THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Thursday, October 9, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 8 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 is a pleasure to see you. I want to welcome senators and our witnesses, both in person and online. Thank you for being here.
My name is Robert Black, a senator from Ontario, and I am chair of this committee. I want to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded, traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. I would now ask the senators to introduce themselves, starting with our deputy.
Senator McNair: John McNair, New Brunswick.
Senator Varone: Toni Varone, Ontario.
Senator Burey: Sharon Burey, Ontario.
Senator Robinson: Good morning. Mary Robinson, representing Prince Edward Island.
Senator McBean: Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Julie Miville-Dechêne, Quebec.
Senator Muggli: It is nice to see you again. Tracy Muggli, Saskatchewan.
The Chair: Thank you for remaining with us, Dr. Feltmate.
Today, the committee continues its study on the topic of the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on the forestry and agriculture industries.
For our first panel, we have the pleasure of welcoming in person Dr. Blair Feltmate, Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo; and joining us by video conference, we welcome Ryan Ness, Research Director on Adaptation, Canadian Climate Institute. Welcome to both of you.
You will each have five minutes for your opening remarks, which will be followed by questions from the senators. When you have one minute left, I will raise my hand, and when it is getting close to time to wrap up, two hands.
The floor is yours, Dr. Feltmate.
Blair Feltmate, Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, as an individual: Good morning. I appreciate the opportunity to meet with you this morning and present a few opening remarks. As was mentioned, I am head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, which is housed within the faculty of environment at the University of Waterloo.
The purpose of the Intact Centre is to prepare communities and homes across Canada for increasingly severe flooding, wildfire and extreme heat. We focus on flooding and wildfire because they are the two most financially costly impacts of extreme weather being realized in Canada, and extreme heat is by far the most lethal.
Today, I’m going to zero in on only one aspect of our work: actions that homeowners can take to limit their exposure to wildfire for those living in forested or grassland regions. Our research shows that Canadians will act to protect their homes from extreme weather when they are given easy-to-follow guidance.
Before turning to how homeowners can limit their vulnerability to wildfire risk, I’ll begin by presenting a few facts about the current impacts of extreme weather affecting Canadians. For example, 1.5 million homeowners across Canada right now cannot get flood insurance for their homes. That’s one in ten homeowners who can’t get insurance for what is probably their biggest financial investment.
If we don’t act rapidly to mobilize adaptation — and this is already happened in California and Arizona — homes may also become uninsurable for wildfire in high-risk zones. Not having wild fire insurance bears a much greater burden than losing flood insurance. Without flood insurance, a homeowner can still get a mortgage. Without fire insurance, a homeowner cannot get a mortgage, which effectively renders his or her home a stranded asset or it is of no value.
I have shared a graph with you that profiles insured catastrophic loss claims for Canada over the period of 1983 to 2024. When you look at the graph, what matters most on the figure is the shape of the curve that depicts catastrophic loss claims payouts realized over time. The regression line on the graph is bending upwards, driven primarily by flood and wildfire damage. In other words, things are getting worse faster. This is not where Canada wants to be.
Now that we have touched on some of the bad news, let’s turn to some good news. Homes and communities in Canada can be protected from wildfire. Homeowners do not have to be victims of circumstance at the mercy of wildfires. There is much that can be done at the level of the house and community before a fire hits that can lower risk by up to 75% of a home or community burning when a fire comes through a region.
This leads us to the infographic I’ve shared with you: Three Steps to a Cost-effective FireSmart Home. I will leave a similar infographic that focuses on community wildfire protection for another day.
On the infographic, along the top row, you will see simple steps a homeowner can take to protect their home for between zero to $300 cost to lower their wildfire exposure. For example, actions can be as simple as removing shrubs from within a few metres of the wall of a house and replacing them with nonburnable material. Another precautionary measure is to store firewood well away from the house and not at the back door for purposes of convenience. For a little more money, in the zone of about $300 to $3,000, wood fencing can be replaced with metal or chain-link fencing. Otherwise, the wooden fence can be a pathway or conduit for fire to travel to a house. At a slightly elevated expense, protection can include installing fire-resistant metal or cement fibre shingles, noncombustible siding and removing large needle-bearing trees that may be close to the house.
Initially, the cost and effort to upgrade a home to limit wildfire risk may seem daunting, but not when you consider that for those who own a home, it is generally their largest investment in life, something they work on for 25 to 30 years to pay for, and it is their retirement fund. The bottom line is this: Infographics work. Within six months of receiving infographics, 70% of homeowners will take two or more actions to protect their home that they would not have otherwise taken.
In my view, a national residential wildfire education program targeting homes in forested regions could be put in place relatively quickly at reasonable cost, offering significant and fast financial benefits for Canadians. Rollout of an education program could include featuring infographics on Government of Canada websites, in communiques from MPs to their constituents, and profiling infographics in newspapers, on billboards and social media.
In short, every day we don’t adapt and prepare for wildfire is a day we don’t have. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Dr. Feltmate, for your opening statement. Mr. Ness, the floor is yours for your opening comments.
Ryan Ness, Research Director on Adaptation, Canadian Climate Institute: Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Honourable senators, it is much appreciated to have the opportunity to appear before you today. My name is Ryan Ness. I’m the director of adaptation research at the Canadian Climate Institute, which is Canada’s independent national climate policy research organization. We provide governments with evidence-based analysis and practical advice to manage climate risks and seize the opportunities that come from proactively addressing these. Our work brings together experts across disciplines to help Canada pursue clean growth, emissions reduction and climate resilience goals.
We have conducted research on the economic and social costs of climate impacts, including the growing threat of wildfires. We have analyzed many of the implications for housing, communities, industry and public health. We have assessed how governments can better prepare for escalating wildfire risks. The evidence shows overwhelmingly that increasingly severe wildfire seasons are now a major economic, social and public health challenge that require urgent, coordinated action at a much larger scale than what is happening now.
Within this context, I will focus on three themes in my remarks: first, how wildfire risk is evolving and what that means for Canada; second, the scale of the risk and the economic stakes for individuals, communities and the economy; and third, the practical directions that governments need to take.
In terms of wildfire risk and what it means for Canada, of course, as you have heard from various witnesses already, wildfire risk is intensifying. Climate change is driving longer fire seasons, drier fuels and more frequent extreme fire weather days. Lightning ignitions of fires are increasing, and wind-driven fires are spreading faster and burning hotter than in the past. This is all because of the changes to climate caused by global heating. The result is not only larger burned areas but more destructive and unpredictable fires that threaten lives, infrastructure, housing and communities, sometimes in regions with little or no history of wildfire.
Wildfire smoke as well is now a national hazard. The pollution from major fires travels thousands of kilometres, degrading air quality and harming human health across the country, leading to some of Canada’s major cities recording some of the worst air quality in the world during major smoke events.
Fires are also transforming Canada’s forests as the fires burn hotter and over larger areas. Our forests are shifting from acting as carbon sinks to becoming net sources of greenhouse gases, reinforcing the very climate change that is driving wildfires. Repeated, severe fires are also transforming our landscapes, converting some forests to shrubland or grassland, reducing the carbon storage capacity of forests and undermining Canada’s unique biodiversity.
The risk of wildfires is not experienced equally across the country. Indigenous communities in particular face disproportionate exposure to wildfire hazards. Nearly one in five First Nations on-reserve communities are located in high-risk wildfire zones, far higher than the national average. Many are also in remote areas, with limited access to firefighting resources, evacuation routes and infrastructure, which amplifies their vulnerability. The consequences can be devastating: destroyed homes, repeat evacuations and displacement of communities that can last for weeks or months.
What does this mean for industry, communities and the national economy? On the forestry side, wildfires are destroying valuable timber, damaging industrial infrastructure and disrupting supply chains that support forest-dependent regional economies. The combined pressures of fire, drought and pests are projected to significantly reduce harvestable timber volumes over time, lowering yields, reducing employment in forestry-dependent areas, and constraining the supply of wood products for both domestic use and import. Our analysis at the Canadian Climate Institute suggests that even under a best-case scenario, these pressures will reduce the forest sector’s GDP by more than $2 billion annually over the next couple of decades.
Wildfires are imposing mounting costs on households and governments. Under current climate conditions, our analysis shows that Canada can expect roughly $700 million per year, on average, in damage to existing homes, which is only a fraction of the total cost once firefighting, evacuation, business interruption and infrastructure losses are also taken into account. Our analysis also shows that without stronger land-use planning and zoning, hundreds of thousands of new homes could be built in wildfire-prone areas over the next decade, pushing annual housing damages up by a billion dollars to over $1.7 billion annually. That’s just with current climate conditions. As fires intensify with continuing climate change, those costs will only climb.
