Mr. Speaker, Parks Canada concluded that producing and validating a comprehensive response to this question would require a significant amount of time and effort, which is not possible in the time allotted and could lead to the disclosure of incomplete and misleading information.
The information requested in part (a) related to fire plans and controlled burns is specific to individual national parks and is therefore located in various business units across the agency. All national parks with fire-prone vegetation are required to have a fire management plan in place as per the Parks Canada agency wildland fire management directive. These plans provide strategic direction on fire management activities and provide planning and operational priorities for implementing the park/site fire management program. These plans include the following core fire program elements: prevention, risk reduction, preparedness, wildfire management and response, and prescribed fire implementation. Parks/sites that implement controlled burns, prescribed fires, are required to develop specific prescribed fire plans for each prescribed fire project. In any given year, there are several of those plans ready for implementation across the agency.
The information pertaining to agreements and contracts for fire plans requested in parts (b) and (c) is not publicly available nor easily accessible. Overall, this request for all the plans, agreements and contracts would yield thousands of pages. Parks Canada has many wildfire mutual aid resource-sharing agreements in place at local, provincial and territorial levels, such as bilateral border zone agreements with most provinces and territories; nationally, such as the Canadian Interagency Mutual Aid Resources Sharing Agreement; and internationally, with the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, and South Africa. Parks Canada uses contracts, supply arrangements, and standing offers for additional wildfire resources such as contract fire crews; structure protection specialists; aircraft; wildfire equipment, such as pumps and hoses; camps; catering services; and aircraft fuel.