Good afternoon.
Thank you, Chair, for the opportunity to present to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development.
My name is Randy Schroeder. I'm a fire chief. I'm the president of the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association and vice-chair of the CAFC national advisory council.
I want to begin by expressing my deepest gratitude to the first responders, including the many municipal fire services, the RCMP, sheriffs, EMS, contractors, the Alberta emergency management agency, Alberta Wildfire, Canada Task Force 2 and Parks Canada, who were all on the front lines during the incident. These brave individuals risked their own well-being to protect the town of Jasper, assisting in the evacuation of thousands and aiding in the ongoing recovery efforts.
I would also like to extend my special thanks to fire chief Mathew Conte of the Jasper Fire Department, who displayed extraordinary leadership and resilience throughout the crisis, despite the personal loss of his own home.
The AFCA has passed resolutions advocating that the Alberta government improve wildfire management by developing a long-term strategy for the resourcing and management of wildland fire events outside Alberta's forest protection areas, and inside as well. These resolutions call for the establishment of a working group consisting of subject matter experts, elected officials and senior municipal administrators to collaborate on this strategy. We're also collaborating with our municipal associations in this advocacy.
While the resolutions focus on the areas outside of the forest protection area, Alberta ministers Ellis' and Loewen's responses led to a recent increase in resources, budget and work toward the creation of a provincial wildfire mitigation strategy, on which the Alberta Fire Chiefs Association has provided input.
The AFCA is advocating to increase response readiness with an increase in wildland urban interface teams across the province. These teams proved critical in saving the historic Jasper Park Lodge, among other infrastructure in Jasper.
Alberta's wildfire season has been starting earlier, lasting longer and affecting larger areas in recent years, creating significant pressure on municipalities and forest services within and outside the FPA. Across the province, we consistently advocate for greater promotion of public education and greater financial support of FireSmart by increasing staffing and growing the program with coordinators at a local level throughout the province, creating public incentives and so on.
On a national level, we have also passed similar resolutions through the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, advocating for accessible, combined curriculum training to provide commonality and standardization among several entities, including Alberta's wildland urban interface training guidelines, the NFPA, the IAAF, the CIFFC and local municipal agencies. Multiple curricula pose a challenge to fire chiefs, who must balance the burden of time to train a volunteer among a host of other training requirements, and provide and sustain a local service level. The lack of coordination between these training resources presents challenges in standardization and available training.
The AFCA will refrain from commenting on the incident management specifics of this incident, recognizing the complexities the incident presented. The logistical geographical challenges, topography, fire behaviour, weather conditions, multi-jurisdictional governance and differentiating fuel types, along with the diverse agencies from across the province and beyond, were challenging in every way possible. Combine that with an interface that posed the challenges of protecting a community filled with historically important but very flammable construction and numerous buildings with cedar and pine shake roofs, clad with wooden siding, built with lightweight construction and beautified with flammable vegetation in almost every yard.
It was a testament to the efforts of all on the ground that so much was saved, including all of the town's critical infrastructure.
We all have a responsibility to increase our resiliency to fire. Government agencies, fire services, businesses and residents share in a combined effort to change our collective approach and behaviour in community planning, development and design, as well as in implementing change to what is already built. It is imperative that we apply rigorous risk assessment practices, effective fire management and appropriate funding to ensure that community protection measures are in place.
Finally, the AFCA supports the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs' advocacy for the creation of a national fire administration. This national fire administration would serve as the nucleus of future national emergency management responses. It would be an organization entailing three types of coordination: between fire departments and federal departments on the fire, life safety and emergency management implications of national priority; between wildfire agencies and structural fire departments at a national level; and between—