Thank you very much.
My name is Damien Burns, and I am the assistant deputy minister of protective services with the Government of Yukon.
To open today, I would just like to say that every summer across western North America and across the world, wildfires threaten communities and infrastructure. Evacuations displace communities for weeks at a time. Air quality plummets to dangerous levels, and livelihoods are impacted by area closures, reduced tourism and damage to critical infrastructure.
The changing climate is increasing the length of the fire season. The severity of the weather within the season and the chance of ignition are widening. Most important, our neighbourhoods and communities in Yukon are expanding into the wildland/urban interface at an increased exposure to the mix of accumulated fuels and worsening fire climate. All across the world we are experiencing longer, more intense fire seasons that have pushed our fire response capacity to the brink of failure.
This perceived increase in extreme fire behaviour and the challenges of the past few seasons have really raised that awareness to a level of national significance, but it is believed that over the next few decades climate change will continue to significantly affect wildlife, fire management and emergency management in Canada. We do expect longer, more intense fire seasons and more extreme weather events, including droughts and flooding. We expect these environmental catastrophes to be more difficult to manage. This is, of course, a Yukon problem and a national problem.
This problem was clearly amplified last summer when in the Yukon we had to contend with the worst flooding in recent memory. Over 400 homes and pieces of critical infrastructure were threatened by rising water in our southern lakes. The challenges of this flooding, coupled with an average challenging Yukon fire season and the ongoing challenges of managing the global pandemic at the time, truly strained our emergency response providers in the Yukon. We were forced to call upon the Canadian Armed Forces, which kindly and generously provided 200 members to come and provide support to those 400 homes and the critical infrastructure that was affected. The support from the armed forces was invaluable in protecting these homes, which, in effect, represent the second-largest community in the Yukon.
The support was invaluable, but we see these emergencies increasing and further pressuring our resources. We see this climate emergency as an oppressing and immediate threat, and we are seeing the effects of a changing climate on our environment and across our Yukon communities.
I think I will leave it at that for now. Thank you.