beverly. It’s with respect to triage and communication.
I’m wondering if we have enough capacity for cellular and network access in order to ensure seamless communication during a wild fire. If not, are there areas we need to prioritize to develop capacity?
Ms. Beverly: It’s a great question. I have a master’s student studying that for Alberta. He is looking at the vulnerability of the communications network and also looking at intersecting that with the road network where people might be moving during an evacuation to identify gaps in communications infrastructure as well as threats to cell phone towers, which can shut down communications. There’s a lack of redundancy in those towers in some locations. So, he is developing a way to rate that vulnerability to identify where we might want to add new towers, for example, and also to better understand where there are those communications gaps.
That study we are doing is wrapping up. It could be done nationally. We can pre-identify where those gaps are and look at ways of managing that vulnerability.
Senator Muggli: I look forward to your students’ work. Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: My question is for Mr. de Groot. First, thank you to the three witnesses. You’ve all contributed really fascinating testimony that has shed light on the committee’s reflections.
I wanted to hear what you have to say about the Global Fire Management Hub. You spoke earlier about the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, or the FAO, and the fact that the FAO created this global hub in 2023. I’d like to hear your thoughts on Canada’s role in this hub. Do you have any recommendations for us, particularly with regard to First Nations involvement? The committee has heard from other groups. In particular, I was very surprised to hear that some First Nations were held back from taking action the way they wanted, and that they were not really asked for their input. I’d like to hear what role Canada could play in this global hub. What recommendations do you have for us? What do you have to say on the matter?
[English]
Mr. de Groot: Thank you for the question. It is an excellent question.
The Global Fire Management Hub is a UN-led initiative by the FAO, the United Nations Environment Program and the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. The whole purpose of the Hub is to bring together the global fire community and get them connected. The goal is to reduce the negative impacts of wildfires on livelihoods, landscapes and the global climate.
The Hub works toward that goal through supporting the free international sharing of knowledge, fire expertise and data. It also helps countries to strengthen their capacity in integrated fire management.
Integrated fire management is a holistic approach to fire management. It is not just about pumps and hoses. It also includes the human aspect — social and cultural fire — and also the ecological role of fire, trying to work with that, finding ways to deal with the fire problem using fire ecology on your side, in effect.
A big topic that comes up all the time is always about traditional use of fire, Indigenous peoples and the knowledge they have gained over centuries in how to use fire for cultural reasons, and for protection as well. There is much to be learned there. It is a rich knowledge base there.
I should probably answer the earlier part of your question: What is Canada’s role in this? I can say Canada is strongly supporting the Hub financially and with expertise. I have talked to the FAO and the Canadian side, and there is a keen interest in Indigenous issues and incorporating that into integrated fire management. That is an important topic.
The first steering group committee meeting of the Fire Hub is in a couple of months. That is where they will set the stage for the roadmap going forward. I know Canada has a keen interest in this, in particular, Indigenous involvement in fire management. I know that’s on the agenda in the Fire Hub discussions. I can’t talk too much more beyond that yet because they still have to meet.
You have hit the nail right on the head about what will be a critical aspect and priority for the Hub, and Canada.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator McBean: Thank you, everyone. I feel as we go through this study we are presented with team national response and team local response.
Dr. Beverly, how could academic research on wildfires be better integrated into policy and community-level decision making but also support? It is almost all three. We have heard of local communities, as Senator Oudar said, as in Little Red River Cree Nation where the Indigenous communities — basically, the federal response came onsite and told them to sit down and wait. How can an academic response support at all three levels?
Ms. Beverly: That’s a great question.
One of the things I found working with communities and agencies is there isn’t a lot of integrated planning that is happening, and I think that’s due to lack of capacity.
For example, I have worked with a dozen communities in Western Canada directly, looking at their mitigation strategies. That community planning process also includes provincial agencies to some extent. It varies from community to community, depending on the actual individuals who are championing these activities. That’s what we found.
I’m also approached by oil and gas. I’m approached by First Nations communities to do that same kind of mitigation and preparedness planning for other values on the landscape, forest industry. They are coming individually. We don’t have that sort of integration.
If we had some support for coordinators to help support that kind of integrated regional planning of all the parties impacted by fire across the land base, which would lead to innovations and best practices to inform policies on how to integrate better.
Senator McBean: Thank you. It’s like you can lead the horse — I don’t mean to say “to water” in a wildfire study — you have all this information at the community and national level; if a national response or the international response were to come in, for them to all be on the same page —
Ms. Beverly: Right. I’m a strong supporter of what I have seen. There is a lot of innovation, best practices and new ideas coming from the bottom up. It is customized. Every community and landscape is so different. That’s where you can potentially harvest solutions from that bottom-up process and share them rather than trying to have a national top-down approach.
I see the opportunity at the local scale for finding solutions and then sharing those more broadly, which is a different model. It is about supporting that local planning.
Senator McBean: Mr. Flannigan or Mr. de Groot, do you have anything to add to that?
Mr. Flannigan: I can say that Canadians are 75% in favour of a national fire fighting force. It has to work together with the provinces, territories and municipalities for it to work. That coordination is where we need some effort, a process. Yes, every community is different, yet there should be a process that allows agencies, a national agency if there were one, and the local community to work together hand in glove.
Senator McBean: Thank you.
Mr. de Groot: I would agree with that.
We don’t have a national firefighting force in Canada right now. As Mr. Flannigan said earlier, forest protection is the mandate of the land owner. We did in the past, about 40 years ago, have a national air tanker fleet, which got absorbed into the provinces afterwards. Because of the situation we have now, it is a crisis that’s growing. We have to look at all options. That is definitely one that needs to be looked at.
As another example, in 2023 there were 12 countries that came to Canada’s aid. That happened because of Canada’s international involvement over the long term. That’s why they came to help us. It pays off to be involved internationally.
One thing that came out of that was interoperability, being able to work together, having people with the same training, similar equipment, getting this to mesh together.
I see my time is up.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Burey: Don’t worry about that, because we are going to keep on the same issue and you are going to get a chance to expand on it.
First, thank you for coming and sharing your expertise, both virtually and in person. We have learned a lot. We have heard from the Indigenous community, First Nations and the issue of not being allowed to fight the fire using proven traditional methods and their expertise. I thank you so much for that. We have heard from urban firefighters who say the interface of wildfires coming into urban areas — how difficult it is because there is a lack of coordination.
