Environment Committee on Oct. 23rd, 2024

[Gerald Soroka, Conservative, Yellowhead, AB]

Some of the things we definitely need to look forward to are.... How can we rebuild?

I'll go back to Mr. Mulligan.

One of the things Ms. Friedel just brought up is that the west side of Jasper, potentially, still can burn.

What kinds of options do we have to do proper forest management there in order to make sure Jasper does not see another forest fire coming from the northwest?

[Brock Mulligan]

I think all of the stakeholders need to be brought together immediately to have a conversation. It's good that we're having these types of conversations about how we can develop a very progressive forest management plan and look at all the tools in the tool box to manage it.

If we assume that leaving things as they are is a viable approach going forward, we risk reliving exactly what we've seen.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you.

Mr. van Koeverden, you have the floor.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

My question will be for MLA Sweet, if that's okay.

You mentioned the problematic rate of pay and the seasonality of the workforce with respect to wildland firefighters in Alberta. I'm curious how that rather austere approach impacts the retention of Alberta wildland firefighters and if retraining is required season after season, if that's the case.

[Heather Sweet]

That's a great question. Our retention is quite low. We increased one fire crew this year, which had almost all brand new staff on it. Most people, like I said, for obvious reasons, go to other jurisdictions, whether they go to Parks Canada or whether they go to B.C., because they're not compensated for being here. Unless you're going back to school, you need a year-round employment opportunity. Retention is very low and, yes, we have to do retraining every year.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you for your insight. I think we all agree that paying first responders appropriately to ensure that they don't need new people every year is really important.

Mr. Mulligan, I have a question, and I thank you for your work and for the contributions that you make to the economy. Obviously, forestry, wood products and lumber are very important for various reasons. In 2017, we heard, not just from your organization but others who said, “Hey, look, the fire likelihood is higher than it has been in the past. The pine beetle has definitely had a significant and deleterious impact on the life of the forest, and fires are more likely.” Following that, our government invested heavily in clearing, in a sprinkler system and in an incremental number of burns.

Are you aware of those additional investments and what the investments were like prior? I know you're not a government official and you work in the sector, but are you aware of the response that the government made during those times?

[Brock Mulligan]

I'm not well aware of the response to fire mitigation within the park. I'm more aware of the investments that were made in pine beetle mitigation. It was $75 million that was put into that. It built on work that was already undergoing in Alberta, and I think, frankly, that it worked quite well. In terms of the protection of the town with some of the other measures that you mentioned, I'm not as up to speed on those.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Milton, ON]

Thank you very much. I've been poring over the numbers too. In hindsight, when you look at a disaster, the response can always be that we should have done more. There's no question that more could always be done, but I'll also say that the amount invested in removal, in preventative fire burning and in the sprinkler system was unprecedented for the area.

I thank you for bringing it to the attention of the minister of the day, and I can reassure you that actions were taken.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much. I want to thank the witnesses both here and online for contributing to this very important discussion.

We're going to take a short break and go on to the second panel. Thank you again. Thank you for being here and for being online.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

I call the meeting back to order.

Members, we are about to start the second panel.

We have with us for this second panel Mr. Jim Eglinski, who is a retired member of Parliament.

Mr. Eglinski, welcome back to the House of Commons.

[Jim Eglinski, Retired Member of Parliament, As an Individual]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We also have Dane de Souza, senior policy adviser on emergency management. Both Mr. Eglinski and Mr. de Souza are appearing as individuals. From the Indigenous Leadership Initiative, we have Amy Cardinal Christianson, policy analyst. From the Outdoor Council of Canada, we have Lindsey Gartner, project director.

We'll start with you, Mr. Eglinski. I think you know how it works. You have five minutes.

[Jim Eglinski]

Thank you, Chair.

Good afternoon, committee members.

Thank you for inviting me to speak to you about the Jasper National Park fire this past summer. I never thought I would be sitting as a speaker on a committee. I'm more comfortable on your side, asking questions, but what took place this summer in Jasper Park and the townsite needs to be studied and examined, and I want to thank the committee for conducting this study.

