THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 21, 2025
The Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry met with videoconference this day at 6:31 p.m. [ET] to examine and report on the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and agriculture industries, as well as rural and Indigenous communities, throughout the country.
Senator Robert Black (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: My name is Rob Black. I’m the chair of the committee, a senator from Ontario, and I want to welcome members of the committee and our witnesses, both in person and online, as well as those watching on the web.
I want to start by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is on the unceded traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation. Before we hear from our witnesses today, I would like to start by asking our senators around the table to introduce themselves, starting with my deputy chair.
Senator McNair: Senator John McNair, New Brunswick, the unceded lands of the Mi’kmaq people.
Senator Martin: Senator Yonah Martin, British Columbia.
Senator Varone: Senator Toni Varone, Ontario.
Senator Robinson: Senator Mary Robinson, Prince Edward Island.
[Translation]
Senator Oudar: Manuelle Oudar from Quebec. I am replacing Senator Sorensen.
[English]
Senator McBean: Senator Marnie McBean, Ontario.
Senator Muggli: Senator Tracy Muggli, Saskatchewan and Treaty 6 territory and traditional homeland of the Métis.
The Chair: Thank you, colleagues. Today, the committee is continuing its study on the topic of the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and the consequential effects that wildfires have on forestry and the agriculture industry as a whole. Our first panel is comprised of Brennan Merasty, Minister of Self-Determination and Self-Government within the Metis Nation—Saskatchewan, and he is accompanied by his colleague, Richard Quintal, Chief Executive Officer. We also welcome Francyne Joe, Executive Director of the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia. And she is accompanied by Matt Nelson, Integrated Fuel Management Supervisor. Thank you for being here in person. We do appreciate it. Joining us by video conference, I would like to welcome David Beaudin, Minister of Agriculture within the Manitoba Métis Federation. We will give each of you five minutes for your opening remarks, and they will be followed by questions from senators. With respect to the five minutes, I’m going to put my hand up when you have one minute left. When you see two hands up, it is about time to wrap it up. I have never had to cut anybody off, but I might. With that, the floor is yours, Minister Merasty.
Brennan Merasty, Minister of Self-Determination and Self-Government and Justice, Métis Nation Saskatchewan: Tansi. Good afternoon esteemed members of the Senate. Thank you for the opportunity to address you today on a critical issue affecting Métis people in Saskatchewan. As an elected representative of Métis Nation–Saskatchewan, the national government of Saskatchewan’s Métis people, it is with honour and a sense of urgency that I stand before you today.
The impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, and Saskatchewan is no exception. We are bearing witness to more extreme weather systems and severe drought conditions in parts of our province to severe storms that cause flash flooding in others. Northern Saskatchewan has faced tinder-dry conditions and significant increases in wildfire activity over the past two years.
This past year took its toll on our citizens and our government resources. In 2025, wildfires scorched 7.1 million acres of our traditional territory, nearly 5 million more acres than in 2024.
What this statistic does not highlight is the significant, detrimental impacts to the Métis people that rely on those lands to sustain themselves and their families. The rapidly moving 2025 wildfires forced our citizens to flee their homes, often with only the clothes on their backs. The surge of wildfires and evacuees heading south overwhelmed provincial resources and the supports offered by the Canadian Red Cross. As is often the case, Métis citizens fell into a jurisdictional gap.
Within the first 24 hours of evacuations, there were instances where evacuees that had travelled 500 kilometres south to urban centres were turned away from evacuation centres because the support workers were unable to determine if it was the province or the Red Cross that was responsible for meeting the needs of Métis people. That led to a number of Métis citizens being forced to sleep in cars or outside and having no access to food and essential items.
Upon learning this, the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan Government sprang into action and opened Batoche, the heart of the Métis homeland, to evacuees. We offered lodging, food, clothing, essential items, cultural activities, children’s activities and, more importantly, safety. We mobilized our teams and locals in urban centres to ensure that evacuees in Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency, or SPSA, and Red Cross-operated centres had access to Métis cultural supports and activities, clothing and other essential items. We also did our best to support those who were able to remain in the community, those who returned home to extremely smoky conditions and those throughout the province who were impacted by four months of smoky conditions by providing air purifiers and other health aids. The Métis Nation–Saskatchewan government’s evacuation response efforts were very successful, but it came at a cost.
In addition to being caught in a jurisdictional gap, Métis Nation–Saskatchewan is caught in a funding gap. Unlike First Nation and Inuit governments, our Métis government does not have access to emergency management funding. This makes it impossible for us to adequately invest in emergency prevention and support our citizens when we are forced to respond to wildfire-related emergencies. Instead, we are forced to wade our way through a complicated and drawn-out process of seeking support to reallocate funding intended for other essential needs such as health, mental health and housing so that it can be used for wildfire emergency management. As we all know, Métis people face major deficits in those areas as well, so we are shifting funds from underfunded, essential areas to emergency management.
When we returned home, some of us found our homes burned to the ground, and many of us found that the hunting and trapping cabins that we rely on for essential shelter when we are out on the land had been destroyed. Similarly, forests that we had relied on for generations to provide us with food, furs, medicine and traditional economic resources had been scorched to the ground.
All of this, coupled with the economic impacts of not being able to remain in the community or on the land to work has resulted in significant impacts to human health and mental health for Métis people in our province. As the Métis government within Saskatchewan, we have a duty to take care of Métis people living in Saskatchewan and our citizens residing in other areas.
The lack of stable, emergency management funding causes immediate hardship for our people and makes it impossible for us to adequately prepare for the wildfire-related emergencies that will inevitably come next fire season. In order to ensure the safety of Métis people in Saskatchewan during wildfire- and climate-related emergencies, the Government of Canada must make an immediate commitment to provide stable, emergency management funding to the Métis Nation–Saskatchewan.
Without this, our people will continue to fall through the cracks.
The Chair: Thank you very much, minister. Now we will move to Minister Beaudin.
David Beaudin, Minister of Agriculture, Manitoba Métis Federation: Thank you, esteemed senators, and good afternoon. Thank you for inviting the Manitoba Métis Federation, the National Government of the Red River Métis, to appear at today’s meeting of the Standing Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry 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.
My name is David Beaudin. I’m the Minister of Agriculture and the Associate Minister of Environment and Climate Change for the Manitoba Métis Federation, or MMF. I will be sharing information on the impact of wildfires to the agriculture and forestry sectors in Manitoba and our government’s response to this summer’s wildfire emergency evacuation.
According to the Province of Manitoba’s Department of Natural Resources and Indigenous Futures year-to-date Fire Situation Report, there have been 432 fires across Manitoba, burning a total of 2,169,858 hectares of land. While an estimate of total hectares of agricultural land affected by wildfires has not been published as yet, the hot, dry conditions across Manitoba leading to an extended 2025 summer fire season had direct and indirect implications on the agriculture sector.
Narratives from Red River Métis citizens engaged in agricultural production from this region and affected by wildfires include a small, 15-head beef cattle operation in Woodridge, Manitoba, which lost 80 acres of productive land and over one mile of fencing for livestock grazing. While the farmyard and all animals were spared, this is a significant setback for a small, family-run operation. Also, a wild rice harvester and processor lost a generations’ old cabin near Manigotagan, Manitoba, used to stay in when tending to wild rice crops, leaving them without a safe place to stay during harvest, as well as the hazardous working conditions during poor air quality warnings and the secondary effects of wildfire on human health, which remain to be seen.
Compounding these conditions was the fall in provincial precipitation accumulation to below 60% of a 30-year average. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada reported severe to extreme drought conditions across the majority of Manitoba. This has resulted in decreases in crop yield and livestock feed shortages, which lead to cash flow concerns for many agricultural producers.