Out of all these discussions, we have heard the same point coming across: Let’s have a FEMA-type agency. I agree with you — I’m from the health care sector — we don’t want a top‑down approach. You have painted a picture of urgency — this is not going to get any better — so we have to do different ways of thinking. It is not either/or.
I think this Senate committee is actually doing a great job in trying to help us move forward on it. It doesn’t mean that a top‑down approach is mutually exclusive of a bottom-up approach.
I am wondering about your ideas. Mr. de Groot, you spoke about these being new times. There are so many things that need to be integrated.
Just expand on what you didn’t get a chance to finish is what I’m trying to ask you.
Mr. de Groot: Having 12 countries come to Canada to help during our crisis is unprecedented. We’re the first country that has had that many people from afar coming to work together. There are a lot of questions from the international community. How did that work? What can we learn from that? That’s a first stepping stone there.
The other issue you brought up — and I was surprised to hear that Indigenous peoples are not being allowed to fight fires. That really is handing it to the community to protect their own community. That is a local way, in the North, where they are isolated. They can provide their own services.
There is another thing to consider. When forest fires burn into a community, there are two types of firefighters. There are wildland firefighters who fight forest fires and urban firefighters who fight structural fires, and the two shouldn’t be intermixed. You would never send a forest firefighter into a burning house. You wouldn’t mix them up.
There is some cross-training that happens, but what really works well is the wildland firefighters dealing with the fire before it gets to the community, and then it becomes the community’s response. They have the experts on how to protect homes and such. We have seen that happen; there are instances where it has happened. That’s a good way to make it mix but there still has to be a unified command and control. That is what we really need.
It can be done, but we have to find a way to do it.
Ms. Beverly: A unified command and the incident command system — and the plan for a unified command can be worked out in advance of any fire. That can be done between the multiple agencies we know will be involved. I don’t see there being barriers right now to a unified command as long as there are efforts to do that in advance.
When it comes to moving crews around and having a national pool of resources — as a firefighter, I was shipped all over the place. I fought fire in Montana, Oregon, the Yukon, Alberta and Ontario. It’s time-consuming to move those resources all over the place. If provincial agencies had more crews, helicopters and air tankers in their province, they could respond more quickly.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you to our witnesses. This is very helpful.
I have a question for Mr. Flannigan. You mentioned a few times being proactive and not reactive, and that we are too reactive and not proactive enough. Why is that? What are the types of obstacles in order to be more proactive? It seems to make sense to me that we want to be predicting and being proactive. What are the obstacles, and what would be the key elements to get better at being proactive?
Mr. Flannigan: Emergency management has four phases: prevention, mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. In Canada, fire management is great at response. Regarding preparation, we need to do some more work. For prevention and mitigation, we need to do a lot more work, because the more money we spend on prevention and mitigation saves us money down the line.
We should be looking at using early enhanced warning systems. We all do it already, but with machine learning and other newer techniques, we can get better at forecasting where extreme weather will occur, even localized, and know where to expect the new lightning-caused ignitions and human-caused ignitions.
Human-caused ignitions are preventable. We use fire bans, but we don’t use forest closures enough. In 2023, Nova Scotia closed the forest, but it was already after the fire situation had erupted. It is the same with Alberta; they closed some parks, but the province was already on fire. We have to do that ahead of time.
Forest closures are very unpopular but very effective at stopping human-caused fires.
With the lightning-caused fires, that is a problem because fire‑management activities can be overwhelmed when you have 100 new fires in 24 hours. Some of these fires have to be triaged. The ones closest to communities we have to fight and the ones in the back 40, we monitor.
Senator Petitclerc: I have a little more time, so maybe I will just dive in a little more. Maybe I can get an answer from you, as well, Ms. Beverly, but are we efficient in ensuring that the academic-level research makes its way down to the ground and into action?
Mr. Flannigan: Working with fire-management agencies, whether local, provincial or territorial, with the researcher is the way to proceed. We can do research, and it can sit on the shelf and not be useful, but by working with those people who actually fight the fires, we work in tandem to deliver new products to help address the —
Senator Petitclerc: My question is: Are we good at this? Are we doing that properly?
Mr. Flannigan: It’s ad hoc. Some researchers are great and some are more ivory tower, shall we say; they are doing great research but are not working with fire-management agencies.
Senator Petitclerc: Can you add something on that — the transfer of academic to the ground?
Ms. Beverly: Sure.
We’re developing, for example, a tool as a science research paper that I published in 2010. It has taken about 14 years to get it into the hands of users in a way that is accessible. It has only been accomplished through a lot of my time trying to transfer it, in addition to my students’ efforts.
We’re achieving it, we have software to help, we’re getting these tools into the hands and they are being used across the country right now by communities in multiple provinces. However, it is very time-consuming. For academic researchers, there is no reward for me to doing that. It comes at the cost of publication, so I’m not as productive as a result.
But that’s the only way — to make those sacrifices — to get the science into use.
Senator Petitclerc: Fourteen years seems like a long time.
Ms. Beverly: It’s too long. When we talk about doing more research and getting better at this, we’re out of time.
The Chair: Finish your sentence.
Ms. Beverly: We’re out of time. We need to be fast.
The Chair: That was your sentence.
Ms. Beverly: We need to move fast and take action now. We can’t do another study.
Senator McNair: Thank you to the witnesses who are here today.
Dr. Flannigan, everyone has mentioned the national quick deployment group or the rapid response team. I wanted to explore that more. Is there a model or approach that you would recommend for a country the size of Canada? Having it based in one spot likely doesn’t make sense. Like you said, it would be a combination of individuals able to respond with equipment but also include helicopters and water tankers.
Mr. Flannigan: Yes. One location probably wouldn’t work, but having it move across the country, quick deploy and using aircraft would work hand in glove with provincial, territorial or municipal governments to fight the fire. The Joint Task Force 2, or JTF2, was in Jasper, but they are a small group, and we need to expand and enhance that activity to be at locations, at times, to deal with the emergency, but ideally to arrive before the emergency and before the fire so that we can put fires out. For example, the Jasper fires were devastating. They started at the base of a tree from a lightning strike. If you had been close by, you could have put that out, and we wouldn’t be talking about Jasper at all. It would just be about a fire that was put out.
Senator McNair: Practically speaking, what sort of numbers are in your best approach or your perfect-world approach?
Mr. Flannigan: It would be expensive, but how much are we spending on the disaster relief and the insurance industry? Eight billion dollars is for all extreme events, but these numbers are rising, and if we eliminate just one of these, it will pay for itself. We’re probably talking billions of dollars, but in an ideal world, this would address hurricanes, flooding and earthquakes. It would be expensive. It would be like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, with a section specializing in fire.