As the past sitting member of Parliament for the Yellowhead riding, I spoke numerous times in the House of Commons regarding the pine beetle situation in Jasper Park and the Yellowhead region. I spoke in May 2016 in the House of Commons, asking the Liberals for their plan to combat the pine beetle infestation in Jasper National Park. I told them at that time that nothing was being done.

I again brought up the issue in June 2017 to then-environment minister Catherine McKenna. I explained my concerns about the tremendous fuel load of dead trees that were the result of the pine beetle. I stressed that the residents were concerned for the safety of the visitors and for their own homes. I told the Liberals there was a high risk of a devastating fire in Jasper if they did not act.

In October 2017, during question period, I asked the Liberals what they were going to do to assist the forestry industry in my region due to the pine beetle infestation. I received no reassurance. On October 26, 2017, I spoke of the pine beetle and my experience with it in B.C. I tried to explain in detail the movement of the pine beetle and that Jasper had turned brown from one end to the other.

I told the Liberals that the people of Jasper at that time, just a few months later, feared for their safety and the safety of their community because of the dead pine trees, and that there was a risk of a fire that, if started, people would not be able to escape. I asked the Liberals for an adaptation plan for the pine beetle, but never received one and never witnessed adequate action being taken by the government inside the park.

On November 9, 2017, I rose again in the House to ask about the government's plan for the pine beetle infestation. I advised that the infestation had increased tenfold in the last year and that it had moved from Jasper into central Alberta. I asked directly what the Liberals were doing to stop this infestation. I once again received no answer.

My point is that, after raising these concerns, I continued to visit Jasper National Park and did not see adequate responses. The Liberal government knew that a fire in Jasper was inevitable—we all did—but it failed to take this seriously to prevent the devastation of the Jasper wildfire. By July 2024, there was so much deadwood laying around that Jasper was a tinderbox. Those of us who live in this area knew there would be a major, destructive fire. We just didn't know when, but we do now.

Jasper National Park and the town of Jasper were almost totally destroyed by the fire. Thankfully, not all was lost.

The impact on the residents of Jasper and business owners and the tourism losses will be felt for years to come. I hope your study of this tragedy will make our park safer and protect the environmental beauty of the landscape and the communities within it.

In closing my address, I want the committee to know that two weeks ago, I drove toward Jasper Park, starting from Lake Louise in the south. I was shocked to see the degree of burn in the park leading up to the Jasper townsite. It had to be a horrendously hot fire. The destruction in the community was devastating. It's hard to put it into words. I feel deeply for the people of Jasper. It's going to be a tough road ahead for them.

For the last 50 years, I have loved to travel through our beautiful Jasper park to enjoy the mountains, the wildlife and the incredible scenery. Never in any of those trips—and there were hundreds—was I not lucky enough to see abundant wildlife.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to stress this: On this last trip through Jasper National Park, I did not see one animal.

What went wrong? The people of Jasper deserve answers.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

We'll go now to Mr. de Souza for five minutes, please.

[Dane de Souza, Senior Policy Adviser, Emergency Management, As an Individual]

Thank you.

Good evening. My name is Dane de Souza. I'm a citizen of the Métis Nation of Alberta. My Métis family names are Sutherland and Sinclair from the Selkirk area of the Red River valley.

I'm a wildland firefighter. I worked six years as a helitack wildfire fighter out of the Rocky Mountain House district in Alberta. I'm a wildfire researcher and expert on indigenous fire stewardship.

I thank you for this opportunity to address you tonight.

I'm going to get right to it. The cause of Jasper, Lytton, Fort McMurray and Slave Lake is not climate change. The intensity and prevalence of fires like these are exacerbated by climate change; however, their cause is directly tied to the colonial suppression of indigenous fire stewardship and fire on the land in general.

To illustrate, indigenous fire stewardship in what is currently Canada is a landscape-based science developed over more than 20,000 years to manage the landscape-based phenomenon of wildfires. Fourteen thousand years ago, the Laurentide glacier spread from the Rocky Mountains to Hudson Bay. As it receded inch by inch, my ancestors were there applying fire to the land. We can track human migration across the planet by tracking the impacts we have had on the natural environment, like the extinction of megafauna.

Applying fire to the land has been and is a key component of how we, as human beings, have influenced our natural environment. As species of trees have grown to repopulate the landscapes formed by glacial recession, my ancestors were there every single inch of the way, applying fire to the landscape to engineer the ecological conditions necessary to sustain themselves.