While there are federal and provincial insurance programs in place to assist agricultural producers in times of crisis, accessing such programs requires existing knowledge, active pre-enrollment and assistance to complete. For a sector based in rural locations, these barriers may be significant for some producers.
Independently of fire response, the Manitoba Métis Federation has supported over 160 Red River Métis producers, including two of those listed above, in adopting on-farm practices targeting climate change adaptation and mitigation through the Red River Métis On-Farm Climate Action Fund, highlighting the MMF’s investment in ensuring environmental sustainability and the viability of Red River Métis-owned agricultural operations.
Although fire occurs naturally on our landscapes and has historically been used as a forestry management tool by the Red River Métis, offering ecological benefits such as stimulating plant growth and clearing debris on the forest floor, uncontrolled wildfires pose significant risks to health, infrastructure and community stability.
Like the agriculture sector, the severity of the 2025 wildfires was intensified by unseasonably warm temperatures, extended periods of drought and vegetation weakened by environmental stressors. MMF consults Red River Métis citizens on forest-harvesting operations, as these activities have the potential to impact their section 35 rights. However, many consultations were postponed in 2025 due to staff being redeployed to assist evacuees and because of uncertainty surrounding wildfires threatening the designated harvest cut blocks.
There is an urgent need for better wildfire preparation that prioritizes hiring Red River Métis citizens residing in villages and settlements near the boreal forest.
Lastly, I will bring to your attention MMF’s July 31 wildfire evacuation report to Indigenous Services Canada, which has been submitted to the committee. The MMF’s emergency response during the 2025 wildfire season represented one of the most comprehensive, Indigenous-led support efforts undertaken in the province across two distinct waves of evacuations.
I encourage you to review our submission to learn more. Thank you. Marsee. I look forward to your questions.
The Chair: Thank you very much. Over to you, Ms. Joe and Mr. Nelson.
Francyne Joe, Executive Director, First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia: Honourable chair and distinguished members of the Senate committee, thank you for inviting us to the unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory to speak on behalf of the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia, or FNESS. My name is Francyne Joe. I am a member of the Shackan Band, and I am also the Executive Director of FNESS.
FNESS is an organization dedicated to supporting First Nations communities across B.C. using the four pillars of emergency management: Mitigation — helping communities reduce risks of wildfire; preparedness — building local capacity through training, planning and community engagement; response — providing support for emergency operating centres, structured defence planning and more; and recovery — supporting communities with guidance and practical assistance after an emergency hazard. We are grateful for this opportunity to address the growing issue of wildfires in Canada and its impact on First Nations communities.
As a First Nations-led organization, our perspectives are rooted in the lived experience of First Nations peoples, who often bear the disproportionate brunt of wildfires. Today, we will provide our perspective on evacuations of First Nations communities caused by wildfires and the challenges of post-evacuation recovery, issues that we feel demand urgent, equitable action.
I would like to pass a few minutes to my colleague.
Matt Nelson, Integrated Fuel Management Supervisor, First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia: My name is Matt Nelson, and I am from Lil’wat Nation, which is part of the St’át’imc Nation. I’m here with the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia as the integrated fire management supervisor.
I’ve been a type 1 wildland firefighter for the past 11 seasons and have first-hand witnessed wildfires become an escalating crisis in Canada. This includes the record-breaking fires of 2023 that scorched millions of hectares and displaced tens of thousands of people. Fuelled by climate change, prolonged droughts and shifting weather patterns, these fire seasons are longer, more aggressive and more challenging. Unfortunately, that’s the new reality. These events not only ravage our forests but also upend the lives of First Nations communities that have stewarded these lands for generations. Communities often located in remote or forested areas face heightened vulnerability due to limited infrastructure, historical underfunding and systematic inequities in emergency response.
One of my guiding principles as a wildland firefighter is to reduce suffering. Displaced people are suffering.
To speak more on the realities of displacement, evacuations during wildfires save lives but they come at a tremendous human cost. The trauma extends far beyond the immediate evacuation. Recovery is a stressful and arduous process that can span months or even years. Homes may be lost or damaged. Cultural sites and traditional harvesting grounds are often irreparably harmed. The psychological toll — stress, anxiety and trauma — continues long after fires are extinguished.
To illustrate, here’s a recent example of our work. The First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia assisted with an Emergency Operations Centre — we call it EOC — in a rural First Nations community during a major wildfire event in this season of 2025. An evacuation order was made due to the limited local resources and coordination challenges. Evacuees were split among three cities hundreds of kilometres apart, and families were separated from each other and community members from their support networks. This fragmentation not only amplified emotional distress but also complicated access to culturally safe services, such as traditional healing practices, foods and medicines. This scenario is not isolated. It reflects a systemic failure where First Nation voices are sidelined.
Our approach at FNESS is guided by four pillars of emergency management — mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. We believe that equitable training and funding in these areas are essential to reducing the impacts of disasters like wildfire.
By investing in community-led mitigation such as culturally and prescribed fires, FireSmart and wildland firefighter training, we can prevent fires from escalating and better equip communities to respond. This not only saves money by avoiding costly, large-scale emergencies but, more importantly, it minimizes the human impact during evacuations and recovery.
Yet despite these proven strategies, First Nations continue to face barriers, underfunded programs, bureaucratic hurdles and a lack of recognition for our expertise that incorporates Indigenous knowledge and practice. I’ll now pass the last minute to Ms. Joe.
Ms. Joe: In closing, wildfires are a call for change. They threaten not just our landscapes but our communities.
The First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia recently submitted its pre-budget submission to the Government of Canada for the upcoming budget. We are requesting $27.9 million over three years. We met last month with various departments — Indigenous Services Canada, emergency services, the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, Environment and Climate Change Canada and many MPs — to secure support and provide background on the work we do.
Through collaborative, equitable action grounded in the four pillars, we can build a more resilient nation, one where First Nations thrive and displacement becomes a rarity rather than commonplace. Kukwstsétselp. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much for your opening statements. Now we will proceed with questions from senators. Colleagues, you have five minutes for your question and that includes the answer as well. I will hold up the hand at four minutes. I’ll ask our deputy chair to begin.
Senator McNair: Thank you again to the panellists for being here tonight.
My first question is for the two ministers. In an article published in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, it was estimated that:
. . . wildland fire evacuations cost at least CAD 3.7 billion (excluding structural losses), jumping to CAD 4.6 billion if we include productivity losses.
The article goes on to state:
Indigenous Peoples are disproportionately impacted in wildfire evacuations compared to the general Canadian population.
Can you comment on whether you agree or disagree with that statement? What are the greatest challenges for Indigenous communities during wildfire evacuations? If possible, you could cite the lessons learned from the 2023, 2024 and now 2025 wildfire season regarding evacuations in Indigenous communities.
Ms. Joe: I found it very interesting that we asked the Library of Parliament through M.P. Frank Caputo about the cost to the Government of Canada. We found in 2023-24 the amount was $581 million to bring wildfire firefighters into Canada from other countries such as Australia, New Zealand and Africa.
I’m asking that we take part of that money and train our own people, because our own people in the First Nations communities know what is needed. We need to develop that capacity. We need to protect our traditional lands, foods, medicines and the properties that have value to us.
With this type of money, we could be hiring people, supporting small business and developing capacity. That was part of our pre-budget submission this year.
Mr. Merasty: Thank you for your question. I heard it from a retired SPSA employee from northern Saskatchewan specifically. For 30-some years, he worked on the frontline as the initial attack. For 30-some years, they did not evacuate any communities in northern Saskatchewan as an example because for 30-some years resources were allocated to SPSA — and the various name changes it went through over the years — to fight the fires on the ground with firefighters that came from those communities. The scientific methods have no bearing on what we do with our traditional and key knowledge of the land base that we live on.