Senator McNair: Thank you. Dr. Beverly, earlier you talked about how we can’t rely on the status quo. We essentially have to think outside the box. We had witnesses before this committee including Indigenous firefighters who weren’t allowed to participate in the fire. They started fighting the fire at night without permission on the 8 o’clock to 8 o’clock shift, and it made a significant difference on saving their town and community. You mentioned firefighting at night. Are you proposing that as an option in looking at new ways to deal with fire?
Ms. Beverly: Thank you for the question. I wasn’t actually referring to that community and the nighttime firefighting they had done. I wasn’t aware of that. I was interested in that. In the province of Alberta, Alberta Wildfire has been piloting nighttime firefighting in order to take advantage of those reduced conditions overnight, and they have been figuring out ways of doing that safely and with the support of drones and other things, because there are more dangers at night, obviously.
Traditionally, that hasn’t been the case. I never fought fire at night when I was a firefighter, but it is an opportunity to look at those alternatives that might better utilize our resources. There is a lot more that we could be doing to efficiently allocate our resources and achieve more with the existing resources.
Senator McNair: The past prohibition on fighting at night was with regard to safety, I assume?
Ms. Beverly: Yes, that’s probably why, and there wasn’t a motivating factor to move that way. The Government of Alberta is doing that, and they are finding that it has a lot of promise.
Senator McNair: On the Indigenous group that fought at night, they were eventually allowed to join the day shift, and they made a difference in saving the town too.
The Chair: I have a question. Let’s pretend you each have a pencil to write this report. Give us one recommendation you would dearly love to see in this report, starting with Mr. de Groot.
Mr. de Groot: I was in a meeting about six or seven years ago. The World Bank had commissioned the International Union of Forest Research Organizations, or IUFRO, to look at the status of fire and climate change. It was a think tank, and they brought experts from around the world. It was very informative. Mr. Flannigan and I were at that meeting, and it was very eye opening. There are many similarities happening around the world, and there are many new ideas.
As I came back from that trip, I was thinking that this meeting has identified the problem and what is going to be coming around the corner. What we need to do in Canada is to have a similar think tank about an action plan. How do we deal with what’s happening and coming forward? I think that would be good.
Ms. Beverly: Triage decisions around allocation of resources and evacuations. I think those have to be the top priority. We cannot stop the fires. They are going to come, and if we can make better decisions on how to allocate those resources and get people to safety, we’re going to lessen the impacts. There has been virtually no research done to support triage decisions. Actually, I’m not aware of any, and it should be a priority area to support.
Mr. Flannigan: Climate change is real, and we have to deal with it. We have to spend more to protect ourselves. We have to explore new options. I know that’s more than one thing.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Simons: I have two quick questions for Dr. Beverly. The conventional wisdom used to be that forest fire started because of human error, whether it was campfires that weren’t put out properly or all-terrain vehicles, or ATVs, being driven around when the temperature was dry. All of you talked essentially about lightning strikes. Are we actually seeing more lightning storms because of climate change, or is it just that the forest is so dry that lightning strikes are more likely to cause fires than they used to?
Ms. Beverly: That’s a great question. I don’t think I can answer it right now. We’re looking at those things, but the easy answer is that there are definitely more days in the year when these things can happen, when lightning can ignite. Are we also seeing increases in lightning? We know we’re seeing a shift — we saw it last year in Alberta — in lightning happening much earlier than we ever expect in the earlier spring. That happened last year. Is it going to continue? We hope not, but in terms of the number of strikes, we’re looking at that, but it is the weather. Fire-conducive weather. We are seeing more drought.
Senator Simons: One of your areas of expertise is in evacuation protocols. One of the real challenges is that many of these communities are very difficult to evacuate, even in a city the size of Fort McMurray, which has one highway from the south and one highway from the north, and that’s it. Jasper has two highway accesses, and one of them was blocked by fire. In Little Red River Cree Nation, they had to take people in canoes. What do we need to know about the infrastructure we need to be able to evacuate people?
Ms. Beverly: That’s another great question. I work and collaborate with transportation engineers Steven Wong at the University of Alberta, and Amy Kim at the University of British Columbia, and we have looked at just that. We have developed simple assessment tools that show the fire pathways into a community, and we can see if those are cutting off the egress routes, or the roads out, for communities that have roads, and then you can pre-identify the threat along those pathways and look at mitigating that. For communities that don’t have roads, that’s even more challenging.
Senator Simons: We heard from witnesses at one of our last sessions from the Northwest Territories saying that the only way to evacuate people was with small planes, which is a very inefficient way to evacuate a community.
Ms. Beverly: Strategic planning regarding evacuations could be key to uncovering those vulnerabilities and taking action so that if or when a fire happens, they are prepared.
Senator Simons: Thank you very much. Thank you to all witnesses, especially to Dr. Flannigan, who got up to be with us at 6:00 a.m. Pacific Time.
Senator Richards: Thank you. I’m just going to ask a quick question to Dr. Flannigan. Is there a certain protocol about when we close the woods, which is already in place? It doesn’t always come after the fire starts? I know in New Brunswick, we closed the woods without a fire. Is this a selective closing, because thousands of people work in the woods in New Brunswick? I’m just wondering how you would go about this etiquette or law. Would it be because of the heat or because of the lightning storm? How would you decide when the woods should be closed?
Mr. Flannigan: It varies from region to region. In Ontario, they have an arrangement with industry about how to define extreme fire conditions: that’s when they close it. Typically, it is just a day or two at most. The land owner agrees to those conditions ahead of time, and when they reach that point, they close the forest.
Senator Richards: That’s what I’m saying. We have that in place in New Brunswick, as well. I’m just wondering if you want to make that a more extreme decision at a certain time of the year or whatever.
Mr. Flannigan: Each landowner has to address this. What I’m saying is that it should be addressed in a fashion that allows the pre-emptive shutdown, like you talked about in New Brunswick.
The Chair: Witnesses, thank you very much for your time, participation, testimonies and insights today.
For our second panel today, we welcome, as individuals, Dr. Sarah Henderson, Scientific Director, Environmental Health Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Scientific Director, National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health; and Dr. Vincent Agyapong, Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University. Welcome, and thank you for being here.
You each have five minutes for your presentation. The floor is yours, Dr. Henderson.
Sarah Henderson, Scientific Director, Environmental Health Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Scientific Director, National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health, as an individual: Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the opportunity to be here with you this morning, honourable senators.