Communities in high wildfire risk zones are on the frontlines of wildfire risk. They are facing compounding challenges as well in response and recovery. Many of the homes and infrastructure in these exposed communities were not built to withstand wildfire conditions, leading to widespread damage and destruction after wildfires strike. Increasingly limited insurance coverage is leaving families and municipalities reliant on government disaster assistance, which rarely is able to make them fully financially whole after a disaster. In remote, rural and Indigenous communities, higher construction and maintenance costs and limited disaster response and reconstruction capacity are further amplifying damages and delaying recovery.
The health impacts of wildfire smoke are adding another layer of cost, often far from fires themselves. The annual health costs are estimated at over $1 billion annually.
Mr. Chair, I see two hands. May I quickly sum up some of the key actions for government?
The Chair: Yes, but you are well over.
Mr. Ness: Thank you.
The practical directions that governments need to take: first is strengthening the resilience of existing fire-prone communities, some of the measures that Dr. Feltmate was discussing. Second, we need to prevent the creation of new wildfire risks through better land-use, housing and infrastructure decisions, including making sure federal funding does not support construction in hazardous places. Third, we need to protect public health and improve coordination across all levels of government to do so. Fourth, we need to sustain action and ambition on emissions reductions because continued global warming will only drive further increases in wildfire risk.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
We will proceed with questions now. Senators, you have five minutes, as in the past, for questions and answers. Senators, as in the past, you will have five minutes each for both questions and answers, so I will ask you to keep your questions brief and the subsequent responses brief as well. We will start with our deputy chair.
Senator McNair: Thank you to both witnesses for being here with an early start to the day. I appreciate it.
Both of you have given us some bad news and then dangled some hope on things that can be done. I’m going to start with Mr. Ness. Your fact sheet on climate change and wildfires talks about the fire season starting earlier, lasting longer and being harder to contain. It goes on to talk about wildfires damaging people’s health and well-being. These are common messages we are hearing from other witnesses that appear before us. Worsening wildfires are making life more expensive, but then government can act to protect communities and slow further heating.
In your Canadian Climate Institute’s February report, Close to Home: How to build more housing in a changing climate, you talk about financial losses are estimated to more than double by 2030, which is five years away, if federal housing targets are achieved in line with current development patterns. The report states that B.C. would see significant financial losses, with significant losses in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec as well.
You very quickly touched on this when you saw the dreaded two hands up from our chair, but what action should the federal government be taking regarding the development of wildfire-resilient housing? And, probably more importantly, do they understand the sense of urgency, from your perspective?
Mr. Ness: Thank you, senator, for your question.
In terms of what governments can do, certainly more funding will be required to scale up measures to protect existing housing, like FireSmart programs that Dr. Feltmate was talking about, as well as managing forests at a large scale, managing the fuel for wildfires, which might include traditional and prescribed burning practices.
We also have a gap in information across Canada. Our wildfire hazard mapping is incomplete and largely inaccessible. The Government of Canada can play a leadership role in advancing the science for wildfire hazard mapping so that it is available so that governments and communities can make informed choices about where to build housing.
As I mentioned, it is important to keep new housing from being built in wildfire-prone areas, in the highest-risk zones, and federal government funding for housing and infrastructure should be targeted to ensure that it does not enable housing construction and development in the most hazardous zones. Even in less hazardous zones, where the risks still remain significant, that funding should come with conditions around wildfire risk assessments and resilience measures.
We also need faster updates to our building codes that apply to the new construction of housing. Wildfire resilience provisions of significance are not expected in the National Building Code until 2030, and provincial adoption of that code, where it actually gets enforced provincially, will take likely years beyond that. We need ways to accelerate that process as well.
Senator McNair: Dr. Feltmate, I want to quickly touch on two things you said.
Infographics work. The one-page summary is a huge tool. You said you have another one for communities. Would you share that with the committee? We would be interested in seeing that.
Mr. Feltmate: Yes, absolutely.
Senator McNair: You talked about a national education program as one of the things the government could be doing. Do you get a sense that they are hearing that recommendation? Are they moving towards that?
Mr. Feltmate: They are hearing it to an extent, but I don’t think acting on it nearly aggressively enough. I would say probably the biggest limitation in reference to addressing climate change in Canada right now is lack of a sense of appreciation of the need to act with urgency. We have to move on this, and we have to move rapidly. I don’t think that’s well understood or appreciated. When we get the information into the hands of homeowners, they act, and we need multiple distribution channels to do that.
Where we are having, by the way, the maximum success and moving forward on adaptation in Canada is at the municipal level. When you meet with mayors and councillors, they get it. It takes 15 minutes for them to say, “I want this information in the hands of all my constituents because we want to help homeowners help themselves. That’s where we can get the most risk out of the system immediately.”
Senator Muggli: Dr. Feltmate, maybe this is just an expansion on what you just said, but what are some of the successful strategies that you’ve seen in terms of getting this into the hands of citizens?
Mr. Feltmate: Probably at the top of the list now, leadership and moving forward on adaptation in the country is through the banks and insurance companies. For example, right now, if you get a mortgage with the Royal Bank of Canada, or RBC — and this is not a commercial for the Intact Centre — you get a full package of infographics on home flood protection, home wildfire protection if you’re in a forested region, and also home heat protection, protecting yourself from extreme heat. They distribute to material to homeowners not just in the mortgage closing package but also twice per year, spring and fall, with reminders on what to do. BMO, the Bank of Montreal, has now come on board to do the same thing. Meridian Credit Union just signed up. I think we will have another major bank on board pretty soon, so they’re pushing it. The property and casualty insurers are pushing this messaging out to their clients.
Now, we have life and health insurers on board. Up to two or three years ago in Canada, from an insurance perspective, it was generally thought that climate change and extreme weather risk were simply problems for P and C insurers — property and casualty insurers — and that life and health insurers were off the hook. But we are about to release a report very shortly showing spikes in claims for medications to deal with psychosocial or mental health stress by people who were in communities that experienced these extreme weather events. We see spikes in claims for counselling services for people who lived through this stuff. We are seeing spikes in claims for lost time from work. Those are all claims for life and health insurers who, up to about three years ago, thought they were off the hook on this stuff, that it was a P and C problem, but it’s not. This puts it smack dab on the doorsteps of Manulife, Sun Life and Canada Life.
Senator Muggli: Thank you. I heard you talk about this before, but I wanted it on the record.
Mr. Ness, is there any trending data on the percentage of harvestable forests, forests that were being actively harvested, that have been lost to forest fires over the years? I’m interested in how it is impacting the industry.
Mr. Ness: Thank you, senator, for the question.
I’m not aware of any particular analysis, but I imagine specialists in forestry and academic institutions within the industry are tracking that. I can say that forward-looking modelling that takes climate change projections into account is very clear that some of our most commercially valuable forests will be impacted from a combination of fire and climate-driven drought and pests. They will reduce timber volumes as well. I would expect that the measured data is tracking that as well, but I’m not aware of where that would be found.
Senator Muggli: I just thought I’d ask.
Do either of you have any data on the number of people who, after a fire evacuation, never go back to their communities? They may stay at the host community. I know a lot of people who were evacuated from northern Manitoba just stayed in Winnipeg and did not go back to their home communities. Do either of you have some information about that?
Mr. Feltmate: It certainly is problematic, getting people back in a timely fashion. When they’ve gone through this devastation and their home has burned down, they want to get back to their homes rapidly and have it rebuilt.
One of the big problems is we are rebuilding communities exactly as they were, which led to the problem in the first place. We have to put the reins on that a little bit and build back better. Let’s operationalize the known actions to mitigate risks going forward. Don’t just rebuild the home exactly as it was, or you’ll have the same problem 15 years down the road.
Mr. Ness: I’m not aware of statistics on how many people do not go back to their communities, but the data is clear that many communities that are most exposed to wildfire, including on-reserve First Nations communities, are being evacuated multiple times, over and over. That brings with it all kinds of disruption and trauma.
Senator Muggli: Thank you.
[Translation]
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Mr. Feltmate, like my colleagues, I find your graphs very well made and easy to understand. I have a question about step 3. It sounds great to be able to build a home out of metal and glass, but as you said, that is expensive. If I understand correctly, many houses located in areas prone to forest fires cannot get insured. How can money be found to build that type of firebreak? Are there any specific programs to help people who want to rebuild in that way — not just for rebuilding after a fire, but in a preventative way? Are there any grants? There were all sorts of options in Quebec at one point when people wanted to change their heating systems. What kind of assistance is available in this particular case?
[English]
Mr. Feltmate: The grants are fairly limited. Through this Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund and the Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements, known as DFAA, money can be claimed from there for communities that experience large-scale devastation. Some percentage of that might ultimately trickle down to homeowners, but, by and large, subsidies on the fire side of the equation are pretty limited. The homeowner is on their own.