This past year, 2.87 million hectares of land burned, which was a major increase from 2024. Ninety per cent of N-14 fur block in the community I live in has burned, which takes away traditional medicines, land use from cultural practices, traditional gathering, medicines, food. Not only does it impact our communities and citizens that live off that land, but it does impact the habitats. The animals that live in those habits have become displaced, not only our people.
I remember receiving calls at one in the morning from the community of Buffalo Narrows. The mayor had nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, no understanding of where the community was being evacuated to, but they were being evacuated. The Métis Nation—Saskatchewan stood up in that moment, and we housed our citizens from Buffalo Narrows in hotels that we had connections to through previous work. We took care of them for weeks until they were able to go back home. Those are our realities and our impacts, and they go beyond scientific methods and knowledge that just don’t meet or compare to traditional knowledge.
Mr. Beaudin: Our government has gone through professional fees, program costs, transportation, fuel costs, furniture and equipment. We have had donations. We have had to purchase a sanitizing unit to sanitize everything before we can put it into boxes and have people accept that. We had to pull the food together quickly.
Beyond all of the small monetary items, some of our bigger concerns were around the mental health of our citizens. You are living out of a bag. The bag stays by the door, you are on a moment’s notice and under high stress. It caused a lot of issues with the state of people’s mental health. That is something which will be part of our future submission as well.
Again, I could go on and on about all of the impacts to the wildlife. Our hunting grounds were changed so now nobody can hunt in the burnt-out area. Thank you very much.
The Chair: I’m going to use the chair’s prerogative and ask a question, if that’s okay, Senator Martin.
Mr. Nelson, the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society of British Columbia published an article in July of this year entitled “Skatin Igniting a Spark” in which you said, “Building wildfire capacity looks different to every community . . . .”
Could you please elaborate and perhaps provide some examples of what building wildfire capacity looks like in different Indigenous communities?
Mr. Nelson: Great question, and thank you for bringing that up. I wrote that previously this year as a wildfire specialist. I was providing training to communities. As a wildfire specialist, we want to meet communities where they are at. Every nation is different. There are 204 different communities in B.C., each one has its different challenges, strengths and weaknesses.
I was really moved because we showed up, and they only had four members who could take the training, out of a full community. I was a little bit sad that is all that showed up, but as we went through the training, I started hearing the background of their stories, and I was so moved because they were fully engaged and fully wanted to learn. By the end of the wildfire training, I learned that they are the only capable bodies in that community. They are the people who are going to take care of their community, and they are the people who want to show up and fight the fires when it rolls into the community. They are a very rural community that needed this training. I wrote that paper because I was quite moved.
The Chair: What does that capacity look like?
Mr. Nelson: Capacity looks very different through different communities. If BC Wildfire Service asks for any volunteers to help out with fires in their community, now they have four people to show up and fight with BC Wildfire Service. Other nations’ capacity building, they already have fully established crews who are allowed to respond. They get contracts through BC Wildfire Service, and they are able to fight fires from their territory but also with Skatin, they needed the extra support, and now they are ready to take care of their own community.
Senator Martin: Thank you for being here and for the important work that you are doing for various First Nations and your communities, the Métis community. I know you have already talked a bit about your work. Ms. Joe, may I ask what are some of the other activities FNESS has conducted with First Nations over the past few years? You talked about the four-pillar approach, and I think that is very important.
Ms. Joe: Yes. Our approach using the four pillars allows us to go into communities before there is even the thought of a wildfire in the area. We’re then able to train men, women, young people, older people to develop the capacity of running hoses, identifying where the risks are, filling out the forms when you are on evacuation.
We find that when an evacuation happens, community members are, as my colleague mentioned, racing out of their communities. They are totally unprepared. When they get to an Emergency Operations Centre, or EOC, first they are quite often facing some forms of discrimination. There is fear going into those EOCs. Then they have to fill out various forms to get the supports that they need.
Our staff — and we are only a staff of 55 that cover the whole province of B.C. — we try to send in probably two or three to go in and support the people who need this funding.
The other thing is with the recent community this past year, they left their reserve, and then the community members were put into three different cities about 100 miles apart. Some families were separated. It gets really scary. By doing these mitigation efforts, we can develop the capacity within the communities to address and be prepared for emergency situations.
Mr. Nelson: It’s a great question. In terms of other things that we’re doing, we talked about the four pillars. Preparedness is preparing the community for emergency management. That’s training these people how to work in EOCs so when the EOCs set up, the nation is able to work with it. When their nation shows up to that EOC, they have a friendly, recognizable face from their community working there.
We do a lot of response, so we get structure protection people out. Then we move into mitigation, so we’re training firefighters and teaching cultural and prescribed fires. How are we removing fuels around the nation? We have wildfire resiliency advisers. What does good forest look like? We have integrated fire management, so a lot of Seven Generations planning. How do we move forward in good ways with colonial systems as well as with Indigenous-led initiatives? We do a lot with FireSmart as well.
Senator Martin: Minister Merasty?
Mr. Merasty: Thank you, senator. With regard to building wildfire capacity, I have to echo that from a Métis and a northern Saskatchewan perspective, that we all have different realities, whether it’s the north, central or southern part of Saskatchewan or this great country we live in. We all have different resources available to us, some more than others. We also have a different understanding of what that land is like, our environments.
In saying that, emergency management becomes more than food and shelter. Our reality is mental health and addiction plays a large role in our small, isolated northern communities, but even those rural and urban centres. In terms of displacement of our people to foreign places, the majority of our people don’t leave our northern, rural communities so that displacement becomes foreign to them and fear plays a role. It also affects our cultural well-being because that connection to our land, our resources and the comfort in our homes, they all play a vital role to safety. Coming into an urban centre and being put in a hotel, which is like a small box, I can tell you, the institutional concept idea doesn’t work for our people. Our people are free. We need to feel free and be part of the community, and evacuation concerns us for those reasons.
Security plays a vital role, not only in the places we are evacuated to because of all of the above, but also in our home communities for those who stay back, the violence and vandalism that takes place. Thank you.
Senator Muggli: Thank you. I have so many questions.
The Chair: You have five minutes.
Senator Muggli: Yes, thanks. Mr. Merasty, congratulations on the way you set up Batoche this summer. I was actually amazed. It was incredible to see that stood up, and it was the right response. I’m so very sorry that you were not resourced properly, that you had to take funds from other programs to be able to manage that.
My first question: Who needs to be at the table to fix that?
Mr. Merasty: Well, I say we can’t do it alone. Our colleagues, our counterparts, we all have to be at the table. We all have a role to play. We have broken those barriers and started conversations with the provincial government, but also hoping to break those barriers and have conversations right here in Ottawa, on the Hill. We all play a role.
Richard Quintal, Chief Executive Officer, Métis Nation Saskatchewan: Senator, if I can elaborate, as our minister has mentioned, we are in communication with the province, but more so it’s a relationship we have built over time with CIRNAC and the Indigenous Services Canada regional office. With CIRNAC and Indigenous Services Canada in Ottawa, there is no emergency management funding for the Métis Nation—Saskatchewan. Hearing our colleagues talk about a four-pillar approach and being prepared and able to work on preparedness, we are always behind the eight ball. For example, when the pandemic hit, last fire season, this fire season, it’s always us reacting and trying to help where we can, so we aren’t able to prepare. We are supporting citizens, whether we’re dispatching equipment, such as sprinkler systems, hoses or air scrubbers to be able to provide support in the community, because sometimes our people stay back to fight and try to save their homes. In one community alone, Denare Beach, we lost over 200 homes. That affects not only our community, but it also affects our Métis government because we’re all related. We all know each other, so it’s really tough.