I want to change the conversation a bit now and talk about wildfire smoke and hopefully convince you this is an important facet of wildfire emergencies.
I’m an environmental engineer and environmental epidemiologist by training. I have been studying the health effects of wildfire smoke in B.C., across Canada and around the world for more than 20 years. I am considered an international expert in this field. I do my daily work on the traditional and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples: the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations in what we now call Vancouver, British Columbia.
My first key message for you today is that the economic impacts caused by wildfire smoke far exceed the economic impacts caused by wildfires, but they receive far less attention. To demonstrate this point, I’m going to talk about the extreme 2017 wildfire season in B.C. because we don’t yet have estimates of the economic impacts of the health effects of the 2023 wildfire season. As a reminder, the 2017 wildfire season in B.C. was a record-setting season, with 1.2 million hectares burned. Smoke from those fires affected most parts of Canada. There were 65,000 people evacuated in the province that summer, but almost every single Canadian was exposed to wildfire smoke at a concentration that would be defined as clinically relevant by the U.S. EPA, meaning a 0.2 microgram per metre cubed increase in PM2.5 annual average. We’ll talk about that later.
This PM2.5 was associated with about 2,700 excess deaths in the country, some immediately while the wildfire smoke was happening and some in the period after the wildfire smoke. The total associated costs with those deaths, as well as hospital visits, ER visits, time taken off work and kids not being in school was $23 billion. In comparison, there were no deaths during the wildfires that year. The costs of wildland firefighting across Canada were $1.5 billion, and the insured losses in B.C. were about $130 million.
Despite the sheer magnitude of the impacts of smoke, it often remains an afterthought in conversations about wildfire. It’s seen as a nuisance and not as an important facet of the emergency that affects the health and well-being of all Canadians.
I’ve included a figure here from a recent paper that was aimed at providing the rationale for a wildfire satellite in Canada. It clearly lays out those health costs over the past several years.
Key message two is that the health effects of wildfire smoke are not uniformly distributed within the population. They have disproportionate effects on people who are more susceptible and vulnerable. That’s partially because some people are more exposed and partially because some people are more susceptible to the exposure.
I really want to focus on children and infants here because there’s growing evidence in that area. First, we have decades of evidence to tell us that air pollution exposure for pregnant people, children and infants is damaging. So far, when we look at wildfire smoke, we know it’s associated with severe birth outcomes, like preterm birth, low birth weight and stillbirth, and there’s mounting evidence for pregnancy loss in very early pregnancy. We know that the children who were exposed to smoke in the womb have more respiratory infections in early life and are more prone to developing asthma and other chronic diseases.
We also know that exposures during infancy and childhood are likely to have impacts on the lifelong health of those children who are exposed. There is a very interesting study on non-human primates in California where monkeys exposed to wildfire smoke in infancy had lungs that never grew as big as the lungs of the monkeys who were not exposed. They also suffered immune dysregulation throughout their entire lives. They also passed the genetic markers of that immune dysregulation onto their offspring, so an indication that these effects can last for generations.
Finally, I want to point out that the Indigenous people of Canada have been affected first and worst by wildfire smoke exposure. They tend to live in places that are more prone to wildfire. There are multiple studies from around the world showing the health impacts on Indigenous people are disproportionately impacted compared with the health impacts on the overall population.
I’ve provided some references for you in the material I sent out by email. Thank you for this opportunity.
The Chair: Thank you.
Dr. Vincent Agyapong, Professor and Head, Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, as an individual: Thank you, honourable chair, and thank you, members of the Senate, for the invitation. I’m Vincent Agyapong, currently Professor and Head of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University. My research has focused on disaster psychiatry and also global mental health. In this context, I’ll be providing testimony related to the mental health effects of wildfires and also approaches to mitigating some of the psychological effects.
To put it in context, I lived and worked in Fort McMurray as a psychiatrist between 2013 and 2016 and witnessed firsthand the wildfires of May 2016 that destroyed forestry and wildlife, and burned down over 2,000 homes leading to the mass evacuation of the entire population of the oil sands city.
I recall the pandemonium caused by the horrific scenes of burning bushes and needing to support an evacuation of patients at the Northern Lights Regional Health Centre, before heading up north to the oil sands rather than to Edmonton with my family because the wildfires had breached the roads leading south and made it unnavigable.
I remember the sense of gratitude for escaping unharmed and the gratitude of many residents for the firefighters who were trying to save our city from destruction. I also remember the heightened state of anxiety, disbelief, despair and hopelessness experienced by many residents of Fort McMurray during the six‑week evacuation period.
Since then, I have led a team that has been researching the short-, medium- and long-term mental health effects of the 2016 wildfires on residents.
I have also developed innovative digital mental health tools that have proven effective in supporting first responders and Canadians who have been impacted by wildfires and other natural disasters such as the COVID pandemic.
In terms of the impact of wildfires on residents affected and communities, six months after the 2016 Fort McMurray wildfires, the prevalence of likely PTSD among adult residents was about 12.8%. The corresponding prevalence for generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder among adult residents was 19.2% and 14.8% respectively.
The prevalence of these conditions remained high or increased at 18 months after the wildfire, and dramatically increased five years after the wildfire. It’s important to note that residents of Fort McMurray were also impacted by flood in 2020 and also experienced the pandemic, like everybody else in Canada, which may account for the dramatic increase.
In terms of children and young adults, from grades 8-12, 18 months post wildfire 37% met the criteria for probable PTSD; 31% met the criteria for probable depression; 17% for probable depression with at least moderate severity; 27% of students met the criteria for probable anxiety; also, 15% for alcohol‑use disorder. Again, in three and a half years, the prevalence of these conditions actually increased, not decreased.
We also did a study that highlighted the fact that those who reported they received support from family and friends were better protected in terms of their mental health, and support from the community.
We looked at other factors like money that people received from insurance companies and from the Government of Alberta. They did not significantly protect people’s psychological well‑being compared to support they reported they received from family and friends.
For example, those who reported they received absolute support from family and friends were about 13 times less likely to have major depressive disorder symptoms.
We also looked at an intervention, the Text4Hope program, in 2013 in Alberta and Nova Scotia and found that daily supportive text messages were able to reduce the psychological burden in terms of anxiety, depression and PTSD symptoms in residents who were impacted by the wildfires.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Simons: I think after this testimony, Dr. Agyapong, you can stay after to work with us all.
