Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. It is a pleasure to be here today. Thank you for inviting me.
The mega-fires that occurred in Jasper in 2024 were no accident; they resulted from a combination of anthropomorphic factors both inside and outside the park. The fact is that over the last 100 years there has been constant human intervention in the national parks and in many forests near population centres. While this intervention was intended to put out the fires that would normally have affected those forests, it prevented forest rejuvenation and the emergence of pioneer species such as poplar and birch that are more tolerant or reduce the risk of fire.
The reason for this human intervention is simple and is the same everywhere: to preserve glorious natural scenery and limit disruption. Doing this, however, tends to raise the average age of the trees and the number of dead trees and shade-tolerant conifers such as fir and spruce, which are often found in undergrowth and allow fire to climb from the surface to the canopy. It is common knowledge that these three factors increase the risk of fire.
Another important point is that because the climate is warming rapidly and Jasper is located at a high latitude in the northern hemisphere, where warming is more marked, the risk of conditions occurring that are conducive to mega-fires is rising. These include early hot, dry springs and the presence of fuel such as dead wood and softwood, along with the hot, dry summers with frequent thunderstorms that we are increasingly seeing.
In fact, some researchers had predicted what happened in Jasper. A number of scientific articles had been published pointing out that these kinds of fires were inevitable, since they are caused by the gradual degradation of our forests and rising tree mortality. This is something that is occurring not just in Canada, but all over the world. In fact, some scientists predict that with accelerated climate change, the number of fires will rise so much in the next 50 years that there is a risk that forests will emit as much carbon annually as all human activity in Canada combined. This means that even if human activities stopped emitting carbon, forest fires and the rise in tree mortality might result in just as much being emitted in the next 30 to 50 years.
I realize that the purpose of today's meeting is to understand the factors leading to the fires in Jasper National Park. However, I would like to speak more generally about the risk of major disruptions in our forests associated with global warming and the increasing introduction of exotic insects and diseases that are killing more and more tree species. Another important point is that our trees are becoming less and less adapted to the new climate conditions, which leads to a loss of vigour and makes them more vulnerable to insects and diseases that should not affect them in normal circumstances.
Climate change is accelerating to the point that some tree species are now outside what is called their normal climate envelope, leading to a loss of vigour on the part of these trees and to forest degradation. This heightens the risk of fire and increases carbon emissions from our forests, makes our forest industry more precarious, and increases the risk of losing biodiversity and all the services that forests provide us. It is important to point out that in the last decade, Canada's forest has emitted more carbon than it absorbs, and this contributes to the earth's warming.
So what can we do? Here are some suggestions.
First, we should encourage diversification of tree species that have varying functional characteristics and are capable of resisting all sorts of disruptions, just as we do by diversifying our pension fund investments in order to reduce risk and guarantee acceptable returns in the future.
We must also not routinely prevent the small disruptions that occur, such as small fires. In fact, we should even be carrying out controlled burning, to keep fuel load low and reduce the proportion of conifers.
Second, a systematic assessment of our forests' vulnerability to insects, diseases and fires needs to be done in all regions of Canada, so that forest management can be used to try to reduce these risks.
Third, we should also increase the speed at which our forests adapt to climate change and insects, by encouraging what is called the assisted migration of tree species: migration initiated by human intervention to bring species that are more southern to the north—