We are working with Indigenous Services, trying to find a way to ensure that when we talk about emergency management — and with Public Safety Canada — that the Métis Nation is at the table and a part of that discussion. In Saskatchewan alone, we represent 80,000 Métis citizens. That’s one tenth of the population of Saskatchewan.
Senator Muggli: Mr. Beaudin, do you have a response?
Mr. Beaudin: Yes, I do. In terms of our MMF emergency response activities, we created and established an MMF reception centre and donation centres. Our emergency housing accommodations were in place within 72 hours. The response across all our regions was the same. We had donation management and volunteer coordination, people working around the clock, answering phones and working with Elders. Our employees were deployed across our nation.
In terms of mental wellness supports, we were calling Elders and everyone that we had in our hotels and our housing. We made sure that they were healthy. We also put together health supports for the pharmacies, those who needed pharmaceuticals that they couldn’t bring with them when they were displaced by fire.
Senator Muggli: If I could interrupt for one second, I just want to check. Are you taking resources out of your existing programs as well to be able to fund these responses?
Mr. Beaudin: Everybody pitched in, including ministers. They were going out of pocket on credit cards. I went on a shopping trip with $3,200 and that was all, just immediate hydration and fluids. The lineups on the highways were so long, bumper-to-bumper, and in Manitoba, there are only two or three direct highways coming south, so gas stations were full. People were running with cans, and we were trying to get our people up in place. We went out of pocket over $3 million on small evacuations.
Senator Muggli: Thank you.
Senator McBean: Thank you. Wow, thank you for sharing this. I think this is going to be one of those committee meetings we’re going to be talking about for a long time.
I would like to thank all five of you for sharing your exceptional and impressive expertise here. Please know we’re hearing you. It’s a very short amount of time, but we’re hearing you.
It’s not the first time that we’ve heard a call to rely on, to empower, to listen to and to use Indigenous firefighters and communities for how to manage things in a good way. Typically, we’re just listening over and over again.
I want to ask a little bit about the jurisdictional complexities that you have been mentioning. Minister Merasty, I’ll get back to you in a second. I will start with Ms. Joe and Mr. Nelson.
If you look at the jurisdictional complexities among the federal, provincial and Indigenous governments, what are the biggest challenges that communities in B.C. that FNESS works with face when preparing for and responding to firefighters? How is FNESS working to manage these jurisdictional, we’ll call them, complexities?
Ms. Joe: We are definitely facing a number of complexities. Whenever a wildfire takes place in a community, it takes anywhere between sometimes 24 to 36 hours for a phone call from the community to be brought to Indigenous Services Canada or to the province, and then it has to go through their paperwork. Then it gets to us, where we finally get a task number — sometimes 36 to 40 hours after the fire started — and then we can send people out to the community to help. Fires can spread pretty quickly in these dry conditions that we’re having in all parts of B.C., and those tax numbers have an expiration of a certain time frame. You have to keep all the paperwork up to date and the communities up to date, and sometimes we’re finding that there is a disjoint in the communication among the communities, the province and the feds.
We had a situation last year where the province was certain that they needed to send heavy-duty equipment through certain parts of the First Nations community — in fact, over a cemetery — and they said that they were right, and the First Nations were wrong. We sided with the First Nations, and we had to spend hours arguing with the province just to get the equipment to take a different route to fight the fire.
We have had a lot of people coming to us saying it shouldn’t be this hard. We should be able to have people on the ground sooner rather than later. They are absolutely right, but because we have to go through these forms, these barriers, it’s hard. That’s just from our perspective. I couldn’t imagine what it’s like as a First Nations member having to face those emergency situations.
Mr. Nelson: Some of the biggest challenges are the wording used for responding to a wildfire. Even if we’re looking to respond, we have the trailers ready, we know the fire is coming. We can’t get funding a lot of the time because some of the wording says, “imminent.” If the fire is not imminent, we can’t roll up and go. Sometimes we’re banking, hoping we will get funding but we’re sending out our crews anyway. Communities are responding anyway because they all know that fire is going to be there in three, four days. Even two weeks out, we can plan for it, but because that fire is not imminent, nobody can respond until it’s already at the door.
Senator McBean: When I get my second round question, it will be a follow-up to that asking how you would fix that. I don’t have time for that.
Minister Merasty, you were talking about jurisdictional difficulties, and with the Métis Nation—Saskatchewan you mentioned it as a jurisdictional gap.
How can the federal and provincial governments, recognizing this jurisdictional gap, better recognize and fund Métis-led approaches to wildfire preparedness and community resilience? Sometimes say it out loud to put it on the record kind of thing, why is it that gap for Métis Nation—Saskatchewan?
Mr. Merasty: A lot of times if you look at our communities, we are left out and forgotten in these scenarios; for example, this past summer, our Métis Nation Saskatchewan had to declare a state of emergency to get any type of attention for our communities that were abandoned with a lack of resources. For our cabin owners, to some or many, a cabin is a place of a weekend retreat or summer gathering place. For a lot of our people, it’s a place of home, a place of gathering and livelihood, and some were fending that off with no resources, from water-pump kits to hoses. We had to use buckets and shovels, alone in most cases. Those are our realities.
The Métis nation did step up and alter moving funds around internally to access water-pump kits and so on, to support those cabin owners and our realities to fend off these fires. But people in communities were left fighting and finding spaces. They had to run to the graveyard for a clear spot of air because of thick, heavy smoke. Funding would solve that problem.
Mr. Quintal: The jurisdictional gap is First Nations firefighting is being supported through the Red Cross. The rest of the province is through the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. In the North, all those communities are Métis, generally next to First Nations, our families are intertwined. First Nations members living off reserve, and living in our communities are Métis citizens; they go through SPSA. We have the structure, like we did during the pandemic, to be able to support our citizens. Keep in mind that our people across the province speak five different languages, so to be able to be served in your language to ensure our cultures and traditions are adhered to when we take care of our Elders and citizens is really important, especially during a time of duress.
Senator Oudar: Thank you for being here. I read a lot of things about your organization, Francyne Joe, First Nations’ Emergency Service Society of B.C.. You described your organization like a model with a lot of excellent communication between your communities and the three levels of government; municipal, provincial, and federal.
What is the reason why this organization doesn’t exist in another province or territory?
Ms. Joe: That’s an excellent question. We’ve been asked by many First Nation groups, especially this past summer, why we don’t have a FNESS in every province or territory. There are similar organizations in the Yukon, Ontario and Quebec, but we’ve been running our services for 40 years. We celebrate actually 40 years next year.
We would like to provide other provinces and territories with our model, and we can support the training with other territories, but as a non-profit, we don’t have the funding to do that right now. A lot of our funding is project-based, so most of our funding will end this fiscal year. If we’re lucky with the budget, we’ll know this fall if we’re going to get any further funding.
In the past, we have applied for project funding that should have started April 1, which is still too late to be doing recruitment and training of our communities. Sometimes we don’t get it until June or July, so we need to make an actual plan across the country, working with the national bodies and sharing information. That’s what we are currently doing. We are working with the BC Cattleman’s Association, the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada, and Thompson Rivers University. We are looking at partnerships to try and develop a clean model that can be shared, and not just in Canada, but with other Indigenous groups across the world.
Senator Robinson: Minister Beaudin, you had talked about ag producers in your territories having difficulty accessing any kind of support programs. I think you mentioned that you need to have knowledge and resources to apply to these support programs.
I’m familiar with the business risk management program that exists for producers in my home province of Prince Edward Island. Are producers in your nations, are they able to access BRM programs, do you know?
Mr. Beaudin: Yes, currently we have a three-year extension on the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, and our farmers and ranchers are accessing the dollars — up to $100,000 a year — for the cover crops, rotational grazing and that sort of thing. There are three programs there.
They’ve been accessing. It has been successful; however, the wildfires are a different animal altogether. We need to reach out.