But, for example, let’s say you’re putting a metal roof on a house to make it such that when embers land on the roof, the roof does not ignite and burn the house down. It’s about $30,000 to put a metal roof on an average home. However, what about the cost of building wrongly? You still have to have a roof. A conventional roof that would be vulnerable to fire costs, say, $15,000. There’s a delta between the two. I’m not saying that it’s irrelevant, but it’s not that great when you consider that the thing I’m investing in is my biggest investment in life and probably my retirement fund. If you have a house worth, say, half a million dollars, spending an extra $10,000 to help ensure it’s not going to burn down is a pretty good deal in my sense.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: It is still a heavy burden for those people who have already experienced fire and have to pay to reconstruct because they won’t have money from the government. Are you both saying that, as we do for other situations, some grants should specifically be given to rebuild with some of those metal structures?
Mr. Feltmate: From my perspective, the short answer is yes, for sure.
By the way, the return on investment for adaptation — and there are lots of studies that have verified this independently — shows that one dollar invested in adaptation produces $2 to $10 in avoided losses per decade. That is a pretty good return. Like, Warren Buffett would be excited about that. So, yes.
Is it a challenge for homeowners to put a little extra cash into protecting their property? The answer is yes. But they also have to think of it as an investment in equity because, at some point, you may go to sell that house, and now you actually use the features that have been put in place to protect the house from wildfire or flooding as desirable features into the valuation of the actual property.
One of the things that we have to get Canadians to understand when they are buying a home is that they should be thinking just as much about vulnerability to wildfire if they are in forested regions, or to flooding, and they should be looking at protective measures the house may have relative to those perils with the same degree of excitement that they look for granite countertops in the kitchen.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Do you have anything to add to that, Mr. Ness?
Mr. Ness: I would certainly agree with Dr. Feltmate that there are benefits to these kinds of investments in housing resilience that extend well beyond benefits to the homeowners themselves. Society ends up paying for much of the damage, whether it’s through disaster assistance or disaster recovery. These are wise investments for society to support as well as just individual homeowners.
Senator Varone: Welcome.
Full disclosure: I have probably been insured by Intact for the longest time. I can’t remember when I had somebody else. You’re not the cheapest, but you’re one of the smartest insurers out there, and you guide us as homeowners very well.
I take exception to one item that you talked about, and that’s the municipalities and the manner in which they are very hesitant to change their building codes. I’ll give you a case in point. I had to fight with Intact and the municipality. I got rid of all my gutters, the eavestroughs. About 20 years ago, the City of Toronto outlawed rainwater leaders, which are what channels the eavestrough water into the ground. They were connected to the sewer for storm water management reasons, and they made every single homeowner in the City of Toronto disconnect them. So if you drive down to Toronto, you will see stubs with caps on them, and you’re not allowed to connect the rainwater that came from your roof to your storm sewers. I said to them, “Well, what is the relevance of my gutters now, because all they do is trap leaves?” So I got rid of the gutters. I eliminated them all. I let the water dissipate naturally as it falls all over. Then I received a citation from the city government for not channelling something that wasn’t going anywhere. I ended up eight years in court. I won. It is now not part of the building code.
When you talk about municipalities embracing change, they’re very slow to react to change. I highlighted about four different items here that are smart homeowner prevention for fire but are not allowed by the municipalities. When you talk about your trees 1.5 metres off, more than likely you will be falling on a drainage swale between the houses, and they don’t want any plantation on a drainage swale. How do you react, and how do you advocate with municipalities to change their thinking as it relates to the building code to ensure that this FireSmart system can actually be implemented?
Mr. Feltmate: I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. These are all tough issues.
I take the guidance we have here as a direction that people should pay attention to, but it’s also idiosyncratic in terms of its utility. There may be cases where the space between homes is so close that you can’t discharge water. There is nowhere to put it. You might be in a little bit of a semi-unsolvable situation to start with.
However, as a general rule of thumb — at least at the level of large cities in Canada, such as Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver — almost all of them have flooding subsidy programs for downspout disconnect that is approved, for sump pump installation and back water valve installation. The City of Toronto, for these three, has a subsidy of about up to $3,400. We’re not there on wildfire. It’s just not as advanced as the flood file.
Generally speaking, the cities where wildfires are occurring tend to be smaller communities without the resources of the big cities. I’m not sure how quickly we’re going to get subsidies in place to help them. It’s going to be a push that would have to come from a program from the federal government.
Even now, I look at the federal government. If you look at the two major programs now on building infrastructure, building Canada going forward, building more homes and the — I forget the other one that is being run in terms of industry builds. But if you read all the material associated with those two initiatives, adaptation isn’t in there anywhere, and it is befuddling to me how that could possibly happen.
Senator McBean: I find it interesting. It’s funny when people say things that are absolutely obvious, and I still say, “That’s so interesting.” The flood prevention file is ahead of fire because floods tend to be hitting the bigger cities and the decision makers faster.
If I go back to a conversation — this just putting it a little bit on the record — before your testimony started, you were talking to me how you’re not chasing down scientists any more. You don’t need more data; you need better conversational and behavioural tools to talk to people.
Your research often emphasizes proactive adaptation rather than reactive recovery. What specific measures — and I’m asking you to just repeat how you personally are navigating through this — could Canadian communities prioritize to reduce wildfire risks before they start, and how are you communicating that to people?
Mr. Feltmate: You have seen the material that’s on this sheet. This is at the level of the home, and we have a similar direction for the community. We’re advocating for controlled burns, multiple egress routes out of communities, building more firebreaks around communities and ensuring that we have adequate water pressure for when fire hits. Right now, the water that comes out of the fire hydrants, once you start to light up the whole street because you need it because it’s all burning, the pressure drops to almost nothing and you’ve got no water. We have to have additional pump capacity to keep the pressure in the system when these events occur because they were designed for one house to burn — not multiple houses.
What was the second part of your question?
Senator McBean: You were talking about the behavioural aspect.
Mr. Feltmate: On the climate file in Canada, it’s a good-news, bad-news story. The good news is that, to a large extent, we know what the problems are, and to a large extent, we know what the solutions are. The problem is that we’re not mobilizing known solutions nearly quickly enough. I don’t need more climate scientists or more financial people telling me the cost. I know. I can stack this stuff up. I’m spending more time with behavioural psychologists and behavioural economists looking at how to motivate Canadians to help themselves.
In reference to the building codes, that’s a good thing to do. You want to bring the building codes up to date so you’re better prepared for what is to come, but boy oh boy, they change at a glacial pace, although that’s actually pretty quick now. The next visitation of the building codes in Canada is 2030, and there’s barely going to be any mention of adaptation in it.
Not too long ago, I was going into a meeting with a lot of people involved in controlling the building codes. I won’t say who it was, but one of the prominent people came up to me and said, “I just want to let you know before this meeting starts that anything you suggest, I’m going to oppose.” That’s how we started. They’re very reluctant to approve changes because they see it as an additional cost to a home that might impede the selling of the home, which actually makes no sense because everybody is held to the same standard.
Senator McBean: Another thing that I believe you said was that one in ten people can’t get flood insurance. Was that you who said that today?
Mr. Feltmate: Ten per cent of the residential housing market, yes. That’s 1.5 million homes.
Senator McBean: What is the possibility — is it a near-term possibility — that there will be communities that can’t get flood insurance? I ask because it struck me that if you can’t get fire insurance, you can’t get a mortgage, but will it also be the case that if you can’t get flood insurance, you can’t get a mortgage?
Mr. Feltmate: No. There are three types of insurance relative to water for a home. There is the conventional package when you buy insurance for your home that, if the pipe on the dishwasher breaks or whatever, you get coverage for that. That’s standard. But it is an additional rider that you have to select and pay for if you want insurance coverage for sewer backup. When the sewer is overwhelmed during the big storms, the water can back up through that system up through the little drain in the basement and flood your basement. That is creatively called sewer backup flooding. You have to pay for that. Or, as of 2015, two years after the floods in Calgary, we now have overland flood insurance in Canada, and Canada was the only country up to that point in the G7 that didn’t have overland flood insurance. Overland flood insurance is when you have a big storm or a river overflows, and if water came through the side window of your house and into the basement, that’s called overland flooding. You have to select for that as well. If you had sewer backup flood coverage but the cause of flooding was overland, you wouldn’t be covered. So you need all three.
By the way, the vast majority of Canadians in Canada have no idea what they’re covered for on flood risk. They look into it when they have got three and a half feet of sewer water in the basement.
Senator McBean: What is the future for fire coverage?
Mr. Feltmate: It’s dangerous because — Allstate Farm has stopped writing new insurance for fire coverage in California and Arizona. It is not impossible that if we don’t get a control on fire risk, there could be areas of northwest Alberta or northeast British Columbia in high-risk fire zones, for example, where insurers simply say, “We can’t provide insurance there because the premium we would have to charge relative to the risk is logarithmic and nobody could ever afford it.” So that can happen if we don’t get our act together on mobilizing adaptation.
Senator Burey: Thank you so much for all of this wonderful expert testimony. I’m going to speak with Mr. Ness, to give you a chance to weigh in here.
