Evidence of meeting #122 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was parks.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Senior Vice-President, Operations, Parks Canada Agency
Yes.
Through the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, of course, Parks Canada gets a lot of support and uses a cross-Canada, government-wide, federal-provincial standard of how forest fires are fought and what information goes into that. That centre—
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair. I'm going to have to cut this off.
Liberal
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
In 2018, Minister, your own superintendent of Parks, Alan Fehr, went on CBC and said that fire was not something that they were concerned about. He claims that your department did its homework to protect Jasper.
Do you stand by the words of your superintendent? Was fire not a concern in Jasper National Park? Did you do your homework, yes or no?
Liberal
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
Yes, some of it was for Jasper and some of it was for the other national parks—
Conservative
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Mr. Lloyd, excuse me, I'm going to stop the time.
I like robust debate, and I have no problem with that, but please let the minister answer the question so that we can find out the truth or an approximation of it.
Go ahead.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
Since that interview was done, $86 million has been invested compared to $2 million when you were in power.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
In 2020, your government announced $6.9 million over three years for Jasper National Park. The Alberta Forest Products Association, in an open letter in 2017, said it would take $85 million to protect the park, yet your government only invested $6.9 million over three years.
The proof is in the pudding. A third of the town of Jasper burned down, and you're here at this committee bragging about a $6-million investment. It's not nearly enough, Minister.
Liberal
Steven Guilbeault Liberal Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC
You're mistaken, it's $6.9 million for rhododendron infestations, to which $79 million must be added. So it's wrong to say it's only $6.9 million when $79 million has been added.
Conservative
Dane Lloyd Conservative Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB
That gets to the crux of my point.
Why were thousands of hectares of dead pine beetle-infested trees allowed to be in close proximity to the town of Jasper—thousands of hectares?
Your government says that you have removed 1,700 hectares since 2014, but in a 2022 report, your own department said that they only removed 1.6 hectares of whitebark pine.
There are thousands of hectares of dead pine beetle trees in the vicinity of Jasper. Why were these allowed to stay there when they represented a serious threat to the town? All of these experts knew it. Why didn't you remove them?
Senior Vice-President, Operations, Parks Canada Agency
There were 1,700 hectares that were removed, about 17 square kilometres, which is about eight times the size of the town of Jasper, just to put it in perspective.
Conservative
Senior Vice-President, Operations, Parks Canada Agency
That's correct, but a lot of that park is not in the town. We can all agree to that, I'm sure. Within that, you had a large buffer zone.
Landon is the vegetation and fire specialist out of Banff.
On top of that, there's a large.... I don't want to just call it a sprinkler system. It's a high-powered sprinkler system that protects the town. It goes up 12 metres in height and protects a large area of the town.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
I'm sorry; I'm going to have to cut it off here. We're way over time. Anyway, it's very complex, I know.