Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise and add my voice to this important emergency debate.
I want to start by thanking all of the firefighters, the first responders and the agencies, organizations and people who have opened up their hearts and homes to people fleeing the fires, as well as all those who are helping preserve communities right across western Canada. It is remarkable work that these people are doing. Earlier today, I had the opportunity to talk about some of the Alberta wildland firefighters who ended up trapped in the community of Chipewyan Lake, which is one of the northwestern chunks of my riding, in a very isolated area. They had lost radio communication, but luckily they were able to re-establish access into the community and those firefighters were able to get safely out of the community.
This is the challenge. We are dealing with multiple fires happening in multiple communities, so to all of those people who are fighting the fires, I say a sincere “thank you”.
That goes especially to a lot of the local politicians. When politicians are elected, they put their name on a ballot, but they do not necessarily anticipate that they are going to be dealing with a large evacuation. This is something that many of our local councillors have had to do. They have had to make choices in places that they did not think they would be making those choices. I sincerely thank those politicians; the grace and leadership they have been able to demonstrate is remarkable for their communities.
When we have fires like these, there is a lot of outpouring of support from right across the country. When we experienced the fire in Fort McMurray, there were people from coast to coast to coast coming together to support Fort McMurray. That was spectacular and wonderful, but what happens after the fire? We are now here in an emergency debate. This is the time to be having these conversations about a hotel or lack thereof in Winnipeg. These conversations pinpoint crisis challenges to make sure that we are addressing those issues, that everything that could be done by the federal government is being done, and that perhaps best practices are being shared.
One of the things that I want to get on the record here is the concept of having conversations about what long-term mitigation looks like. Fire-smarting is a lot more than just getting rid of dead leaves. My colleague highlighted that fire-smarting is incredibly important, but it goes a lot further than just fire-smarting the yard and choosing the right trees, because it can go down to asking, are people fire-smarting their home? Are they putting non-combustible materials on the outside of their house? What does that look like in terms of the non-combustible materials on their roof? Have they moved debris and combustible materials away from their home? What have they done to perhaps install sprinkler systems that can be deployed remotely? These are all conversation spaces, and I really appreciate the member for Calgary Confederation for talking about fire-smarting, because it has such an important role here.
However, there is so much more than just cosmetic fire-smarting. We heard a bit earlier that the Species at Risk Act prevents firebreaks from being built in certain places and communities, so it puts northern and isolated communities at risk, because we cannot do those firebreaks. Furthermore, the Migratory Birds Convention Act is another federal act that comes up regularly that is an impediment to doing adequate firebreaks and fire-smarting around communities, because people have to wait until after all the birds have nested and all the eggs are gone. Those are challenges.
In Fort McMurray, it was unseasonably warm. We could see that there were risks. We could see that there were going to be problems. The challenge was that we could not do anything until there was a local state of emergency. Until that point in time, we could not do that preparation that we knew was important. That is the challenge. That is when communities really struggle with this.
I am going to take this opportunity, because this is one of the first opportunities I have had to give a speech in this chamber in this 45th Parliament. I want to give a shout-out to possibly one of the only people who is listening at home here tonight, at nearly midnight. He is a good friend of mine, a local councillor in the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo, otherwise known as Fort McMurray. He is my good friend, Allan Grandison. Allan is always there in my corner. He has always been there, supporting me and cheering me on, and he is a very brave individual.
Allan has had to navigate, in his time on council, many evacuations, which included us welcoming evacuees from the Northwest Territories last summer. He did it with grace and dignity, looking out for seniors and elders in a way that was truly remarkable.
Lessons that Allan and the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo deployed last summer are things I would like to see the federal government doing. There is so much we can do to make sure people understand that we are here for them. We can go beyond the blame game, which is not important right now. What is important right now is that people have a safe place to stay, have food and know that someone loves and cares for them.
If someone is not in their home right now, if someone is struggling because they do not know if they are going to have a home to go back to, understand that there are politicians in this place who understand what they are going through. I remember back to my time with the Fort McMurray fire, or even just last summer, when I could not make a flight to get out of Fort McMurray because the highway had to be shut down to allow people to evacuate. We get these people. We are here for them and we are going to work diligently to make sure they have what they need.
I am thankful for this opportunity to speak. I wish a great night to everyone, and I thank Allan.