I’m talking about wildfires and adaptation now, just to give you a heads-up. We’ve had many witnesses who talked about a national coordinating sort of agency, and some people have made recommendations in terms of adaptation, best practices, standardizing and using resources efficiently. We understand that there are jurisdictional issues, incorporating Indigenous practices and having prepossession of resources. Can you comment on your ideas or thoughts on having some national coordinating body for wildfires?
Mr. Ness: That has certainly been a discussion both on the wildfire response side — maybe a little less so on the proactive risk reduction side like we’re talking about today in many ways. But, certainly, coordination at a national level will be important, sharing knowledge about what works and what doesn’t across different parts of the country, especially as new areas now become prone to wildfire, like Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. They can learn from areas like Alberta and British Columbia that have been managing wildfire for decades.
There is certainly need for consistency, as I mentioned earlier, in wildfire hazard mapping. In most parts of the country, you cannot find a map that tells you whether or not you are exposed to wildfire, whether you’re in a high-risk area. Ensuring that there is a consistent level of quality and availability of that mapping across the country is something that a national-level coordinating effort could very much support.
Other practices like zoning and building — perhaps not building codes. As Dr. Feltmate mentioned, that’s a very slow process that is not moving fast enough to incorporate wildfire-resilience components, but sharing practices between municipalities that have taken matters in their own hands, not waiting for provincial or national direction in that regard.
So, yes, there is certainly a role for coordinated national approaches in many respects in our proactive risk reduction when it comes to wildfires.
Senator Burey: Would you like to comment, Dr. Feltmate?
Mr. Feltmate: We need to coordinate nationally to take on expressions of extreme weather risk, and we need to do so rapidly. For example, when you look at the catastrophic loss claims data for 2024, you see $9.1 billion paid out. One of the problems during 2024 that was unprecedented was we had so many catastrophic events occurring simultaneously, even the insurers couldn’t get adjusters out to locations fast enough. We had major flooding in Toronto and flooding beyond that more generally in southern Ontario. We had flooding in Montreal and flooding throughout various parts of Quebec. We had the Jasper wildfire, and we had a significant windstorm in Calgary. The problem was that there were not enough people to service all these events that were happening simultaneously. Even the largest insurer, Intact, which has Cat teams — they have teams that they deploy to areas when these disasters are occurring — they couldn’t keep up with demand. This is unprecedented.
By the way, just broadly on one other point about the federal government I think you mentioned earlier, just so you know, from 2015 to 2024 in Canada, the federal government dedicated $160 billion to mitigating greenhouse gas emissions, either directly or through tax subsidies. Over the same period of time, the federal government directed $6.7 billion to adaptation. The ratio of the allocation of resources in the country is 24 to 1, mitigation to adaptation. Adaptation almost gets no funding. I don’t know what the right number is, but it’s sure not 24 to 1. It’s enormously lopsided. The Insurance Bureau of Canada is leaning towards 50-50.
Senator Robinson: There have been so many great answers. When you go late in the question round, your questions kind of get narrowed down. It’s been fantastic. I love it.
I wanted to build on Senator Miville-Dechêne’s question in regard to the costs homeowners face if they’re looking to invest in some of the more complex upgrades that you have listed in your infographic. By the way, I too love infographics and learn well from them. I recently learned that if you have a security system in your home, your insurer will give you a break on your premiums. I wonder if there is something similar for homeowners who do make the investment in these FireSmart home tips you’ve given, as they would be helping reduce their vulnerability to fire and also helping to reduce an insurance company’s exposure on a claim.
Mr. Feltmate: The answer is yes. The average reduction, both for fire and flood, is about a 5 to 15% reduction in insurance premium. It’s kind of in that zone. It’s an incentive. So the answer is yes.
What we’re working on now with the banks is, for homes that have these features in place, when you get a mortgage, that you get a few basis points shaved off the cost of your mortgage in recognition of the fact that the probability of your home being damaged from wildfire or flooding is lower, which is good for the bank which co-owns the house, really. The answer is yes, both for insurers and soon to be banking, I believe.
Senator Robinson: Do you think that that is well communicated to the customers of insurance companies, or — I was unaware of the security system, and I had to be proactive and actually ask insurers if this was the truth.
Mr. Feltmate: Is it communicated well? The answer is no. I would say, starting about eight years ago or something like that, with the major property and casualty insurers, they worked fairly aggressively, and they continue to do so, to put their coverage — what they cover and the benefits to you into much simpler language. I talked to the CEO of one of the major property and casualty insurers — which was not Intact, by the way — and the CEO said to me she has trouble understanding her own policy. So they’re working very aggressively to put direction into user-friendly terms and to roll it out accordingly.
Senator Robinson: Do you think Intact could do a better job of driving awareness and adoption of more FireSmart home sense?
Mr. Feltmate: The answer is, “Sort of.” I’m saying that because, well, number one, I don’t want to get fired. Number two, they’ve launched a major program now called “Keep It Intact.” That is a massive communications program to get the information we’re talking about into the hands of homeowners across the country.
Senator Robinson: That would certainly help drive up better uptake of adaptation.
Mr. Feltmate: Yes.
Senator Robinson: Which is the ultimate goal for all of us.
Mr. Feltmate: Everybody wins, by the way. The best way to solve the problem is to not have the problem. Everybody wins by not having the floods or wildfires being problematic. The homeowners win, the insurers win, and even the municipalities win. Everybody wins by not having the problem.
Senator Robinson: And everyone else in the pool, as we see premiums going up.
Mr. Feltmate: Yes.
The Chair: Mr. Ness, we’ve heard that a significant number of wildfires are sparked by human-caused events, like campfires, vehicles, power lines and arson. But in an article you published last August, you mentioned,
. . . a persistent false narrative circulates each summer that Canada’s worsening wildfires are caused by bad actors, not climate change.”
Can you elaborate on that a bit?
Mr. Ness: Thank you for the question, senator.
Yes, there is a narrative that seems to pop up every year, and increasingly so. We’re seeing claims that the increase in wildfires, their sizes, their frequency, how long they last, is the result of human activity, including arson, rather than climate change. In reality, a large portion of wildfires have always been started by human causes, only a small fraction of which are arson-related. They are mostly accidental, by campfires or equipment sparking in forestry or by mining in a forested area. That proportion has not changed. The difference now is what happens when a fire is sparked. The fires become out-of-control wildfires much more quickly than they ever did before. That’s entirely the result of climate change. Human-caused fires are also not the principal cause of the scope of fires that we’ve seen. For example, 2023 was Canada’s record wildfire season by a factor of more than two, and 93% of the area burned that year was the result of fires caused by lightning and not by human causes. While we can certainly try to reduce human-caused fires to the degree possible, climate change is supercharging all fires, whether they’re human caused or started by lightning.
The Chair: Thank you.
Dr. Feltmate, to me, the infographic looks like something that a community would use, a town or a city. Are there any FireSmart suggestions tailored toward rural, agricultural or Indigenous lands? How might they differ? Are you thinking about that as well? I know some of these can apply, but are there different ones?
Mr. Feltmate: Not that I’m aware of. That doesn’t mean that they can’t be done and or shouldn’t be done, but it’s basically a matter of capacity. We haven’t got that far yet, but it is an extremely good idea. I’ll take note of that, by the way.
Senator McNair: I wanted to explore a couple of areas, but I’ll try to limit it to one.
Dr. Feltmate, you talked about the problem that, after the disaster occurs, people want to rebuild exactly the same infrastructure. Fort McMurray is on your chart. Jasper is on the chart. Did you see a difference in the approaches? Is it just the same? Are they building back the same?
Mr. Feltmate: They basically built back wrong, immediately, with homes —
Senator McNair: That is so discouraging.
Mr. Feltmate: Yes, it is. So that’s 2016. You hope we’ve evolved beyond that.
Senator McNair: That’s 10 years, yes.
Mr. Feltmate: It’s a tough slog. When these events occur, it’s like, we’ve had our event, so now we can go back to where we were and hope it won’t happen again. I’m not defending it, and there’s no logic in that, but that’s what you hear. No, it was built back wrong. We can’t continue to keep making that mistake.
Senator McNair: Quickly, you mentioned RBC was the lead as far as this sort of fact sheet that goes out twice a year to the homeowners from banks. Why wouldn’t all banks be on side? What’s the reluctance?
Mr. Feltmate: We’re working rapidly to correct that omission. We have BMO on board. I think, fairly soon, we’ll have another large Canadian bank. I won’t say what bank it is, but the word “commerce” might be in the title. We have credit unions on board. Meridian Credit Union is the second-largest credit union in Canada, and they are now aggressively promoting this material. It’s really just about getting to them and explaining it to them.
By the way, the reason they really like this material is that it also gives them a touchpoint with their customers. When they’re on a five-year mortgage, four and a half years may go by before they hear from the bank. The banks then say, “We value you as a customer. Please renew.” So now the banks have provided value twice a year, giving guidance on how to protect their homes. That kind of endears them to their customers.