Senator Robinson: I was going to ask in particular, thinking about AgriRecovery, and how AgriRecovery is there to help after a natural disaster. I know it’s always a little complex in provincial situations, because in order to trigger AgriRecovery, you have to have the province more or less pull the trigger with the feds. What is your experience with that?
Mr. Beaudin: Right now with Manitoba, our relationship is — I’ll just say it’s fifty-fifty. Sometimes we were supported, and sometimes we’re not. Sometimes it’s our fault, sometimes it’s theirs when it comes to proposals.
At the end of the day, it’s how do we get producers to come to us and work together with the MMF, and the province’s agricultural department so that we can look at programs that benefit everybody?
Senator Robinson: For programming, I’m thinking in particular of Shaun Soonias works with Farm Credit Canada. Is there any programming to help build that understanding, or any program literacy of what is available to your producers? How do you address that?
Senator McBean was talking about jurisdictional complexities, and it is almost like that in this situation. What is there to help your people build the knowledge they need to be able to access and be enrolled in these programs so that when it does come around, they’re not having to respond, but maybe they’re already in the program?
Mr. Beaudin: This needs to start right at the grassroots level and involve their Métis government, the MMF. We don’t have a fully supported agricultural portfolio, we’re all on project funding. Like the other person said, once that funding is gone, they’re just writing proposals hoping they get more dollars. So without long-term, sustainable funding, we can’t even plan properly. We can’t pull a strategic plan together with our farmers and ranchers.
I think where it starts is a good, solid department that can then start to reach out with the rest of the farmers and ranchers. Even if it’s across jurisdictional boundaries, this is not a one-stop person to pull this together. This is the province, this is the feds, this is the municipalities. We need to come together and look at what is best.
The Chair: Thank you.
Mr. Merasty: Thank you, Mr. Chair, I wanted to speak to some of that too, in Saskatchewan. Thank you to our colleagues in Manitoba.
Again, there were 2.78 million hectares destroyed in Saskatchewan; ninety per cent of N-14 fur block burned, and 110,000 hectares were destroyed in Denare Beach. This takes away from our food sovereignty as Métis and First Nations Peoples and the traditional medicines that we gather seasonally throughout the years. The devastation to the old-growth forests takes away our woodland caribou and then big game, such as moose, that our people live off of. More importantly, the wild rice harvesters are left abandoned with nowhere to turn and no resources to access to subsidize their losses.
Thank you.
Senator Robinson: There has been news recently on wild rice and the implications of climate change on the ability to produce it.
Mr. Merasty: We are seeing some impacts of climate change in our wild rice. I know a couple of years back, our wild rice harvesters were unable to harvest due to the worms, and that’s because of climate change and the heat and different things.
It is the same thing this year. It is not as great as last year, but it is there. It’s an impact taking away from their livelihoods, but more importantly, the water levels are decreasing, and the bacteria we’re seeing on the lakes is something new to us and unheard of.
Senator Varone: My question is for the First Nations’ Emergency Services Society, or FNESS, and I am going to go about it in a kind of backwards way. I’m the rookie senator here, and I probably have the most to learn in terms of agriculture —
Senator Robinson: We were sworn in the same day.
Senator Varone: Yes, but you’ve been in agriculture your whole life. I’ve been taking agricultural land and building houses on it.
But I’ve learned this one truth, and it’s an incontrovertible truth: The cost of climate resilience is substantial, but the cost of doing nothing is monumental.
When you’re faced with governments that pretty much operate their budgets on zero-sum games — more money that goes one place and less money somewhere else — in your four pillars of resilience, where do you start?
If the government came to you and said, “You get X,” how do you build that resilience within First Nations?
Ms. Joe: We’ve been spending a number of years working with, probably, 90% of the First Nations communities in British Columbia, so we already have a really good relationship with the First Nations who already know where their gaps are. We bring them together, and we see how we can develop partnerships between First Nations.
As Mr. Nelson mentioned, sometimes when we do this training, there are only four or five people from a First Nation who can participate, so we need to ensure that First Nations are working together, so that when a fire might take place, they can work together and put the fire out.
But it’s the mitigation area where we start working on communities before a fire takes place, emergency management plans, AI technology to direct those emergency management plans, drones to do the mapping and training the people, so they know exactly who is doing what and in which role.
We did mitigation activities with one of the First Nations in the Fraser Canyon just north of Lytton, which is always having fires, and the fire went around the community. It didn’t affect the community. No lives were lost. No buildings were lost. It was a complete success, so if we could be putting funding into those areas, we would see far more successes for communities.
Senator Varone: You have that itemized based on a percentage of what per cent goes into mitigation, what per cent goes into preparedness and what per cent goes into — ?
Mr. Nelson: To continue on that whole topic, at FNESS, we work with the four pillars that we talked about, and it’s a nation-to-nation start. We have to start with a nation and ask, “What do you guys need,” type of thing, and we have multiple specialists throughout all the different pillars.
If they need preparedness, if they need to ready their response team, if they need the mitigation or if they need recovery, we’re going to start where they’re at type of thing. We’re not showing the nations that they have to do it. We’re asking them and walking with them, “How do we get where you guys want to be?”
Senator Varone: Thank you.
Ms. Joe: One other point: In the past few years, we have provided over 150 wildfire training sessions, and we have trained almost 2,000 people in firefighting. However, you have so many people moving —
Senator Varone: Who is the funder?
Ms. Joe: That was with federal funds. For those funds, they were project and provincial. They were project specific.
Now, what happens, though, is that people move out of the community, and also the age of a lot of our firefighters is higher. They are 55 plus, so they don’t have the mobility to be fighting fires.
Senator Varone: The training which you’re suggesting needs to be continuous.
Ms. Joe: Exactly. We have to roll over that training on a regular basis, and maps have to be updated. Especially after the atmospheric flood that took place in B.C., I know that on my reserve, we lost a lot of property, and that changed the mapping. We need to ensure we have the input as to what drought situations are. There is a lot we need to continually do, but because we don’t have a regular annual budget, we just try to do the best that we can.
Senator McNair: Mr. Merasty, the starting point on moving forward, as you indicated, is ensuring there is stable emergency management funding in place.
I want to take a moment and mirror what Senator Muggli said: Congratulations on doing what you had to do to protect the Métis Nation and your province, because the jurisdictional silliness that goes on at the time, sending people 500 kilometres down the road and then not letting them have a place to stay, it’s mind-boggling.
I wanted to say one other thing to Mr. Nelson. Thank you for reminding us about the obvious, but you said displaced peoples are suffering, and we have to remember that it continues long beyond the fire season ending.
Anyway, I’ll leave it at that. There may be a moment for somebody else to ask a question.
Senator Martin: Very quickly, I have a sort of follow-up to what Senator McBean asked.
Knowing that there are these gaps, the interjurisdictional issues and gaps and complexities, are there specific agreements that you would like in place before next spring? Are there things in progress that you’re working on?
Ms. Joe: Yes, we are working with the — there are so many acronyms — the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, or CIFFC. We are also working with the National Indigenous Fire Safety Council, but we need to see more of this collaboration between each province and each territory. We have different expertise.
For us, I have had the approval from my board of directors to expand some of our work as much as possible with our Métis and Inuit counterparts, not just in B.C. but across the country, but it comes down to funding again.
Mr. Nelson: A big piece would be to change the Indigenous Services Canada, or ISC, type of wording to unlock funding. If a community is under threat, the funding should be unlocked, not an imminent fire. That would be a really big help, because we could roll out the trailers early and prepare if we know that the fires are coming.
The Chair: Thank you.
I would ask Senator Muggli and Senator McBean to ask your questions, and we’ll ask you to respond in writing.
Very quickly, Senator Muggli, your question?