My first question is for Dr. Henderson. I live in Edmonton, which in the summers now has days where people are warned not to go outside if they have diminished lung function, where people wear masks; they repurpose their COVID masks to go outside in the summer. For most people, it’s seen more as an inconvenience, something that ruins their ability to have a party or a picnic.
What are the health consequences of living in a city like Edmonton, Saskatoon or Calgary? Edmonton is particularly impacted by fire smoke. What should we be worrying about as a health consequence?
Ms. Henderson: Whenever we’re talking about air pollution, it has health effects on two different time scales. There are those immediate effects, which is why we warn some folks to stay indoors on poor air quality days.
Then there’s the burden of air pollution we experience over the entirety of our lives. We know that living in a highly polluted city is associated with a shorter life span and higher incidence of almost every single chronic disease you can name.
It remains a question whether or not living in a city like Edmonton that has these very sporadic, extreme exposures are the same as living in a highly polluted city.
Senator Simons: Like Beijing or New Delhi?
Ms. Henderson: Exactly, that’s polluted day in and day out. Wildfire smoke might have less impact because there are these periods of reprieve between exposures.
On the other hand, the exposures are far more extreme in many cases, and they are far more complex. Wildfire smoke is a very complex and toxic form of air pollution.
In the absence of more evidence, I always tell people we have to assume it’s similar. We have to assume these episodic exposures are having the same kinds of effects as living in a highly polluted city. So far, the limited evidence we have available supports that.
There was a recent study out of McGill University a couple of years ago suggesting, if you live close to wildfire, you’re at higher risk of developing lung and brain cancer, the same way you would be if you lived in a highly polluted city.
Senator Simons: What about when that wildfire smoke combines with industrial pollution you might find in Fort McMurray or Edmonton?
Ms. Henderson: Sure. That wildfire smoke is going to overwhelm the industrial pollution in many cases. It’s adding to the overall burden of lifetime exposure.
One of the key things to understand about wildfire smoke in Canada is we have done an excellent job of regulating air pollution from other sources, like industry and vehicles, because of decades of evidence showing air pollution is not good for human health.
As a result, those sources are shrinking in terms of the burden of lifetime exposure they contribute, while wildfire is growing and growing. Altogether, we have to consider them as people’s lifetime overall exposure burden.
Senator Simons: Let’s turn to mental health. I have friends who were in Fort McMurray during the wildfire who were evacuated, one of whom was a young, former staffer in my office, who remained traumatized and triggered by things.
Are we doing enough to help people process the consequences of going through something so stressful, the consequences for schoolchildren, parents and anybody who’s felt that extreme stress of wondering if you’re going to get out of there alive?
Dr. Agyapong: Yes. For example, Alberta Health Services is doing a lot in terms of trying to increase the human resource base for mental health provisions in Fort McMurray. I left in 2016, and, to date, they’ve not been really able to recruit a child psychiatrist. There are some other psychiatrists who are providing child psychiatry services, but I don’t think they have the complement of child psychiatry resources to be able to significantly address that.
So more needs to be done in terms of incentivizing a child psychiatry team to be willing to go to Fort McMurray.
Senator Simons: We have a chronic problem all across this country in having enough access to mental health care — psychiatrists and psychologists.
Dr. Henderson mentioned that it’s Indigenous communities that are most affected by the smoke, but it’s also often Indigenous communities that are most affected by the threat of fire and the stress of evacuation. I know for a community like Little Red River Cree Nation, it’s an added stressor when people are evacuated into an all-White or mostly White community. They feel alienated in the place to which they’ve been evacuated.
I’ve used up all the time.
The Chair: If there’s a question there, you get to ask it in the second round.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Ms. Henderson, I’m really pleased that you’re here. I want to reassure you that I think all the committee members are very concerned about the health effects of fires. I’m new to the committee, but in the initial questions I asked when the committee first began looking into this, it was really…. I was surprised to read the Water and Air Quality Bureau of Health Canada’s study on the human health effects of wildfire smoke, particularly the chapter on reproductive and developmental effects. This morning, you gave a very good account of all these effects, not only on pregnancy, but also on the unborn child. It’s really worrisome to see the impact of exposure in the second and third trimesters of pregnancy and the damage it can do to the child.
I’d like to give you some time to tell us about the long-term effects on children’s health, but also on health in general. I’ve read the whole study carefully. I’ve listened to you as well. It concerns me to understand that we end up seeing a depletion of antioxidants, biochemical changes in the body, alteration of the cell cycle, and DNA damage too — basically, everything that can compromise a person’s immune system. In short, the entire immune response is damaged.
What we notice further on in the report is that this mainly affects vulnerable populations — you mentioned that and I thank you for it — and especially First Nations. I’m not a scientist, I’m a lawyer, so perhaps I didn’t use the right words. Instead, as I read this section, I realized that our behaviours end up disproportionately affecting First Nations. I think that addressing this issue will prevent us from adopting long-term behaviours that could lead to discrimination with respect to these medical effects. I’m sorry, this is a long question.
The study concludes that there aren’t enough studies or results. I have mixed feelings about that, because I feel that with the light you shed on the issue today, there are enough studies to act on. Do you come to the same conclusion as Health Canada, that there aren’t enough studies, or are there enough? Do we have a sufficiently clear and scientific answer today to take action and not wait for further studies? I wanted to let you finish your response. I’m sorry my question is so long.
[English]
Ms. Henderson: I’m going to address the last part of that question.
Scientists never have enough studies; it’s a universal truth. We have enough evidence. Air pollution is not good for human health. Wildfire smoke is a complex and severe form of air pollution. There’s no world in which it’s good for humans.
The next thing we have to do is think about how we protect individuals from these exposures when they’re happening. We’ve heard from our fire scientists that the fires are going to happen; there are some things we can do to change that somewhat, but the fires are going to happen. Therefore, we need to be looking at effective interventions so that we can reduce smoke exposures in the population.
First, the vast majority of people in Canada spend the vast majority of time indoors. We need to have cleaner indoor air to help protect people, and then when they’re outside, we need to think through some of the ways they can reduce their exposure. Senator Simons mentioned masks. That’s a very effective form of self-protection for some folks. There are other things you can do, such as reducing exercise outdoors so you’re not breathing as intensely or as heavily.
What we need, first and foremost, is a population that is “smoke smart.” Dr. Flannigan mentioned FireSmart Canada, which is an excellent program across Canada. We need a smoke-resilient population that knows how to deal with these exposures when they’re occurring.
Thank you.