Senator Varone: I’m not very familiar with the National Building Code of Canada, but I pretty much know my way around the Ontario Building Code. Most of us who live in Toronto have homes, if it’s three and a half storeys or less, built under section 9 of the building code. Section 3 of the building code is for four storeys and above. It mandates, as part of the code, all of this, including having your home sprinklered. If you do it in advance, it’s very cheap.
My point is that, in high-fire-risk zones, aren’t you better off advocating that those homes are built under Part 3 of the building code instead of Part 9, because it does address everything?
Mr. Feltmate: The short answer is, yes, I would agree with that.
Senator Varone: Is there any advocacy to that?
Mr. Feltmate: Not that I’m aware of, but I’m not saying it’s not there. The answer is I don’t know.
Senator McBean: Mr. Ness, your institute’s work has shown that climate adaptation and resilient measures can substantially reduce the economic and social costs of climate change. What specific adaptation policies or investments would have the greatest impact in reducing the scale and frequency of wildfires in Canada?
I admit I did come prepared with this question, so I will steer you, first, if I can, into one of the things that you talked about, which is that we should have better wildfire hazard mapping. Can you talk to us about the advantages that would present for everyone?
Mr. Ness: Thank you for the question, senator.
Yes, wildfire hazard mapping, just like flood mapping, is essential information for all actors in housing to make better decisions, whether it’s homeowners having the information to know whether or not they’re buying into a high-risk area; whether it’s developers and municipalities knowing where to build and where it’s not safe to build; or whether it’s insurers or banks lending mortgages, knowing where they’re taking on more risk and where they may have to price that risk into the cost of the products that they’re offering. Without that information, we’re flying blind in most parts of the country. There is not a lot of insight as to whether or not homeowners, banks and communities need to do anything differently. There’s not that signal. There is not the information out there to say, “Hey, you’re in a problem place, and you need to change the way you manage.”
The Chair: Dr. Feltmate and Mr. Ness, thank you very much for your participation today. Your testimony and insight have been very much appreciated. Dr. Feltmate will supply our clerk with some additional information that we talked about earlier, so we look forward to receiving that down the road.
Colleagues, we will now hear from the next panel. We have Wayne Maddever, the CEO of FireRein. He is accompanied by his colleague Dr. David Hyndman, Chief Science Officer. We also welcome Meaghan Seagrave, the Executive Director of BioIndustrial Innovation Canada.
Wayne Maddever, Chief Executive Officer, FireRein Inc.: Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this hearing.
FireRein Inc. is located in Napanee, Ontario. Our company has developed and commercialized Eco-Gel, a 100%-bio-based firefighting gel, to replace other toxic firefighting foams and retardants. Not only is this material 100% bio-based, but 75% of the composition is Canadian-based agricultural products, namely canola oil and corn starch. Eco-Gel is also the only firefighting water enhancer in the world to have designations with verification from both UL and U.S.A. FDA for bio and efficacy on fires.
Eco-Gel was developed by FireRein’s founders, who are all firefighters, to replace the toxic PFAS foams which have now been clearly demonstrated to cause cancer in firefighters, who suffer from the highest rate of death from occupational cancer. Not only are these PFAS foams toxic, but we hear about them every day as the “forever chemicals.” Every airport and military base in Canada that used foams is now contaminated with these materials as the materials seeped into the groundwater after fires.
We’ve found customers for EcoGel in Canada, the U.S. and South America. We were recently evaluated by the Canadian military through the government’s ISC Program. FireRein is now qualified to bid on government contracts.
Although it was used last year in wildfires to protect infrastructure, notably rail assets, during the Jasper fire, the penetration of this highly effective and environmentally safe product into the wildfire-fighting market has been hindered in large part by bureaucratic adherence to U.S. standards in the absence of Canadian standards.
Along with PFAS foams, the most commonly used firefighting chemicals in wildfire situations, either dropped aerially or applied on the ground to combat wildfires, are ammonium-phosphate-based retardants that dominate due to their perceived benefits. The most recognizable of these is the red-dyed retardant material called PHOS-CHEK provided by Perimeter Solutions, a U.S. company. Because of recent certification requirement changes, it now essentially has a monopoly on that market. Not only do we see this during aerial water bombing, but numerous pictures were published of this red material as a residual on houses and vehicles in the Los Angeles fires.
The major component of these retardants is ammonium phosphate, a fertilizer, which has several deleterious effects on the environment. When dropped on wildfires, the concentration of this fertilizer material is many times the maximum allowed in agricultural use. These excessive fertilizer-like concentrations alter ecosystems, promote invasive species, disrupt soil microbes and stunt plant regrowth, as well as promoting algal blooms and eutrophication.
By far the biggest obstacle to us, however, is a bureaucratic obstacle known as the USDA QPL, or Qualified Products List. When we have talked to any agencies or governments about the potential use of our material on wildfires, the first question is, “Is your Eco-Gel on the QPL?” Without that, they will not even entertain any further discussion with us about the product and its use during wildfires.
Let me take a moment to discuss what the QPL is all about. It really deals with corrosion in aircraft and, therefore, has nothing to do with fighting wildfires on the ground through backpacks or truck application. In addition, in the QPL standard, only one of the 10 categories really deals with efficacy. Most of it is dealing with corrosion and the properties of these ammonium-based materials.
The obvious question is why have we not applied for it.
The Chair: You have one more minute.
Mr. Maddever: I’m almost finished. We are on the bell lap.
I would ask this committee, given the current wildfire and political environments, why a Canadian-invented-and-manufactured, bio-based product, using a majority of Canadian agricultural products in its composition, is being blocked from entry or even consideration into this critical market? This is addressed in a report that I have quoted in my documentation.
As a final comment, I would say that we are also aligned with a company in the U.S. called Caylym Technologies which has a unique delivery system which would allow use of idle military aircraft to aid in wildfire fight application. This would free up aircraft. We have heard about numerous provinces having to acquire more aerial bombers.
Thank you.
The Chair: I apologize to our witnesses that I didn’t explain to our witnesses that this signal means you have one minute left, and that signal means it is time to wrap up. Thank you for your remarks.
Ms. Seagrave?
Meaghan Seagrave, Executive Director, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada: Good morning, senators, and thank you for the invitation to speak here today about this important issue.
Bioindustrial Innovation Canada, or BIC, is a not-for-profit, non-governmental sustainable chemistry business accelerator. While BIC is headquartered in Sarnia, Ontario, I’m appearing to you today from beautiful Nova Scotia, where it is nice but cold, on the land that is the unceded, ancestral territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
The work that BIC does is reliant on strong and vibrant natural resource industries in Canada, including forestry and agriculture. Canada was often described as a nation of fishers, farmers and foresters, and although these sectors remain hugely important to the economic fabric of our nation, they are often considered sunset sectors when we talk about innovation and technology. They are regularly overlooked for their potential to contribute to our future economic prowess and sustainability. However, it is these resource sectors that will allow us to compete in this new ever-changing global economy, and it is why we need to understand the multifaceted impacts of wildfires on these industries and our Indigenous and rural communities.
As an organization, we support very early-stage technologies in the sustainable chemistry space, which may not resonate with you personally or seem aligned to this topic, but let me help you connect the dots. We identify and validate promising technologies that leverage our vast natural resources and help them to become viable and investable businesses here in Canada. Our focus is on companies and ideas that take these forest and agricultural inputs and use them to create products or materials that replace traditional fossil-based inputs along a multitude of value chains.
To put it simply, we can replace a substantial portion of our oil and gas sector by products with value-add transformation from these resource sectors. Starches, hemicelluloses, celluloses, lignins, oil and proteins are the building blocks of secondary chemicals and intermediates for everything from industrial lubricants, fuels, textiles, detergents, construction materials and much more.
I’m hopeful you are starting to see the tie-back to forest fires and the consequential and downstream impacts they can have on a multitude of other industries and sectors here in Canada.
Over the last few years, we have watched in horror as wildfires have caused an incredible amount of loss across this country. The most impacted communities are the ones that live in the pathway of these fires, our rural and Indigenous communities that so often rely on forestry and farming for their livelihoods.
Beyond the immediate losses from a forest fire, communities also have to grapple with how to rebuild, often in areas that are now uninhabitable due to the chemicals that were used to suppress the fires and leach into groundwater and poison wells and arable land. Thankfully, there are made-in-Canada solutions — as you’ve just heard — that don’t decimate the environment. As a result, they can be used to fight these fires. Canada is in a unique position to take advantage of our forestry and agriculture industries for value-added opportunities and to shore up our own domestic supply and value chains.
As more and more industries in manufacturing look to lower their carbon inputs, Canada is in an enviable position to have all the raw materials required. However, we need to focus on onshoring the transformation of those raw resources and become the makers of the value-added products.