Senator Muggli: If you were writing recommendations for our report regarding traumatic recovery following wildfire devastation, what would that look like? What would those recommendations be to help people with mental health trauma recovery?
Then the other quick one was going to be around if there are any technical training gaps for training people on fire prevention.
The Chair: That question could be answered by each group, so I’ll leave that.
Senator McBean: Written or video.
I think we knew this was going to be really good information, so thank you.
Ms. Joe, you mentioned that there was a community near Lytton where the fire went around. If you could provide us with the details and maybe even a pillar-by-pillar approach on what FNESS did and give us the accounting of how that worked.
I imagine you have put in a pre-budget submission of $27.9 million, so maybe that was going to be the answer to when I was asking about the jurisdictional challenges.
Forgive my language, but I think it’s always a bitching session if you’re only talking about the problems and you don’t come to what your solutions are.
I’m saying you have the solution, I want them. We’ve only let you do the first part and we’re very interested in what your solutions are. What would you do with the money if you were given more money? Minister Merasty, you had asked for stable, emergency planning funds. If you got those, what would you use them on?
The Chair: Our clerk will send each of you these last couple questions, just so you have them as they’re transcribed. Minister Merasty, Minister Beaudin, Mr. Quintal, Ms. Joe, and Mr. Nelson, thank you very much for your participation today. Your testimony and insight have been very much appreciated.
For our second panel, we’ll be hearing from Elisa Binon, Data Coordinator for North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, Global Monitoring at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, and Major Rick Zelinsky, Director of Public Affairs and Emergency Disaster Services at the Salvation Army. Major Zelinsky is accompanied by his colleague, Tracy Desjarlais, Indigenous Liaison for Emergency Disaster Services. Ms. Binon, the floor is yours.
Elisa Binon, Data Coordinator for North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia, Global Monitoring, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre: Thank you for inviting to share our findings on the impacts of wildfire displacements in Canada with you. I’ll be making my intervention in English, but I’ll be glad to answer in French or English.
My name is Elisa Binon, and I am the Data Coordinator for North America, the Caribbean, Europe and Central Asia at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, or IDMC. The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre monitors internal displacement due to disasters, conflicts and violence in over 200 countries and territories.
Our mission is to highlight the situation of internally displaced persons, or IDPs, who are too often overlooked. We do not collect primary data, but we aggregate, curate and validate information from governments and a variety of other sources to provide reliable data and analysis that can inform policy making and action to prevent, address and resolve internal displacement.
Internal displacement due to disasters is a growing global challenge, affecting developing and wealthier nations alike. Canada is not an exception, with wildfires being the principal driver of displacement. In fact, Canada is among the countries most affected by wildfire displacement.
In 2023, 43% of all documented wildfire displacements worldwide occurred in Canada. The IDMC recorded over 200,000 internal displacements across Canada that year, of which 96% were caused by wildfires. Fifteen per cent of these wildfire displacements affected Indigenous communities.
In 2024, Canada ranked third globally for wildfire displacements, after the U.S. and Greece. Our preliminary data for 2025 shows more than 70,000 wildfire-related displacement across Canada. In both 2024 and 2025, wildfires triggered 99% of all internal displacements in Canada. Indigenous Peoples were disproportionally affected. Fifty-eight per cent of wildfire evacuations in 2024 impacted Indigenous Peoples, whereas in 2025, preliminary data shows 56% of evacuations due to wildfires impacting Indigenous Peoples in Canada.
These figures are considered underestimates, however, due to the difficulty in finding reliable and accurate data, as Canada lacks a central agency which systematically collects data on internal displacements.
Behind these figures are real people, who are individually impacted by displacement. The hardships that IDPs experience are severe. They include loss of homes, safety, or sense thereof, and livelihoods. Children may experience disruption in their education, and people of all ages suffer from mental-health impacts. Our data suggests that wildfire displacement is lasting longer and becoming increasingly recurrent. There have been instances of the same communities being forced to evacuate multiple times within the year, as was seen, for instance, when the Northern Quebec Cree Nation of Nemaska was called to evacuate five times in July 2023.
We are also seeing an increase in wildfire displacement in urban areas. While remote locations and communities are more often impacted, we have seen multiple instances of highly populated urban and suburban neighbourhoods beings forced to evacuate due to wildfires in recent years. In 2023, nearly half of the recorded displacements took place in urban areas.
With the growing impacts of climate change, the number of displacements each year is expected to increase. According to UN-backed scientific data, Canada is warming twice as fast as the global average, and climate change has more than doubled the likelihood of extreme weather conditions in Eastern Canada in 2023.
The Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement affirm that national governments bear the primary responsibility to address internal displacement. In light of this, we would like to provide recommendations.
Collecting accurate, timely and disaggregated data on internal displacements is the first step in understanding the trends, patterns and impacts of wildfire displacement and the starting point for establishing informed and effective policies. We therefore encourage the Canadian government to collect data on how many of its citizens are forced to evacuate their homes each year due to disasters and the duration of that displacement.
Second, all levels of government should continuously involve affected communities in discussions on disaster displacement to find the best and most adequate solutions, for instance, by prioritizing First Nations knowledge and self-determination when designing emergency plans.
Third, it is essential to ensure adequate evacuation and reception conditions for internally displaced persons to minimize the impacts of displacement.
Evacuation sites should include all necessary equipment and staff to meet specific needs and vulnerabilities.
Finally, we would like to commend Canada on its commitment to finding solutions to internal displacement. This is evident through Canada’s co-chairing of the Group of Friends on solutions to internal displacement.
We hope Canada will continue to demonstrate a steadfast commitment to addressing internal displacement.
Thank you for your time and attention.
The Chair: Thank you for your opening statement.
Major Zelinsky and Ms. Desjarlais, it’s now your turn.
Major Rick Zelinsky, Director of Public Affairs and Emergency Disaster Services, Salvation Army: Thank you for the opportunity to speak.
Given the scarcity of resources in rural communities, the Salvation Army has witnessed an increased demand on our services across Canada, from sea to sea to sea. Our disaster services have only recently shut down, for example, in the Annapolis Valley in Nova Scotia.
In 2024, we found we had to extend our services in High Prairie, Alberta to support evacuees from Métis settlements due to lack of resources in the area.
We extended our stay by over a month, which was far past our usual deployment, serving over 40,000 meals, logging over 12,000 volunteer hours as well as providing emotional and spiritual support.
We continue to experience the increased demand for our services. In 2025, we responded in all but four provinces in Canada. We did respond in Yellowknife.
The Salvation Army is operating in 400-plus communities in Canada with boots on the ground. I’d like to turn the microphone to one of our Indigenous leaders on the emergency disaster team, Tracy Desjarlais, to speak to the impact on Indigenous communities. I’m happy to answer any questions after that.
Tracy Desjarlais, Indigenous Liaison for Emergency Disaster Services, Salvation Army: Good evening, chair and senators. My name is Tracy Desjarlais. I’m from the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan. I want to thank the committee for inviting me to speak on the impacts of wildfires on Indigenous communities across Canada, specifically on our land, air, water and the effects of the evacuations.
Forest fires destroy more than trees; they take away medicines, berries, wildlife habitat and traplines that sustain our way of life.
When fires sweep through, ash and soot poison the soil and waterways, changing the land for generations. In terms of the air, wildfire smoke has become an ongoing health emergency. Many of our Elders, children and people with respiratory conditions struggle to breathe. We have seen more asthma, heart problems and even deaths during prolonged smoke events.
In terms of our water, after the fires, heavy rains wash ash and chemicals into our water sources. Communities must rely on bottled or trucked water for months. Federal water standards must include emergency testing and rapid response systems after wildfires.
In terms of the evacuations, yes, I probably sound like a broken record about Indigenous communities being disproportionately affected by wildfire evacuations. Many are forced to leave their homes multiple times in a decade.