Within the genetics of every blade of grass, every tree and every animal on this continent is the memory of these fires. There are countless reasons for which the land would be burned, ranging from influencing the migration of animals, to reinvigorating the growth of plants to provide medicines and sustenance, to influencing the makeup of the landscape to provide materials and mobility throughout the forest.

In my research, I have interviewed the last of the traditional fire stewards left in the wake of Canada's cultural genocide. Each of them speaks of a turning point in the 1980s, in which Canada could effectively enforce the suppression of indigenous fire stewardship, which was passed into law in the 1900s.

If you were to look at the graphs of fire intensity, frequency and prevalence in the boreal forest, they all follow a similar pattern. In the 1990s, there's a steady increase. In the 2000s, it steepens. Now, it's virtually vertical, in comparison. This is not a coincidence. Indigenous fire has set the rhythm of forest cycles throughout the boreal, having created landscapes that can tolerate fire and increase resilience. By removing indigenous fire from the land, we have created the conditions that result in the exact scenarios we're here to discuss today.

I've had the pleasure of working with the Mountain Legacy Project, which compares photos of modern-day national parks like Banff and Jasper with glass slides taken over 100 years ago. There's a striking difference between these landscapes in the composition of the forest. One hundred years ago, Jasper was speckled with small fields, prairies, glens and forests at different stages of the growth cycle—a landscape mosaic. More recently, these forests are dense, conifer-rich oceans of trees.

Picture the boreal forest as an ocean and fire as a wave that passes through that ocean, gaining force and energy until it becomes a force that is absolutely unstoppable. There's no house, no infrastructure and no response that can withstand this amount of energy, which is beyond that of an atomic bomb.

Now, picture that exact same ocean. Over here is an island that was burnt five years ago to reinvigorate traditional medicines. Then over here is an archipelago of underbrush that was cleared six years ago to create mobility through portages. Over here is a nice little island for ungulates that was burnt five years ago. As that wave comes through that ocean of trees, it crashes upon the shores of those pockets and loses its energy, so by the time it reaches communities, it can be dealt with.

The solution at hand is at the intersection of climate action and truth and reconciliation. By employing wildfire practitioners year-round to carry out landscape-level burns with decentralized decision-making, we can return good fire to land. These benefits are not only that we can prevent another conversation like this and save lives, but we can increase biodiversity and optimize carbon cycling, ecological health and resilience in the face of climate change.

Last year, wildfires in Canada put more carbon into the atmosphere than the entire global airline industry. These wildfires are unnatural and their impact on the ability of the forest to sequester and store carbon has detriments that threaten the existence of humanity.

By following models similar to those championed by the Banff wildfire management program, we can action these solutions. This model requires that wildfire management is carried out by landscape-level decision-makers and practitioners who are highly experienced and committed to fire stewardship in collaboration with local communities and indigenous knowledge-keepers.

To be quite frank, I find it sickening that we're here talking about Jasper, not Lytton and not Paddle Prairie. We're admonishing those who responded to these fires while gutting wildfire programs every year and bleeding vital years of experience. We're not here talking about the wildland firefighters who lost their lives in the past years.

Here are your solutions: Invest in indigenous fire stewardship, work with communities at a landscape level to put good fire on the land to meet needs beyond resiliency and honour the lives of those firefighters who have lost their lives by treating this as an occupation as opposed to a cost variable on a forestry budget that is to be slashed for political gain.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Mr. de Souza.

We'll go now to Amy Cardinal Christianson for five minutes.

[Amy Cardinal Christianson, Policy Analyst, Indigenous Leadership Initiative]

Thank you.

My name is Amy Cardinal Christianson. I live in Treaty 6, Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. I'm a member of the Métis Nation from the Cardinal and Laboucane families of Treaty 6 and Treaty 8. My family's band, Peeaysis Band, was disenfranchised by the Canadian government.

My family used to travel and trade through Jasper, but I do not have indigenous rights or territory in the area and fully support the indigenous rights holders there.

I come to this testimony from a national perspective through my past role as a research scientist with the Canadian forest service for 15 years, my two years spent as an indigenous fire specialist with Parks Canada and my current role with Indigenous Leadership Initiative.