Canada’s vast renewable biomass resources position it as a global leader in this rapidly expanding green chemistry and bio-based materials space. With over 200 million tonnes of biomass produced annually — most of which remains underutilized since we use only 10% or less — Canada has the potential to significantly diversify our economy and strengthen domestic supply chains by transforming these resources into sustainable chemicals, plastics, materials, et cetera.
I’m not saying we can do it all, but we can at least start to do something to reduce our reliance on imported materials. For too long, we have relied on exporting our raw materials and importing finished products at a premium. This new geopolitical situation in which we find ourselves has created the perfect scenario for Canada to increase its own security and sovereignty in many ways.
At BIC, we work to identify and strategically invest in early-stage, high-risk technologies that don’t often have a place in Canada’s program and investment landscape because they don’t fit neatly into a siloed sector or siloed department box, and frankly, neither do we. BIC is unique in this pan-national cross-sectoral playground, and we are the only remaining pre-seed investor in this space left in Canada. We want to help you see the big picture and the reasons why other countries are envious of Canada so you understand the importance of protecting these sectors while ensuring their future sustainability. These sectors represent Canada’s advantage and help position Canada at the forefront of the circular economy, so let me help you identify these opportunities and means to execute them.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your opening remarks. We will start our questions with our deputy chair.
Senator McNair: Thank you to the witnesses for being here today.
I’m going to start with Mr. Maddever with respect to your product Eco-Gel. You talked about the bureaucracy and what is holding you back. I want to ask what the next steps are for FireRein in trying to break through the bureaucracy. I’m also interested in knowing how the cost of Eco-Gel compares with the so-called toxic fire retardants. Bureaucracies are sometimes concerned about costing. You said briefly that it was used in Jasper. It sounded like it was a limited application. Do you have any comment about how it compares in performance with other fire retardants?
Mr. Maddever: Thank you. I’ll ask Dr. Hyndman to answer a couple of those questions.
The use in Jasper was on the CN rail tracks around that. The material is a fire retardant as well as a fire suppressant. It was sprayed in advance of the fire. All I can basically say is that the trains kept running in that application. It was not used to fight the fire specifically. It was used to protect infrastructure. Buildings in Jasper were protected, as was the infrastructure.
The cost of this is significantly lower than the red retardants. Recently, Saskatchewan has been using another type of gel, and the cost of that is probably three to four times the cost of what our material would be.
David, perhaps you could add a few things, and then I’ll comment on the bureaucratic aspect.
David Hyndman, Chief Science Officer, FireRein Inc.: We positioned the input costs for our product so that we were middle of the road as far as the cost of the final product going out. One of the things we have not done to our satisfaction yet is a life-cycle analysis, which may be beyond this committee, but being that we are 100% bio-based and only use natural inputs, there is a footprint associated with the petroleum-based retardants and foams that we do not carry. Obviously, there is the value added for the raw material supply chain for Canadian manufacturers as well, which, to Meaghan’s point, we have a bioeconomy and we’re trying to do a value-added position.
Mr. Maddever: This is sold as a concentrate, as are all the other products. We have priced our material at the same approximate price per litre or kilogram as the other products. However, we use far less than many of the other ones. Some use 10% to 15% additive; we use anywhere between 2% and 5%. So the total cost to the user is far less.
Let me address the bureaucratic question by saying that this is an area of great frustration to us — to be able to crack through this. As I indicated, the Qualified Products List, or QPL, standard really addresses water-bombing aircraft. Our frustration has been that this seems to be universally applied, that we would only be considered for other certain applications, and yet we have the Canadian military prepared to use it. To be honest, I’m not sure. We continue to talk to different governments. Thank you for this opportunity to crack through and just have them understand that, for ground base firefighting for wildfires, we could start tomorrow.
As far as the QPL standard, it’s an early-stage company. This is not only an expensive process, it takes about two years, but it is also a high risk to our intellectual property. Right now, it only addresses the salt-based additives. We also understand that under the current U.S. administration, the QPL standard has basically been suspended by the United States Forest Service. Nothing is happening there. We really don’t know what is going to happen.
The bottom line is this: Here we are in Canada with a Canadian-based product and with Canadian problems, yet having a U.S. standard direct this. There is a report that was produced a couple of years ago by the Canadian Institute of Forest Firefighting, and this very question was asked. So it has been around for a while, the question of why we are basing everything on a U.S.-based standard.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Varone: Mr. Maddever, drones are the new weapon of choice in modern warfare. I have seen videos of drones carrying that red PFAS foam. Is the Eco-Gel drone-adaptable? That’s the first question.
Mr. Maddever: Absolutely. It’s no different. Those are water-based additives. We are water-based. It happens that we are a gel, that’s all.
Mr. Hyndman: We have done drone trials in South Africa to some success as we fine-tune the interactions between what the drone is capable of and how our product behaves.
Senator Varone: What were the results of that test?
Mr. Hyndman: Again, it was early stages.
Senator Varone: Did you get closer to the fire?
Mr. Hyndman: You are definitely more directed and more specific on your targeting. Drones are part of the continuum. Drones, then helicopters and then aerial bombers. Helicopters are more directional and more targeted than the bombers. Drones add another layer of specificity. Since you can swarm drones these days, you can be very precise in where it is dropped. Because our product has stick-and-stay properties, it will put out the fire largely because it is sticky water, and then it will keep the fire down because the residual moisture is retained. That can be from drone deployment or other deployments, like ground-based ones for controlled burns as were discussed in the first panel.
Senator Varone: Thank you.
Senator Muggli: My first question is for Mr. Maddever. I was interested in learning whether there are any negative impacts on the environment with residual material from the product.
Mr. Maddever: Thank you very much for that question. Perfect.
We had this tested by the University of Guelph. There are standard tests for toxicity for aquatic species. We were tested compared to the incumbent technologies. We have virtually no effect on the environment or on the fish species they use, whereas the other materials are highly toxic to those species, both plant and fish.
Senator Muggli: My second question is for Ms. Seagrave. To get closer to the root of the issue, climate change is resulting in the rise of wildfires. How can the bioeconomy help cut emissions by replacing carbon-intensive materials or products in our everyday economy?
To add on to that, do you have any information about the value added of firebreak planting? I have heard some folks are looking at wild blueberry plants. Because of their makeup, they might be used as a good firebreak.
Ms. Seagrave: Thank you, senator. I appreciate the question.
With regard to the bioeconomy in general, if we make better use of the residuals that are currently lying on the ground, especially from a forestry and agricultural perspective, we are going to help cut the risk of that fuel for forest fires.
Let me throw one quick example out at you. We currently export 90% of the soy we grow in this country to other markets, primarily the U.S. That soybean gets crushed and turned into an oil, blown into foams or made into car seats, and then we import it back to Canada and put it into cars within our automotive industry. We can do all of those pieces here in Canada. That’s one example.
We do the same thing with lumber and timber. We are still a country of fishers, farmers and foresters. We need to shift our focus from being an export-specific nation to a transformation nation and export the value-added product. That will decrease the carbon intensity of all of our manufacturing value chains and decrease the greenhouse emissions not just in Canada but globally.
With regard to your second question about blueberries or firebreaks, any ability to diversify our crop base or product base means we are diversifying our opportunity from an economic perspective. If you use blueberries, there are lots of opportunities on the nutraceutical and pharmaceutical side, as well as from a food security perspective. There are always those opportunities.
Mr. Hyndman: If I could jump in on the firebreak comment, it has become the practice in most jurisdictions in Canada to use the industrial equivalent of Roundup to deciduous trees, cause them to die, so that the softwoods are more easily accessible. Given the higher incidence of wildfires and the fact that softwoods burn more easily, we are taking firebreaks out of forests to aid the economic retrieval of softwoods. We are shooting ourselves in the foot, to some extent, with some of the current forestry practices. There needs to be a fulsome discussion about the implications of that.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Just as a bit of a follow-up to Ms. Seagrave and your work, I’m wondering if you could give us examples of what you are trying to do to cut back on gas and oil. You were saying especially in the rural sector and agriculture. What have you done to improve the situation and to indirectly help to curb wildfires?
Ms. Seagrave: Connecting the dots to curb wildfires is not an easy, natural progression to make. Our organization identifies technologies, validates those technologies and then helps to commercialize and scale them, all in that larger bioeconomy. It is about displacing and replacing fossil-based inputs along a multitude of value chains and using Canada’s natural resources as supply chain in very complex value chains that are typically supported by intermediates and chemicals coming out of the oil and gas sector. That’s where we play. We call it the green chemistry value chain or the hybrid chemistry value chain.
With regard to the opportunity to impact forest fires, if we can actually utilize more of our resource base, which, as Dr. Hyndman said, is about management practices and getting material out of the forests, then there is no material there for forest fires to continue to burn. There is no fuel for it. We currently harvest about 2% of our allowable cut in this country as a whole. If you think about that from an opportunity perspective, we can increase the harvesting and convert the utilization of that biomass into biobased products, not just lumber or timber, and we can turn those into chemicals, materials or by-products that can be used along a multitude of value chains. So we’re economically onshoring that value add and reducing the fuel for those forest fires here in Canada.