I’m going to quote one of Prince Albert Grand Council, Grand Chief Brian Hardlotte, when I spoke to him about this before today, this is one of his main concerns, his quote: Many people passed away during evacuations in his territory because of their health and the stress of being moved. The fires that caused evacuations were, unfortunately, man-made fires, deliberately set, which is very sad. This shows how not all fires are natural, some are preventable, tragedies that cause unnecessary loss and trauma.
What needs to change? We need Indigenous-led solutions, community fire stewardship with training and funding of Indigenous fire crews for cultural and prescribed burns, clean-air shelters in schools and community centres, rapid water testing and emergency filtration systems after fires, culturally safe evacuation plans, designed and led by local nations and long-term mental health supports for families displaced by repeated evacuations.
Wildfires are not only environmental issues, they are sovereignty and public health issues. They are issues of Indigenous survival and leadership.
That’s all I have. I was going to speak specifically about a couple of other issues where some First Nations set up evacuation centres to receive evacuees here in Saskatchewan. But because of how people were — I don’t know what the terminology is I’m trying to say — but they never received any evacuees in their centres after setting up.
This morning I spoke to somebody here in my hotel. They had an evacuation centre set up. They didn’t receive any evacuees. They had many donations they sent up in truckloads to the Far North. I can go on, but I’ll leave it at that for now.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for your opening statements.
Senator McNair: Thank you to the panellists for being here tonight. To start, my question is for Ms. Binon.
In May and June 2025, as you heard from the first panel, wildfires spread rapidly through Manitoba and Saskatchewan, triggering an evacuation of 42,000 people.
In a recent article, your organization published entitled “Wildfire displacement is on the rise: 2025 sends a clear warning,”, your organization stated most countries do not systematically collect wildfire displacement data leaving critical gaps in wildfire preparedness, response capacity and recovery.
Can you explain to me how often is wildfire displacement data collected in Canada, who collects it and reports the data? Can you also explain how the systematic collection of wildfire displacement data could strengthen wildfire preparedness, response capacity and recovery in our country?
Ms. Binon: Yes, absolutely. In Canada, we have received data from Indigenous Services Canada after creating a partnership with them. This data is disaggregated by the type of disaster, the month of the evacuation and the province or territory.
Other data we get from Canada — we don’t receive it; we have to go and search for it — we monitor via media sources primarily for up-to-date current information. This is difficult, because media sources don’t always provide their source for the information, in which case we cannot use the data unless we find corroboration of that information somewhere else.
It can also be challenging, because media sources might provide information on the number of buildings that were evacuated or under evacuation order, which is not a reliable estimate. It’s difficult to use it, because we don’t know how many of those buildings are uninhabited.
We consider our data to be a big underestimate. This is how we collect it for Canada, which is why it’s crucial there would be an entity or organization at a federal or national level which would collect this data, or even at a provincial level, so we can have better estimates.
The value of collecting this data, it assists in informing policies. When you know how many people are displaced in each province or territory each year, due to what, when this data is disaggregated it means how many women, children, Indigenous Peoples, First Nations and Inuit, when you have this information it can inform policy at a great level so you know where to put the resources.
Which community is systematically affected, for instance? This is what data can show. This is why it’s key to collect such data.
Senator McNair: I wish to fact check a statement you made. Canada, you said, is warming twice as fast in global warming. Is that accurate? What was the statement you gave?
Ms. Binon: According to UN scientific data, yes. This is information that the UN has published.
Senator McNair: The other fact that you gave, or the ranking — we rank third for wildfire displacement, which isn’t a ranking that we want to have, I assume.
Ms. Binon: This is based on our data, the data that we collect at the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre. Since we collect for over 200 territories and countries worldwide, we then analyze that data, and through the analysis we saw that in 2024 Canada came in third in wildfire displacement.
Senator McNair: Thank you.
Senator Muggli: Thank you for being with us. My question is for The Salvation Army. I’m wondering how your volunteers and staff are trained to manage the mental health and traumatic response needs of evacuees, specific to First Nations and Métis evacuees, and I’m wondering what is needed for long-term support, in your opinion. Is there a traumatic response community-based model that you would recommend, or what are your thoughts on the follow-up mental health piece?
Mr. Zelinsky: I’ll speak to the first part of it, and then I will ask Ms. Desjarlais to speak to the long term on that. So all of our volunteers go through training. We have developed in-house training, and people can move through various levels. When it comes to emotional support, they are generally people who are professionals in the field. When I said we were in 400-plus communities, that is trained clergy, volunteers in those communities. We train our people just to be available, to listen, to support people to the level that they are able to.
We are looking at — with Tracy and the connections to Indigenous communities, we’re actually not looking at running into communities to try to fix things for them, but to say to — we have spoken to various chiefs to say, “The Salvation Army has a training program, we have the ability to set up teams for you and we would like to lend our 110 years of expertise to your community to bring training,” to help them with that.
I think that ongoing support — the government has been supporting five national non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, for wildfire response, and a few of us do emotional support, including St. John Ambulance and The Salvation Army. The continued support to ensure continuity and consistency moving forward is going to be very important. We were able to ramp up and build our capacity very quickly and very effectively with that support from the government, but I think that that is needed moving forward because this situation is not going away.
Ms. Desjarlais, I don’t know if you would like to speak to the long-term response.
Senator Muggli: Specifically, if you were to make a recommendation for what we should do for mental health follow-on after such events, do you have any recommendations of what that would look like?
Ms. Desjarlais: Thank you. Based on displaced folks that I have spoken with, some of them being elderly, they compared this to residential school, being taken from your community and being displaced and that type of — the traumatic event that was triggering for them. So the ongoing supports in that regard, like their mental health, community programming, that type of thing, because a lot of northern communities don’t even have that today, but to implement things such as that to help them through that trauma.
Senator Muggli: And in evacuation centres, even having ceremonial support would be really important?
Ms. Desjarlais: Correct. Cold Lake, Alberta, for example — somebody from Cold Lake had told me this, that some of them were evacuated, and some of the local people came, the Elders came, to try to even bring them some traditional foods instead of — I mean, they were grateful for soup and sandwiches, but sometimes they want some of their own traditional foods. So some of the local First Nation Elders came to feed them some of their local traditional foods, and they weren’t allowed to bring it into the reception centre.
They weren’t allowed to. Apparently, they set up in the parking lot, and then there was a big, long line of folks wanting to have that traditional meat. Things like —
Senator Muggli: And medicines as well?
Ms. Desjarlais: — that are culturally sensitive — yes. I went out to some of the centres myself and provided some of our traditional medicines.
Senator Muggli: Thank you.
Senator Varone: Yes. My question is for Ms. Binon. You track a lot of data, and I understand the data that you are tracking with respect to evacuations, but I’m confused with the context of the word “displacement” and what you mean by it. Is displacement the actual leaving of their home and then returning to their home in that temporary period, or do you mean the displacement because their home has been destroyed by fire and they have nowhere to live? And if that’s not the case, are you tracking that percentage of casualties in terms of homes that are destroyed by fire?
Ms. Binon: Thank you for your question. So the answer is both. We use indicators of displacement. Internal displacement means being forced to leave your habitual place of residence due to disaster, conflict or violence. This is what we monitor. For disaster, we have various indicators of displacement. One of those indicators is evacuations. When people have to evacuate their home — they are forced out of their home in this instance due to wildfires — they are internally displaced, because they do not leave Canada. They stay within their own country.
Senator Varone: Do they have a home to return to after displacement?
Ms. Binon: Sometimes they do. Sometimes the home has not been destroyed. We also do record destroyed housing, and that is another indicator of displacement. We record —
Senator Varone: Do you have those percentages that you can share with us?
