Evidence of meeting #124 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 fires.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
That's correct.
It's been my experience from previous fires that the hydrant systems cannot be deemed reliable. They're designed to have only one or two structural fires at a time. When you have numerous fire trucks tying in, it is not impossible for the water system to be completely depleted. That's why we now use secondary water sources to supply water.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
You had the fire trucks and the water trucks available in order to engage the fire in Jasper and the townsite. Am I correct?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
That's correct.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
You were told specifically by parks officials to not engage in fighting the fire in Jasper. Am I correct that you said that?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
We were able to use water from Pyramid Lake, but not from the Athabasca River, and we were not allowed to engage the fire.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Twenty fire trucks and 50 firefighters not allowed to engage the fire.
Is there anything in the statutes that you're aware of that would have allowed them to bring you under their incident command protocols and have you join the fight against the fire?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
In my previous experience, what they could have done was assign a task force leader to our group to act as a liaison to the incident command. This way, we could have a functioning relationship with the incident command.
As well, in dire circumstances, if a fire comes in and they are worried about the entire community, they do have the ability, under other legislation, such as the Alberta Forest and Prairie Protection Act, to use conscription to bring us into their command as well.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
Do believe that if you would have been able to engage the fire, you could have saved some property in the town of Jasper?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
Absolutely. Part of our arsenal that we had out there were two airport fire trucks, as well as eight industrial fire trucks. These are monstrously large fire trucks that could have put out a lot of water to help protect communities on the front line. Then the smaller brush trucks could have been used to help defend the community from the impingements that landed.
Conservative
Blaine Calkins Conservative Red Deer—Lacombe, AB
What did it make you and your crews that you had assembled feel like when you were told not to engage in the fires and you stood and watched properties burn down in Jasper?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
We were deflated. We felt that our mission.... We could have gotten more results.
Liberal
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all of the witnesses.
Thank you to our tech crews who keep these committees going with the support that you provide to our witnesses and to us as parliamentarians.
I want to start with you, Mr. Liivam, just to expand on your involvement that night. Were you on the ground that night when things were all happening?
Canadian Registered Safety Professional and President, Arctic Fire Safety Services Limited
My intent was to be there that night, but when my crews got split up, I had to take my senior firefighters with me, including one who was a former deputy fire chief for the Enoch Cree Nation.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
Okay. You're passing on information, and part of the information you're passing on isn't connecting with some of the information we have from the night of the fire about what was happening on the ground.
I know there will be other hearings. Hearings have been scheduled. This committee is looking at some of the governance issues and what we could do as members of Parliament to support future firefighting efforts.
Regarding the role of the unified command and the governance around that, I asked a question—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Excuse me. I have to interrupt for a second.
Mr. Liivam, your sound is not of sufficient quality for the interpreters.
Mr. Longfield, I'm sorry to interrupt your question, but you'll have to direct it to someone else, I think.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
If it's okay with you, Chair, I'll ask the question and ask for an answer—
Liberal
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
In terms of coordination of efforts, unified command really are the ones who are doing command and control on the disaster as it's unfolding. We did bring in firefighters from other countries, following governance through unified command. How was this group brought into the fire?
I understand there was an insurance company involved from the States. How did they tie into unified command? Who asked them to be there, and how did that then unfold in terms of governance?
Thank you for the answer and thank you for the role that you played in saving some property. Obviously, I think there's some coordination between your group and the unified command structure that needs some further work.
I'd like to take my question over to Mr. Messier.
You mentioned the pine beetle. I was involved with the forestry industry, supplying hydraulic equipment, back in the 2000s. In 2004, that outbreak happened, and the fight went on for years—actually, for more than a decade—to try and get pine beetles under control.
One of the theories at the time was that the pine beetle survived winters that used to be a lot more harsh before climate change affected weather patterns. Is that how, maybe directly or indirectly, climate change is affecting forests by allowing different types of species to attack trees just by their nature of living and what they do to survive? They take the life of the tree.
Could you comment on the role of climate change on the invasive species that are affecting our forests?
Professor of Forest Ecology, As an Individual
In the case that you brought forward, there were actually two causes of this increase in pine beetles. One was the fact that we planted a lot of lodgepole pine in British Columbia and in Alberta through forestry. I think we have created large monocultures that are actually much more susceptible to the pine beetle.
You're right in that scientists have also shown that when we get winter temperatures below -30°, it usually kills the beetles or reduces the number of beetles, and with climate change, it's getting warmer.
There were two factors, as you can see: survival of the beetles during the winter and the fact that there are a lot more pure lodgepole pines across B.C. That has created this epidemic.
Actually, this species was native to B.C. but not to Alberta, and it has crossed the Prairies because of this very large amount, and it's actually spreading toward the east and threatening all of the pines in Canada.
This is one example out of many other insects. As I said in my statement today, we shouldn't be worried about only fires; we should be worried about drought and about various types of insects that may not have been doing a lot of damage before but will do more damage now because the trees are getting weaker and becoming maladapted. We need to look at the question in a very broad way rather than just looking at one disturbance or one factor at a time.
October 7th, 2024 / 11:45 a.m.
Liberal
Lloyd Longfield Liberal Guelph, ON
I think the danger within this committee is that we are focused on Jasper as part of our study and we have legislation that has gone through the House on the Jasper situation. The broader picture of healthy forests and healthy biosystems becomes the bigger picture, and climate change is part of that, as you said; biodiversity is another big part of that, and the national government could have a role to play.
Am I understanding that properly in terms of rolling out better ecosystems for the forestry industry?
Professor of Forest Ecology, As an Individual
Yes, that's actually what I think we should do. We should use forestry as a tool to help diversify and adapt our forests to climate change and other disturbances.
I just got a big grant from NSERC and a lot of partners in Canada and provinces to test this across Canada. The idea will be to use forestry not just to simplify the forest and produce only a few species that are useful for the industry, but really to make the forest better adapted and more diversified. I think that if we do this, we will be able maybe to reduce the risk of having wildfires like the one in Jasper.
I will finish by saying that it should also be done in parks, not just in forests that we cut. Even in parks, the species are maladapted to what's happening and the risk of dying and burning is increasing.