Senator Miville-Dechêne: Could you give us an example? Using wood, for example, how would that concretely happen? What kind of projects are you financing or helping on that front?
Ms. Seagrave: Great question. Pretty much any type of cellulosic or lignin cellulosic biomass, which is what we were going to see from wood, as well as a number of agricultural crops, can be turned into a number of biobased chemicals.
I’ll use an example in Ontario of a company we helped support from a finance and a business development perspective that is essentially using lignin and cellulose to create biobased plastics. The pilot plant they built creates biobased PET to replace plastics in plastic bottles and caps. They have recently shipped 300 tonnes of material to Europe into their offtake purchasers who are now testing it in their bottling lines from a lower-carbon perspective. That’s coming out of Canadian biomass.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Hyndman: I wanted to add quickly that we have done an awful lot of research and development in the 13 years that FireRein has been around. One of the things that we have tested is the incorporation of lignin into our product because lignin has intumescent properties; for example, it will allow the surface to char, which can be a barrier to fire actually getting to whatever the product is coated on. In a small sense, we’re an example of what the senator had just asked about, using the forest to protect the forest.
Senator Burey: Thank you for being here and for your expertise. I’m going to ask my three questions all at once, and they’re for all the witnesses.
We have heard about some of the barriers, like the QPS standard. What are some of the other barriers to scaling up innovative firefighting technologies across provinces and territories? That’s the first one. Expound on some more of the barriers.
Second, in your view, how could federal emergency response frameworks better integrate innovative solutions like yours, if we had a framework?
Lastly, how can these technologies be made accessible to our Indigenous or remote communities who are often on the frontlines of wildfire impacts?
Mr. Maddever: Thank you for that.
If I could start with the third question, we have as our customers some First Nations. Our material could be sold to any firefighting group, any local. Not only do we have mines up in Labrador and in northern Ontario, but we have a number of First Nation groups who quite like it for its obvious fundamental reasons. It’s using natural materials. We have customers in these spaces. That is purely a marketing thing, to get that out there.
I’m just going backwards with your questions, with your permission. As far as federal emergency, I mentioned the Caylym system for using military planes for fighting wildfires. I suggest better integration of these efforts is necessary. It appears to us, as relative outsiders, that wildfire fighting is done on a provincial level, and there doesn’t appear to be a lot of coordination. We spoke to Minister Blair, who was in charge of the military, and his brief response was that the provinces just have to ask, but they’re not asking. This Caylym system could get around the QPL even just for water, but it would allow all those idle military and cargo aircraft to be part of the wildfire fighting process. There is just a lack of coordination there between those agencies. I would suggest that’s one area the government could help us.
In terms of the barriers, obviously the QPL, and we need to get the word across that we can help today with ground-based wildfire fighting because the material is a retardant. It can be used as a fire break, sprayed in advance, as well as using it as a suppressant.
The other thing is just marketing. In the wildfire-fighting industry, if you were going to ask somebody in municipal firefighting about the future, they would say the future is based on the past. It’s a very conservative industry, and getting it to move needs a lot of marketing, a lot of pressure and a lot of first adopters.
Senator Burey: I was wondering if Ms. Seagrave could take the next one, because I know I’m going to run out of time.
Ms. Seagrave: As Wayne had mentioned, procurement, procurement, procurement, and then coordination. The disconnect between the provinces and the federal government is significant. It’s not just on the procurement side, but it’s, “Stay out of my camp. This is my territory, not yours. Who is going to pay for it? How are we doing the cost-sharing?” These questions need to be asked and answered before anyone will hop in or hop around the table to make decisions.
When it comes to our forests, they are provincially managed, but they are federally regulated. Everything that happens around the regulation of what can happen in the forest happens at the federal level, but the actual land base is managed provincially. Because of that disconnect between provinces and the federal government, there is a lack of coordination.
Maybe I could throw one additional thing out now. There was a program about 10 years ago. It was a joint program between the NRC and Global Affairs at the time, and it was called a made-in-Canada solution. It was all about coordinating procurement through the federal government so that the provincial governments could then come up and simply ask for that resource and it was already purchased, paid for and available for use. It was all-Canadian IP and technology, first-novel use and early adoption.
Senator McBean: I will continue on with Senator Burey’s question because my question was pretty much exactly the same thing, about the challenges and how to integrate clean firefighting technologies with Canada’s wildfire response systems.
We are tasked here with looking at agricultural areas, so I’m wondering if the response for integrating these biotechnology fuels, these clean firefighting technologies, has been different in forested areas versus agricultural field areas.
I am also curious what the shelf life is of the Eco-Gel versus PHOS-CHEK. Is it something that communities or farms could have in a large vat at their disposal to use on occasion?
Mr. Maddever: Let me address the first question. There is no significant difference between forested areas or open areas in terms of response. It’s just a matter of getting them to adopt and try the material. We do demonstrations. We continue to do that. In fact, the team has just returned from demonstrations in Guyana, and they’re headed to Los Angeles to do the same thing, particularly with structure protection after the Los Angeles fires. No significant change there.
As far as shelf life, the material is designed to have the shelf life with the existing incumbents, and perhaps David can answer that specifically, but it is in years.
Mr. Hyndman: We have tested it out with accelerated testing to five years. Some of the synthetics that are petroleum based say indefinite shelf life, although we have seen otherwise in testing that we have done and anecdotal reports from fire departments that we work with.
Ours is organic. It is food-grade materials in there, so it has to be treated a little differently than the PHOS-CHEK products because those are inorganic. Those are the ammonium phosphate salts that Wayne mentioned. There are differences, but it’s an educational thing that we go through when we’re introducing the product to a new customer.
One of the main barriers is the procurement, as Meaghan has said. The procurement is because everyone in the government is used to asking for a foam or a retardant. We are classified as a water additive. Foams are a part of the water-additive space. If you’re asking for a foam, we’re out of the running before we even start, despite the technological and environmental advantages. I wanted to get that out on the floor, that sometimes it’s just the wording that needs to change.
Mr. Maddever: It’s important to emphasize to the committee that our material is completely fungible with existing systems. For example, if we have a municipality adopt our material rather than the foam, we simply clean out the foam tanks — which is a reservoir on the fire truck — and add our material, and everything is the same.
We have to train the firefighters because it looks different. It doesn’t foam up when it comes out of the nozzle. As soon as you see the material, you can see the gel-like characteristics, but they can spray it, and it sticks and stays. Foams subside after a while. But it is essentially fungible with any equipment that is out there.
Senator McBean: To be clear, the Eco-Gel can last? If a community were to buy a super large tank of the stuff, it could sit there for up to five years, or were you saying that about the other product?
Mr. Hyndman: Ours. We have done shelf life testing out to five years. I’m comfortable as a scientist giving that number.
Senator McBean: Thank you.
Senator Robinson: I had a question for David Hyndman, being the scientist in the crowd, and this is a follow-up to Senator McBean’s points, I wonder if you could give us a sense about the trade-off. I assume when we talk about longer shelf life, there are some trade-offs there as far as persistence in the environment. I wanted to hear your comments on that.
I will also lead into my second question before I give it to you. We talked about how it was sprayed as a gel preventatively as a fire retardant for rails as the trains pass through during wildfire season. I wonder if you could speak to how long the efficacy is after application. At what point does it stop being a fire retardant? If you could give us a comparative of your product as opposed to the traditional foam products in that sense, that would be great, Mr. Hyndman.
Mr. Hyndman: Thank you for the questions.
Persistence is an interesting one. The foams are dominated by surfactants, which are smaller molecules. They will biodegrade, and most of the foam competitors have biodegradability as a criterion. They biodegrade quickly, but as they’re doing that, their ecotoxicity is high because of the chemistry of disrupting membranes on organisms and that type of thing.
Our product is comprised of polymers that are of a food-grade material that you’ve had in your salad dressing. Our biodegradability is slower, but the products of that biodegradation are no different than the breakdown of a tree in the forest. We quip that we’re like throwing a bag of carrots into the forest. It takes longer, but it is more natural because the inputs are natural.
Persistence in the environment — we essentially have none. The impact of the foams, especially if they are actually used in a fire scenario, is that they are leaching the toxic products of combustion into the soil, if it’s in a wildland setting, whereas our product will stay on the surface because of these stick-and-stay properties we talked about. Yes, things may eventually go into the ground, but it is a much slower process because we retain those products. In an urban setting, that means you can clean it up. It means it’s not running into the wastewater treatment.
As far as spraying the gel and how long, that’s as much as anything an environmental factor. If you’re spraying it at two degrees, you might have days of efficacy where the product is retaining that moisture and it’s still wet and protective. If you’re in the middle of a 35 Celsius day out in the Prairies where it’s bone dry, you will have hours. That said, we’re still mostly water, and water would be gone in minutes. So everything is relative.