Ms. Binon: I do not have the figures in front of me right now, but I can absolutely share them afterwards, but there is also a limitation in this data that we have due to lack of reporting.
Senator Varone: Understood. Thank you.
Senator Martin: This is also to Ms. Binon. Do you have examples of countries that have really good data and the kind of data they are collecting that you have access to, and how is it done?
Ms. Binon: Yes, we do have some examples. One example that I can give you is actually the United States. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, has operations briefings. On a daily basis, they publish briefings with reports on wildfire displacement and wildfire evacuations and also destruction of homes. We use this data, we collect this data, and we record it in our database to get an estimate of how many people are displaced due to wildfires in the U.S. So this is at a federal level. It is a really good example.
They also do a survey. The U.S. Census Bureau does a survey where they ask the population whether they have been displaced, evacuated or if their homes have been destroyed due to disasters. They ask questions such as which disaster?; how long were you displaced?; were you able to return home?; and, was your home rendered uninhabitable? These kinds of questions are asked.
These are extremely good examples, and they also, after some disasters — more like the bigger disasters — they also do preliminary damage assessment reports that they publish publicly, which include how many homes were destroyed due to a specific disaster. It is not limited to wildfires. It can also include floods, storms, hurricanes or tornadoes. The U.S. is a fairly good example of data collection, publishing and rendering this public, so that we can use it.
Senator McBean: I’m going to continue on in the same vein a little bit, and maybe, Ms. Binon, I can ask you — I don’t imagine you have it right in front of you, so maybe you can provide it to us. I was writing furiously as you were speaking to us, and what I got was 43% of I think it might have been Canadians who are displaced are displaced by wildfire. I also wrote down 15% of those people are Indigenous, 58% of wildfire displacement in Canada — I also wrote as Indigenous. If you could share your notes with us in a written format, I would appreciate that.
You also said that Canada is third as a nation for wildfire displacement. Can you let us know who got the gold and the silver? It’s reverse engineering because I don’t want that gold or silver, but maybe you could share some more of that information with us. That would be really helpful.
Also, at one point you said that in 2023, half of displacements were from urban areas. How do you define “urban”?
Ms. Binon: Hopefully I can answer all of your questions. Just to clarify, of course, I can absolutely send you fact sheets with the data that answers all of those questions, with pleasure. It’s also available on our website.
Just to clarify, the number of people displaced due to wildfires is much higher than 43%. The data I provided is that in 2023, 43% of all documented wildfire displacement worldwide occurred in Canada. In 2023, 96% of internal displacements were caused by wildfires. Last year and this year, 99% of internal displacements in Canada were caused by wildfires. Those are the actual figures.
Now, what I mentioned about Canada ranking third globally was for last year. First was the U.S., and the second was Greece. Canada came after that. We recorded over 45,000 displacements in 2024, so significantly less than 2023, but still much higher than the previous years, before 2023.
Senator McBean: And how do you define “urban”?
Ms. Binon: Right. That question is not exactly for me to answer, but generally, we look at how the data is published and represented, and if it is described as being in an urban area, then we rely on that if the source is reliable.
Senator McBean: I respect that most industries require art too, so I respect that you kind of have a sense of what it is.
For Major Zelinsky and Tracy Desjarlais, what lessons have been learned from the recent wildfire season about the logistics of providing large-scale humanitarian aid in remote and Indigenous communities? If you were listening to the first panel at all, I was kind of drilling in a little bit on jurisdictional complexities.
How does your organization coordinate with governments, Indigenous communities and local agencies to provide the shelter, food and mental supports that are so needed?
Mr. Zelinsky: Thank you. Yes, this is a bit of a challenge. We are part of the humanitarian workforce that’s through the federal government, but deployments are done through the provincial government and then also through municipalities. Who is going to call us out becomes a bit of a challenge and how we are going to respond becomes a bit of a challenge. We have just taken the position that we will respond regardless. Even if we don’t have funding, we’re going to move because it’s the morally correct decision for us.
In the sense of Indigenous communities, we learned through working with FNESS, they identified 30 communities that are at high risk in British Columbia. Again, the Salvation Army decided we are going to leverage our donors to help FNESS get funding to set up remote water suppression systems in their communities. We helped out with the response inside that First Nation.
We’re just in the process of providing water suppression systems to 30 Indigenous communities throughout B.C. so that they can have immediate response to wildfires in their communities within 15 minutes of the fire starting versus having to wait for a three- or four-hour response from a fire department in a neighbouring community or a more remote community.
The Chair: I have a question. Within the next few weeks, we’re going to be starting to write this report, which could and likely will contain recommendations to the federal government. If you had a pen in hand, what would be two recommendations each of you would want to include in that report? I’ll start with Major Zelinsky.
Mr. Zelinsky: First of all, funding. You can never tell an NGO or charity that they have enough money. We are always looking for funding in that way, not just to fill our coffers but to ensure that we have a consistent, national response to wildfires. That would be the first thing.
The second thing would be that they work on jurisdictional issues. They have to decide who is going to deploy. If the feds are funding us, they have to be able to deploy us into situations. Surrounding that, if we go into Alberta, as an example, to fight wildfires, currently, we have to go to all of the municipalities to get memorandums of understanding to respond versus just asking for one memorandum of understanding, the province deploys us and we just move into a situation anywhere in the province. If we did it nationally, even better, because then it would remove the borders. We can travel very quickly and deploy large assets to support very remote communities that have no access. We’re able to go in with wifi, refrigeration, cooking, et cetera, because we have those at our disposal.
The Chair: Ms. Desjarlais?
Ms. Desjarlais: Mine too was about jurisdiction, but Major Zelinsky kind of covered that. Just having First Nations inclusion in the preparedness plans — I don’t know how else to say it — so they are at the table too. I’ll just leave it at that.
The Chair: We know what you mean. Thank you. Ms. Binon, pen in hand, what would you do?
Ms. Binon: The first recommendation is from a data perspective. We would recommend that there be a systematic and disaggregated data collection on internal displacement in order to see how many people are displaced each year, and what the cause of that displacement is. How far do they have to go during the displacement period? Are their homes destroyed? How fast do they have to move? Also, how fast does a wildfire go from an evacuation recommendation to an alert to an order? And where are people displaced to? This information can really help improve evacuation plans, better plan shelter locations and better assist in designing communications strategies so that future responses are faster and more targeted.
The second recommendation, during that time of displacement, it’s truly essential to lessen the trauma of displacement. There is immense trauma associated with displacement; the uncertainty of whether and when you can go home and if your home going to be there is immense.
During a situation of displacement, there must be policies in place to ensure that the reception conditions are adequate, that they fit the need of the affected communities and that they are targeted toward ensuring mental and physical health, and general well-being. That includes, for instance, ensuring continued education for prolonged displacement for minors. Access to resources is also necessary, for instance, for social, cultural and religious practices.
All of those considerations will help lessen the trauma of displacement.
The Chair: Thank you very much.
Colleagues, I have no folks for second round unless folks have further questions. With that, thanks to our witnesses for taking the time to appear before us today. It was a very informative panel and session. We appreciate your contributions to our study. As I mentioned, we will soon be getting into the writing phase of this report, and we will ensure that each of you receive a copy of the report down the road. If you have further things to contribute in answers to some of the questions, please send them to our clerk. We would appreciate that.
Colleagues, thank you very much for your contributions today; your preparation and thoughtful participation are appreciated.
I want to take a moment to thank the staff who support our committee: our colleagues in our offices; the interpreters; the Debates team transcribing and editing this meeting; the committee room attendant; the multimedia services technician; the Broadcasting team; the Recording Centre; ISD; and our page, Ms. Angélique Pinto. Thank you very much for contributing to this successful committee meeting.
(The committee adjourned.)