I first want to send my thoughts of compassion and solidarity to my colleagues with Parks Canada, who not only had to endure the fire event that happened there and the recovery they are currently undertaking but also hearings like this, where people take incredibly complex situations that are generations in the making and try to finger-point. I know how hard you were all working leading up to the fire. I know what you endured during the fires, and I fully support your moving forward.

As the previous indigenous witnesses stated, the fire problem in Jasper National Park started in 1907, when the national park was established and indigenous people were forcibly removed. These people had distinct kinship ties to the cultural landscapes there, including fire stewardship practices like frequently burning valley bottoms to achieve diversity on the landscape in coordination with our important teacher, lightning. Now when people travel to national parks like Jasper, they observe a carpet of dark green trees as far as the eye can see and think it is beautiful and natural; it is not. It is an unhealthy landscape that is suffering. It is not adaptive to human-caused climate change, which is further increasing the fire problem.

Our elders refer to this as a “hungry forest”, because you have to go so far to encounter any forms of diversity. These homogenous forests, where the trees are all around the same age and same species type, become prone to disturbances like insects and out-of-control fires, as many witnesses have stated, but I want to make it clear that fire is not a disturbance on the landscape although we treat it as such. Rather, it has been the removal of fire from fire-dependent forests in Canada that has been the larger disturbance and has caused what we're seeing today.

When I woke up the day after Jasper burned, I had multiple messages from indigenous people who are rights holders in that area saying that this would never have happened if they had been allowed to continue their relationship with fire in the lands and valleys of Jasper.

I also want to point out that what happened in Jasper is not unique. Indigenous communities all across Canada are repeatedly disproportionately impacted by wildfire. In the last two years, 149 indigenous communities have experienced wildfire evacuations. I'll repeat that. One hundred forty-nine indigenous communities were evacuated from wildfire in the last two years, yet indigenous nations and people are continually excluded from decision-making around fire management.

Wildfire evacuations are expensive. We estimated that, in the last 42 years, wildfire evacuations have cost the Canadian economy $4.6 billion. This doesn't even include the cost of fighting the fires, just of moving people. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the years in Canada on bringing in international firefighters who don't know our landscape. We're spending hundreds of millions on firefighting planes that need to be upgraded or replaced.

People are starting to push for a federal firefighting force, but more bureaucracy with people further removed from local knowledge is not the answer.

We already have a movement that could function as a net nationwide firefighting force in Canada that's just waiting to be activated, indigenous guardians. More than 200 first nation, year-round guardian programs already help manage lands and waters across the country. Some are helping respond to fires. When fire threatened Fort Good Hope, Northwest Territories, this June, the guardians were prepared. They helped evacuate community members, and thanks to training from Yukon First Nations Wildfire, they joined the fire line and helped save the town.

By expanding existing guardian programs and investing in new fire guardian programs, we can create a fleet of locally knowledgeable professionals ready to respond to fire and reduce risk. Indigenous fire guardians will work year-round on fire. They will be able to put fire on the land in spring and fall, a technique proven to reduce fire risk during hot, dry summers. They will work on emergency management, planning, education, preparedness and fire prevention and on response and on recovery after fires happen.

Vegetation also grows back, and they will be there to make sure that fire mitigation work is maintained. They will work to build healthy landscapes that will also protect our vital watersheds. Not only does this increase the ability to navigate this new area of fire, but it also creates jobs. Engaging more guardians in fighting wildfire is an investment that pays off.

I've just returned from Australia where their indigenous fire rangers are making huge positive impacts. It will enable indigenous nations in Canada to meet the challenge of supercharged fire with greater capacity and indigenous and local knowledge.

We will always have fire, but we can change our relationship with it. Indigenous leadership is the future of fire.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Ms. Cardinal Christianson.

We will go now to Lindsey Gartner for five minutes, please.

[Lindsey Gartner, Project Director, Outdoor Council of Canada]

Hello, everyone.

I would just like to start by thanking you, Amy and Dane, for the immense knowledge that you brought here today. I stand in solidarity with your messages.