Senator Robinson: How would that compare to the traditional products?
Mr. Hyndman: The red retardants, though they do get used in suppression, are mostly supposed to be applied and then let dry. So they will be around essentially until the next significant rainfall. That said, there are the ecological impacts of what is in them. As far as foams, they’re only viable while they’re still a foam. Once those bubbles have collapsed, they’re no better than water.
Senator Robinson: One last comment. Most of our fires don’t happen when it’s two degrees and damp, do they?
Mr. Hyndman: No. We’re still better than the water alternative.
Senator Robinson: Yes. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I’ll ask a question. I know that you met with Senator Robinson and Senator Lewis back in April of this year, and you mentioned that the technology is being used, or was used, in California for wildfires. Is that correct? Am I right on that? You must have met the QPL standard for the U.S. at that point. Why are the barriers still existing here in this country, or am I reading that wrong?
Mr. Maddever: We were not used in the wildfires down in Los Angeles.
The Chair: They were not.
Mr. Maddever: No.
Mr. Hyndman: We are in active discussions both for battery energy storage facilities, which have an impact because they’re typically placed in rural locations that may catch on fire, and for structure or home defence-type applications. Using all the pools in the houses in California to spray our product on the houses to that FireSmart concept, those are discussions we’re having, and we have not been deployed at this point.
The Chair: So the QPL standard is a U.S. standard, but you’re being asked to meet it here in Canada as well. Am I correct there?
Mr. Maddever: That is correct.
Mr. Hyndman: I would say that every province we’ve talked to has asked if we’re on the QPL.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Varone: My question is to everyone there, but since Senator Robinson stole my question, I will ask an offshoot derivative of that question.
I was interested in the spot application of the Eco-Gel. If I’m in my “forever home” surrounded by a forest, you use it as a fire retardant, and it works. The applicability means that it’s easier to clean, it’s easier to dissipate, and it’s non-toxic. I have seen what ammonium phosphate can do to somebody’s shrubs, lawn and everything else. Have you contemplated aligning yourself with the insurance industry, given the fact that your product not just does the same thing — if not better — but the residual effect is less harmful to the environment and home, and it proposes much less casualty risk from an insurance standpoint? Would you not want to align yourself with the insurance companies in Canada to promote your product?
Mr. Maddever: We’ve certainly targeted that as one of our goals in terms of marketing. I will say that, sadly, the Los Angeles fires have moved that forward. We have developed a home defence kit, and they use that expression. The team is down in Los Angeles with a number of people who want to market that to homeowners who lost their homes or who are close to losing their homes in L.A. for all the reasons you mentioned. It is easy to apply and easy to clean up.
You mentioned the red residue. One of the things we should understand is that that material is not only toxic when it’s washed off and it’s not supposed to be used around waterways, but if you’re using it on a railway trestle, guess what’s under the railway trestle? It’s usually a river. But it’s also corrosive to the tracks, and any of those cars you saw covered with that material in Los Angeles were probably scrapped because of that effect.
So there a number of factors there, but, thank you, the insurance industry is one into which we would love to be able to penetrate. I’m hoping we can use the work that the fellows are doing down in L.A. as a starting point for that.
Mr. Hyndman: We have certainly had discussions with a number of companies. It’s in progress, and we’re even to the point where the re-insurers have approached us. So it’s in the works, and we’re looking for that communication aspect of including it in your homeowner package of mitigation things that you can do.
Senator McBean: This is a committee that concerns itself with looking at Canadian forested areas and agriculture areas, so the idea of this non-toxic fire suppressant is very appealing. I hear you saying that it is easy to apply and easy to clean up, but I’m a little worried that it’s also necessary to apply it often. As Senator Robinson said, Canadian fires are often occurring on 35-degree or 40-degree days, and it’s hot and dry. Did I hear right that the efficacy of the product is only for a few hours? Maybe I’m just not understanding how wildfires are treated. Does this product need to be applied often for it to continually protect an area? Did that rail line have to be continually treated with the product?
Mr. Maddever: Let me break up the two uses of these materials. One is as a suppressant and the other is as a retardant.
A suppressant puts out the fire, fighting the fire as it occurs. This material doesn’t have to be reapplied. We can show you videos. We tested a school bus full of tires and wood pallets in Aurora, Illinois. They set the bus on fire, fully ablaze. Most people standing around said they had never seen a fire suppressed that quickly. It is extremely effective when it is applied as a suppressant, and it puts out the fire.
The comments we were having about length of time deal with EcoGel as a retardant. It is used in two different ways. One is to protect structures, and humidity and temperature have an effect on that. It can be rehydrated with a water spray to maintain its quality. It’s a gel like a shaving gel. It holds the water.
Those are the two uses. The main thing we want, of course, is suppression. Put the fire out, number one, and stop it. But it can be used as a retardant, as a fire break. It may need to be reapplied. or it may have to be sprayed with water, but once it’s there, it sticks. It stays in place and continues to be effective as long as it still has its gel qualities.
Mr. Hyndman: There is a continuum here. The retardant, if it’s dry, will stay until there is a significant rain. We are in the middle. To Wayne’s point, suppression is our forte. The retardant properties exist while it is still hydrated. Even after it is dry, internal testing has shown that it has a barrier protection effect. That is actually the main reason the Royal Canadian Navy, through the Innovative Solutions Canada program, was interested in our product for barrier protection on board naval ships. That same aspect can be applied to the wildland-urban interface for house protection. There is another use as replacement of foams for use on controlled-burn applications and that type of thing where it will last significantly longer.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Senator Robinson: My question is, where are you getting your canola? What is your relationship with our Canadian canola growers and the Canola Council of Canada? Could you speak to that?
Mr. Hyndman: We have talked to the Canola Council. We are trying to support the value chain, so we deal with distributors, the resellers of the world or in the Canadian landscape. We get the products from resellers for that and for the starch that Wayne mentioned. We’re a little bit further down on the value chain, but I must say, during COVID, we were very much in the face of the Canola Council and others, asking if we could go directly because the supply chain was essentially broken and the costs increased significantly. Now that all of that has settled down, we’re back to the normal chain of command, as far as that. As we scale up and go from 20,000-litre inputs of vegetable oil to entire tanker trucks, those discussions may change.
Senator Robinson: Super.
I want to thank Ms. Seagrave for her comments about the missed opportunity from which Canada seems to continue to suffer just in exporting our raw products. I felt that your comments were parallel and in step with what we heard from the report in 2017. Some people call it the Dominic Barton report. We’re really missing the chance to capture a lot of economic-driver opportunities within agriculture if we fail to do more value-added work here. I appreciate your comments on that.
Ms. Seagrave: I appreciate you saying that.
To David’s comment and your question around where the canola is coming from, especially with the export hurdles facing the canola industry with China, we don’t have crushers in Canada, or we have very few of them. We export 99% whole raw material. If we did more of that transformation here, we could enable and support more technologies like FireRein and their Eco-Gel in Canada. We could create that entire value chain from a Canadian perspective. It’s completely doable. We have never had the urgency, so we have never had the kick in the pants. Now, with the administration in the U.S. pushing us, we need to do more of this, and the opportunity is absolutely there.
Senator Robinson: If you have any comments to submit to the clerk on how we could assist in stimulating the increase in the value-added presence in our country, I would really appreciate that.
Ms. Seagrave: I would be more than happy to do that.
I’ll throw out one last comment. BIC as an organization, along as with 400 stakeholders across the country, put together a national bioeconomy strategy in 2019. We could not get that strategy adopted by any federal line department because it wasn’t anyone’s mandate. NRCan said they only do forestry. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, or AFC, said they only do agriculture. ISED said they only do technology, and NRC — everyone passed the buck.
We produced that strategy in 2019, and the recommendations in that strategy hold true today. If we simply executed them one by one, we would actually be so much further ahead. It’s an opportunity that was lost because no single-line department was willing to take it on because it crossed too many sectors from a siloed perspective, too many line departments and then too many industries. If we don’t start connecting the dots across those line departments, those sectors and those industries, we will not have that one Canadian economy. We will have fragmented economies that will be impacted.
The Chair: To our witnesses, thank you for taking the time to appear before us. This was certainly an informative session. We do appreciate your additions to our study, and we look forward to sharing the final study with you when it’s done.
Colleagues, before we wrap up, I do want to acknowledge that this is Senator Richards’ last day, since he is retiring. I want you folks to know that Senator Richards has been a significant piece of this committee over time. It’s been a pleasure working with him. Thank you, Senator Richards.
I also thank each committee member for your active participation and thoughtful questions, as always. It’s an exciting committee in which to be involved. As always, I thank our colleagues who work in our offices to get us ready for these meetings and the folks behind me, the interpreters, the Debates team transcribing the meeting, the committee room attendants, the multimedia service technicians, the Broadcasting team who ensures this is available to the worldwide web, the recording centre, ISD and our page.
(The committee adjourned.)