QUESTION PERIOD — Ministry of Emergency Management and Community Resilience
Emergency Management in First Nations Communities
October 7, 2026
Welcome, minister. As Canada grapples with increasing environmental crises, particularly — as we’ve heard — with respect to forest fires, this past summer we saw Namaygoosisagagun First Nation and Whitewater Lake First Nation in northern Ontario burn to the ground. Grand Council Chief of the Anishinabek Nation, Linda Debassige, confirmed that the First Nation was left to self-evacuate without government support and after the federal government had assured the community there was no imminent threat. She noted:
If this community waited for a mandatory evacuation process, we’d be doing a recovery mission for the bodies of children, of elders, of men and women.
Across Canada, 80% of Indigenous communities are located in areas at higher risk of fire. What proactive steps is the government taking to ensure that communities already experiencing systemic inequality are not abandoned to the most devastating impacts of —
Thank you, senator.
Thank you for the question. In terms of that particular situation, Ontario would have first been responsible for the coordination of suppression and evacuation attempts. The federal government’s capacity is exercised when there is an RFA, so a formal request for federal assistance. In the case of the Province of Ontario, a formal request was made a few days after, and it was to evacuate a First Nation that was suffering from the effects of smoke. So I approved that formal request and called in the Armed Forces so that we could evacuate a different community.
Just to the question more broadly, we know that First Nations disproportionately suffer the effects of climate change, and we know that rural and Indigenous communities face some of the most difficult challenges, not only with respect to suppression in their communities in terms of equipment and firefighters, but also in terms of evacuation.
In terms of evacuations, one of the things that I am looking at, and will be moving forward with, is adding a couple of First Nations agencies to our humanitarian workforce. So there will be —
Thank you, minister.