I am Lindsey. I am a Jasper community member who has called Jasper home for close to seven years. I wish that I could be with you today in person so that we could look each other in the eyes and so that you could see in me the future, because I am the future, like your children and your grandchildren.

So far in this committee, various politicians have asked what we will do to protect other communities and how we will protect Canadians. I am here today to tell you one way that we can protect our future. The first step is putting aside the divisive politics and working together.

As our community grapples with the aftermath of this fire, there is a troubling narrative, one that points fingers at individuals, political leaders and governmental agencies. First and foremost, these divisive politics are harmful to Jasperites. As a resident myself and as someone with deep connections to those who actively fought the fire and are working tirelessly on recovery efforts now, my message is that Jasper needs support, not division. Please put the politics aside and allow Jasperites to recover. Listen to the on-the-ground expertise. Support those who are on the ground. That is the role of good leadership.

Second, beneath these surface-level discussions lies a much larger, more insidious truth. The wildfire that swept through our community is not an isolated event. It is the consequence of climate change, of colonial land-use practices and of a global system built on extraction and corporate gain at the cost of a livable planet.

The same competitive and cutthroat attitude with which we have treated the earth is present in our Parliament today. Why are we amplifying a culture of division, destruction and competition? We desperately need collaboration. The conversation around this fire has been misdirected. It has been convenient to focus on surface-level debates, like which party didn't allocate enough resources or what management plan could have been different. However, the root issue is not about one individual's mistake or a single policy misstep. Climate change is the outcome of a system that prioritizes short-term economic profit over long-term human and ecological health.

Wildfires, floods and droughts are all symptoms of a system that no longer serves life but only serves profit. My question is not what one governmental agency or one party is to do in a nearsighted time frame. My question is about what we are going to do to ensure that there's a future for young people. We don't want to live on a burning planet, but we are. I do not want to see my leadership point fingers and perpetuate divisive and polarizing arguments when I need you to work together to find solutions to climate change.

Here is my single recommendation. I implore you to acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis and to take an active role in being leaders to drive us to solutions. I believe you can do this. There is an overwhelming consensus through the largest peer-reviewed scientific process, the IPCC, which outlines why we must meet our international targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Please listen to the science.

This is to every person in Parliament, every political leader and every Canadian: Canada can be the leader of a system that prioritizes human well-being. We have the resources, the land, the culture and the people. With regard to climate change, we can adapt and show the world what an abundant system looks like. This is an exciting moment. I believe it is an inflection point in history, but business-as-usual will not work. You have an opportunity to be a leader, to be a leader of this change and to protect other communities like Jasper. However, that will require collaboration, and it will require a dedication to choose people's well-being over division. That needs to start right here in our Parliament.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Francis Scarpaleggia]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gartner.

We'll go now to the rounds of questions.

Mr. Mazier, you have six minutes, please.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses today. There's been some great testimony here.

Mr. Eglinski, since the Jasper wildfire investigation began, we've learned that Parks Canada officials were discussing cancelling prescribed burns. A senior official at Parks Canada wrote in an email, months before the Jasper wildfires, “At what point do we make the organizational decision to cancel...prescribed burns in Western Canada?”

Did Parks Canada complete all the prescribed burns in Jasper that they said they would?

[Jim Eglinski]

To my knowledge, no. We had many discussions with staff from the parks. They would tell us that they were going to do a burn in the fall and that they were going to do a burn in the spring. Those never happened. In our pine beetle task force that we set up with Parks Canada, the industry of the area, the Town of Hinton, the Town of Edson and Yellowhead County, there was always “going to do”, but nothing happened.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Eglinski, I've obtained some very damning allegations from you. In 2016 you stated, “government employees have been told they cannot talk to the local officials about [the mountain pine beetle] issue”. You then stated that the Liberal government was “muzzling scientists” at Parks Canada.

Are you aware of any Parks Canada employees who have been reprimanded or placed under a gag order for voicing their concerns with the Liberal government's mismanagement of Jasper National Park?

[Jim Eglinski]

Yes. I am aware of one individual, one of the scientists working in the park, being terminated for comments he made against management or management levels. I did not speak to that gentleman personally—he did not want to speak to me—but messages were relayed to me by fellow workers of his to take some action. I thought it was deemed necessary to bring it up in the House.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Was he terminated?