Senator Muggli: Thanks to both of you for coming today. I appreciate this. My background is in health care administration, primarily mental-health and substance-use-related work. About six or so years ago, I had the daunting opportunity to respond to a community tragedy by leading a mental health response. Community trauma response is tricky. It’s important to understand the previous existing capacity for a community to manage traumatic events, and then it’s important to understand what’s the right way to intervene; you can’t just fly random people in to try to support that community. Those are some of the things I learned.
Dr. Agyapong, do you have any thoughts on what the right approach is to support a community following a traumatic event? Is there training that could help build capacity in a community so that, when there are traumatic events, there is a mental health strategy in place to support communities through such events?
Dr. Agyapong: Thank you very much.
I think we should look at it in two ways. One is prevention and building resilience in all fire-prone communities before the events happen, and then there is the approach to dealing with it once people are in the situation.
In terms of building resilience, our research suggests that those who reported they received support from family, friends and from the community were actually protected. We should begin to build community institutions — not-for-profit organizations — that are within the community that are supporting mental health care. We should begin to build recreational facilities that contribute to mental health care. We should begin to incorporate mental health literacy into workplaces and schools so that people are aware of some of the things they can do to protect their mental and psychological well-being. Those are going to build resilience for the day that disaster may strike.
When disaster strikes, as you indicated, you may parachute in and want to help. The help you offer might not really be what supports mental well-being. When a disaster happens, it’s important we increase the resources for locally based programs in the community and that people are familiar with. For example, the Canadian Mental Health Association — what resources are we giving them to provide increased resources and training to people within? If we use localized resources and programs, we will be better able to achieve greater results than just parachuting in programs from other places.
Senator Muggli: I’m interested in knowing if you have an awareness of whether there are specific programs to train people in community trauma response. One thing I found useful in the situation I was in was that the school system and the health authority’s mental health systems had taken the same training in responding to community traumatic events. That was incredibly useful because they were using the same orientation and language. They understood how to work through it together.
I’m wondering if you have any awareness that programs that might be available to help communities build capacity specifically to community traumatic events.
Dr. Agyapong: There are things like wellness and recovery programs that are used in different places and different contexts. There are many local programs that already exist within communities, which can be supported, resourced and utilized, probably to the same effect. It is not about spreading around the same thing in every way, but about looking at what works within the local contexts and then properly resourcing them.
Senator McBean: As often happens, asked and mostly answered, but Dr. Henderson, I live in Toronto. I grew up being told that my city was polluted, so I took my family for a vacation in 2017 to Whistler, and, as you know, it was a terrible year. You said smoke was seen as a nuisance, and I said, “In that category?” We had a two-year-old with us, and my wife was shutting us down, saying, “They are telling us to stay inside,” and to do everything you said.
As you know, most people in B.C. don’t even have air conditioning. So when you go inside is shutting windows any help at all other than just making the house hot? You suggested that masks reduce exercise, but I’m going to ask this: With regard to a smoke-smart population, have you put some thought to that? How would that be distributed? What’s the recommendation we should take from that?
Ms. Henderson: First, does staying indoors simply with your doors and windows closed help? The answer depends on the building, but generally, no. We can see anywhere between 60% to 100% smoke infiltration into the indoor environment with doors and windows closed depending on the building envelope. Also, if you make it too hot, you are putting yourself at risk of heat exposure, and that’s even worse for you than smoke exposure. So, it is not the ideal circumstance.
There is work going on right now in the National Building Code of Canada to look at heat and ensure that every new building that is built has a place where you can stay cool in it, every new home that is built, and ideally, that would be a cooler clean-air shelter for every home in Canada so that people have a space to be safe. Do masks work? They can be very effective if they are well fitted to your face. If they are not well fitted to your face, they are about 50% effective, at best, and for kids and folks who aren’t going to be able to wear a mask well, it is just not the best possible solution. You can’t sleep in them. You don’t want to wear them all day. They are very hot. They get sweaty. There are all kinds of concerns about them, but they have their place.
What does a smoke-smart society look like? That’s a great question, and I think your experience highlights how people across Canada feel where there are some folks who say, “This is natural; it is fine; I’m not worried about it.” It’s crucial to ensure that folks are aware that smoke can affect their health and that there are things they can do to protect themselves. My number one thing that I tell folks is to ask yourself the question: Where are you breathing right now, and what are your opportunities to reduce your exposure where you are breathing right now, because that’s the thing that’s going to help reduce your exposure from maybe 100% to maybe 50%. It is just taking those small opportunities throughout your day. You can’t stop breathing, so you need to be thinking at all times about ways to reduce your exposure wherever you are breathing.
Senator McBean: Would you have suggested that my family should have left and gone back to Toronto?
Ms. Henderson: I would not have.
Senator McBean: I want to know what options people have.
Ms. Henderson: It is not a practical solution. We can’t evacuate all of Edmonton when it gets smoky. What I would have suggested is that your two-year-old child is very susceptible to these exposures, because those are baby lungs, and they are growing pretty fast. Those exposures have all kinds of opportunities to disrupt those growth pathways. So, let’s take extra precautions, because you have a two-year-old child with you, and think about cleaner spaces to spend time in, and better times to go outdoors when the smoke is not so bad.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for your expertise and sharing with us. Our committee wanted to hear about the health effects. I’m going to say that I’m a Dalhousie University graduate, so welcome. I had to say that.
You heard the last discussion about how to coordinate services, how to make sure that we have best practices, best policies and strategies that are going to encompass the new normal. It is not just, as you were speaking about the COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma and the psychological resilience that needs to be inputted in the new normal for our society. You heard mention of a disaster management coordinating effort. That is not to get rid of the local responses, because you are rightly giving resources. What are your thoughts on an overarching coordinating effort? Not just looking at wildfire, because these things are going to be for everything that we have to do. What are your thoughts on that proposal or discussion?
Dr. Agyapong: That’s an excellent idea, particularly because — as you indicated — we have had a pandemic, flooding in many different parts of Canada and wildfires. We know these events are occurring in different areas. Suddenly, you have a national coordinating body to ensure that the response is consistent and also that resources are properly deployed to support the local communities. If we just leave everything to the local communities, then we’re going to see disparities in implementation of some of the best evidence-based practices.
For example, in Alberta, when the pandemic happened, we were able to deploy the text message program, to which about 60,000 people were able to subscribe, and receive three months of intervention. We were able to demonstrate that those who received the intervention had less suicidal ideation, less depressive symptoms and less anxiety symptoms compared to those who did not. Other provinces didn’t have that opportunity, but if there had been a national coordinating body, an intervention like that, which has been proven to be effective, could have been deployed on a national scale. I would be in support of that.
Ms. Henderson: What I would ideally like to see is the conversation about smoke when we’re talking about the wildfire circumstance wrapped into the whole conversation so that it is not an afterthought. When we’re talking about wildfire on the news, we’re also talking about smoke on the news. We’re pushing out information about smoke along with information about wildfire and along with information about mental health, so we’re treating it as a complete package rather than in disparate pieces.
Senator Burey: Thank you.
Senator Petitclerc: Thank you, both, for being here today. I have a simple question. From physical, medical and psychological perspectives, I would like both of you to just simply walk me through what happens right after a fire in a community. What is done? What is not done? Who are we testing? Are we assessing everybody? How is that practically done? What are the gaps? I don’t know who wants to start first.
Dr. Agyapong: I can share my experience because I went through the 2016 wildfires. At that time, we were evacuated up north into the oil sands where we stayed for 48 hours before we were flown to Edmonton. The immediate response was to provide us with the basic necessities, like a toothbrush, a pillow, clothing, et cetera. However, there was no coordination in terms of psychological well-being because, as you can imagine, everybody including those mental health clinicians were also in a state of looking after themselves. Everybody was in distress.
That’s where we need to look at other ways and options that don’t always involve human resources and that uses technology. How can we use technology better in those circumstances to support people?
During the 2023 wildfires in Alberta and Nova Scotia, when working with Alberta Health Services and Nova Scotia Health Authority, we deployed technology, and we got thousands of people subscribed to the program. So you can imagine the number of humans you would require to provide that level of intervention, but with technology, you can reach many people simultaneously, and without as much cost.
We need to look at ways of really supporting people and by thinking more of technology.
Ms. Henderson: To the best of my knowledge, there is no systematic approach to smoke and smoke exposure. We have certainly tried to work with emergency managers to highlight the populations that are going to be most at risk with these exposures, such as people who are pregnant, infants and children. There is awareness among emergency management, but I still don’t see evidence that there is a coordinated and systemic response to try to protect those highly vulnerable populations.
Senator Petitclerc: If you have a fire that is close to a community and there is no system that will say, “Let’s assess all the children,” for example — or those vulnerable — so it has to be that someone has symptoms, maybe, or a concern?
Ms. Henderson: There is certainly no system to broadly assess the population. For anybody who makes it to the ER or their physician, even under those circumstances, there is a low awareness in the medical community about wildfire smoke and about its health effects. It is on a physician-by-physician or clinician-by-clinician basis.
Senator Petitclerc: I realize it requires so many resources, but in an ideal scenario, with the data you have, should there be broader approaches?
Ms. Henderson: One thing we do in B.C., to build upon the technology element, is there is a program called the Smart Mom program. You can sign up as someone who is pregnant to get text messages about a healthy pregnancy. If we know it will be smoky in a community, we send out a message to the people who are signed up in that community.
But that’s a very small piece of the puzzle.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. I think I will direct questions to both of you. You are speaking about very different capacities — physical and mental.
My question is: How does exposure to wildfire smoke or the trauma of wildfire affect people differently based upon things like age, genetics or socio-economic status?
Then I would say to both of you as well — and you just sort of touched upon some communication — what is the best way to effectively communicate risk levels at the time it is happening, but, also, how do we communicate out to people that what they are feeling might need to be assessed?
Dr. Agyapong: Thank you very much.
In terms of your second question about how we communicate with people, certainly, the use of the local resources can be a very good and effective communication means. Again, however, as I have indicated, technology, like text messaging — you are able to embed links of resources that people need into those kinds of messages, and they can know what to do. That can include additional mental health resources and physical health resources that are available to them.
Those are some of the ways that are very important.
I missed your first question.
Senator Sorensen: It is more on how exposure to something like the trauma of wildfire affect people differently based on age, socio-economic status and genetics.
Dr. Agyapong: Yes.
In all of the studies we have done, we have always looked at the factors that increase the likelihood of people having certain conditions. We look at age. We did a children’s study, which was very different from the adult study. For the adult study, we looked at them from age 18 until age whatever — 90. We didn’t find there to be an association between age and the mental health effects that people had.
We looked at gender, housing status and employment status. They didn’t really correlate with the psychological burden.
Senator Sorensen: Okay, thank you. Dr. Henderson?
Ms. Henderson: Anybody who is growing is going to be at higher risk, because, again, there is the disruption of cellular processes. The faster you are growing, the more the risk is going to be.
Senator Sorensen: Right. Okay.
Ms. Henderson: For those who are fully grown, I would say that baseline health is the number one indicator. Those who have compromised baseline health because of pre-existing illness, poverty or age are going to be more susceptible to smoke than those who are in good health, regardless of age. Obviously, as people get older, their baseline health tends to decline, so that does put them at higher risk.
In terms of how to communicate best, we have a few options in B.C. We have the Smoky Skies Bulletin that would get pushed out to communities when we’re expecting it to get smoky. We have the Air Quality Health Index, or AQHI.
But I would argue there is potentially room to use some of the bigger tools we have in the toolbox. Everybody got an alert readiness text on their phones yesterday. I believe there may be circumstances where communicating via those types of channels would make sense.
The Chair: Our library analyst has the pen for the final report. What’s the one thing you want her to remember from your presentations?
Ms. Henderson: There is no world in which wildfire smoke is good for human health. There are opportunities to protect human health through effective interventions. Unfortunately, those interventions require behavioural changes at the individual level and societal changes at the whole-of-society level. We need to be looking at them from the top through to the bottom to achieve a smoke-smart population.
Dr. Agyapong: Thank you very much.
From my point of view, we have to look at things from two levels: prevention and responding. In terms of prevention, I want to see more resources devoted to mental health programs at the community level, in schools and workplaces, and also building capacity for local not-for-profit organizations to help them to be able to respond to situations when they happen.
Also, we need to embed technology into the management of natural disaster crises when they happen in Canada.
The Chair: Thank you.
We have three senators on a second round, and that should take us close to the end, unless there are other ones. We’ll start with three minutes per question.
Senator Simons: I wanted to give Dr. Agyapong a chance to respond to my last question about mental health supports for people in remote and Indigenous communities.
Then I wanted to ask Dr. Henderson this something. We talk a lot about outdoor air quality, but I want to talk about indoor air quality, which we were sensitized to during the pandemic’s worst years. I remember visiting my mother in hospital during bad wildfire seasons, and the hospital was full of smoke. That shocked me because I would have thought that a hospital would have the best air-filtering units.
What do we need to do to ensure our schools, hospitals and other public buildings have the right kind of air filtration to protect people inside?
Dr. Agyapong: Thank you very much.
I worked in Fort McMurray and frequently saw patients from the First Nations communities where they are not reachable by road unless it is the winter and their winter roads were open.
There is a huge opportunity for us to use technology, like video conferencing, to support them in a way that we do but probably not as much as we should be doing.
It will be useful for us to look at being intentional about providing the resources and targeting those communities with increased telehealth clinical programs, not just in a crisis situation but also looking at some resiliency building programs intentionally designed for these communities that are virtual.
We will never have enough mental health therapists or psychiatrists, even in bigger cities. To address the shortfall in these vulnerable communities, we need to be intentional about providing those resources and leveraging on technology.
Ms. Henderson: Within the next few months, ASHRAE will release its guidance on protecting the occupants of commercial buildings, schools and hospitals from wildfire smoke. I have been sitting on this committee for the past four years. That guidance is very much needed.
There will at least be a framework for a universal conversation about how to protect indoor air quality when it is smoky outside.
Senator Simons: Can you make certain we get a copy of that report?
Ms. Henderson: It will not be a report. It will be an ASHRAE guidance document. I am not sure whether or not it is going to be freely available. I will speak with the committee to ask whether I can disseminate an early copy to this committee.
Senator Simons: Thank you.
Ms. Henderson: You are welcome.
Senator Muggli: Dr. Agyapong, to carry on the mental health line, if you can reflect on your Fort McMurray experience, I know that was traumatic. I actually housed one of the imams from Fort McMurray and his family who drove all the way to Saskatoon because they couldn’t find anywhere to stay along the way. I saw how traumatized they were.
I’m interested in if there are any studies or overall if you have noted increases of specific mental health issues, particularly suicidality presentations.
Dr. Agyapong: Absolutely. Before the wildfires of 2016, we had reached a state in Fort McMurray where we had a ten-bed unit which often had about four patient beds that were empty because we had improved the outpatient responsiveness of family doctor referrals and so on and so forth.
After the wildfires, there was an increased presentation to the emergency departments, particularly from the oil sands camps. People coming in and needing to be admitted.
Other studies also suggest with the five-year follow-up data and the three-and-a-half-year data, things are getting worse, not better. I think it is because the wildfire has made them vulnerable or susceptible to other traumatic experiences.
There is one paper we published in the Journal of Psychotraumatology. We suggested those who experienced the wildfires, flooding and the COVID pandemic were 18 times more likely to experience generalized anxiety disorder and 11 times more likely to experience post-traumatic stress disorder compared to those who went through the pandemic alone and lived in the city of Fort McMurray. Clearly, the wildfire is having a negative psychological impact.
Senator McBean: Dr. Henderson, back to the smoke-safe areas. The Housing Accelerator Fund, which has agreements with the federal government and municipalities, is looking to build houses quickly. Do you think a program like this should be used to add smoke-safe priorities into their agreements? What would an area in a house and/or an apartment building look that?
Ms. Henderson: First, I would start by saying it shouldn’t just be smoke safe, it should be climate safe. Smoke is one of many climate hazards where the indoor environment can help to protect us from the hazard. We should be looking at all hazards when we’re talking about new housing in Canada.
There are two things you have to consider when talking about the indoor infiltration of wildfire smoke: One is keeping it out and one is cleaning it out.
In the first place, we want building envelopes that allow us to keep smoke outdoors so they are not leaky and not too much smoke gets in.
In the second place, we want the ability to be able to clean smoke out of the air that gets in through filtration, either induct filtration or portable air cleaners. Those are the two key pieces. All of that will be outlined in the ASHRAE guidance.
Coming back to this technology theme, we are in a world now where we can use pretty low-cost sensors to understand what indoor air quality is. We can monitor carbon dioxide. We can monitor fine particulate matter. Starting to build those technologies into homes in the way we monitor humidity and temperature in homes is just the smart thing to do in a changing climate.
Senator Burey: Again, to the mental health effects, I wish for you to expand on the long-term psychological effects after disaster. Most people think the disaster happens and that’s the end of it. Those psychological effects go into the future. You did speak about the compounding effects of trauma. Speak about the long-term effects.
I didn’t hear any mention of the learning problems after, especially with kids. You talked about the effect on the whole system. Could you elaborate on that?
Dr. Agyapong: Yes, thank you. As the data that has been shared suggests, rates of these psychological problems actually have been increasing and not decreasing, which provides some convincing evidence there are longer-term psychological effects. The question is why are we seeing an increase in these disorders and not a decrease?
Usually when people experience some traumatic events, the expectation is, over time, the effects of the trauma will probably wane and they are going to get better, which in most people is the situation.
The reality is the data suggests these effects are staying much longer than we expect. We have to look at what else is happening around this? We are all aware of the COVID pandemic which, in itself, was very stressful for everybody and increased, on a global level, the levels of psychological symptoms.
We have also indicated there has been flooding in different places. Unfortunately, Fort McMurray is one of the places impacted by flooding. I think the increase is correlated with the multiple things happening in Fort McMurray.
They also were in a situation where oil prices crashed and there was a lot of unemployment at the time as well. In addition to unemployment, flooding, COVID-19 pandemic, and then the wildfires, it is really expected that we are seeing those increases.
Ms. Henderson: I didn’t talk too much about how smoke affects the body biologically. One of the important things to know is some of those very small particles are small enough to translocate across the lung into the bloodstream, and then cross the blood brain barrier. Smoke can have a direct impact on the brain.
We know that children do not perform as well in school on smoky days. We know there is an attention deficit on smoky days. We know these early life exposures do seem to be associated with the development of conditions such as ADHD and autism spectrum disorder. We can anticipate there are these direct impacts on the brain health of children.
The Chair: Thank you. On that note, witnesses, thank you for your participation and testimony today. Your insights are appreciated.
I want to thank the committee members for your always active participation and thoughtful questions. I want to take a moment to thank the folks who support us behind and at the sides, our interpreters, the Debates team transcribing this meeting, the committee room attendants, Multimedia Services technicians, the broadcasting team, the recording centre, the Information Services Directorate, our office staff and, of course, our page, Alex. Thank you to each of you.
If there is no other business, honourable senators, this meeting is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)