Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.
My heart goes out to people in the west dealing with wildfires and displacement. While this is a debate rightly focused on wildfires in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, like other members, I did want to acknowledge that wildfires are also impacting the people of Alberta, with thousands of evacuees from Swan Hills, Dene Tha' and other communities across the province.
We have seen many wildfires of late in my home province of Alberta alone: in Slave Lake and Richardson in 2011, Fort McMurray in May 2016, High Level in 2019 and millions of hectares in 2023 that forced thousands of evacuations. Of course, last year in Jasper, 25,000 people were evacuated and hundreds of homes were destroyed. Sadly, that is a pretty incomplete list of all of the fires.
We know wildfire seasons are getting longer, more intense and harder to predict across the nation, and more extreme weather, like wildfires and floods, are now our reality. It is tragic. We need to live the mantra of prepare, adapt and recover. We need to do what we can, as a government, as a Parliament and as a nation, to assist the affected people across the west through this troubling time.
These events are concentrated moments in a chain of events. Looking backwards, leading to this are decisions we have made as societies across the globe that have increased extreme weather events. We cannot wave away climate change. It is not a future threat; it is a present one. It takes a somewhat wilful blindness to ignore the increasing frequency of so-called 100-year floods and once-in-a-generation forest fires. It takes a denial that borders on malice to ignore the increase in hurricanes, droughts and heat waves that climate change has brought, which have cost the lives of thousands across the globe.
If members are not familiar with what a wet-bulb temperature is, I am sorry to say they likely will be in the future. It is a temperature and humidity at which sweating no longer cools people down. When that temperature is over 35 degrees for long enough, death without air conditioning is a given. Climate change is driving wet-bulb temperatures to be more frequent and of longer duration. It is, one might say, a five-alarm wake-up call.
We need to prepare, adapt and recover. The changes to our climate brought on by climate change are already here. We need to prepare for more extreme weather events, adapt to our changing climate and recover when the events happen. We do need to be fire smart, which includes ignition-resistant homes, firebreaks and land use planning, keeping yards clean and forest management. Prescribed burns are done by the provinces, and Parks Canada does some, but we have to acknowledge it is a smaller window for prescribed burns, and there is resource competition with all of the wildfires that are occurring because of climate change.
Yes, I agree with members opposite that a national firefighting force has promise, and I am glad it is something being explored. I am glad that, as the Minister of Emergency Management and Community Resilience has said, nothing is off the table. We also need to incentivize residents and businesses to prepare for and adapt to this changing climate. We need to minimize the damage. We need to take steps now, working with global partners, to reduce the damage that climate change is bringing us.
My friends, this is not as bad as it gets. I said fires are part of a chain. We have looked backwards, but now it is time to look forward from this event. These crises are often less time-bound and geography-bound than we imagine.
In a past life, I worked for the Government of Alberta, in a province that has seen too many major wildfires. I joined just after Fort McMurray was evacuated and burned, as it was being rebuilt. I was there in 2019 when wildfires forced the evacuation of High Level. Unfortunately, one of the things we learned is that the effects of wildfires last far longer than the moment of crisis. There is an event, a fire; people are evacuated and the community is with them. The country is with them. Volunteers and donations come in from everywhere, from across the globe.
A year later, life is supposed to be normal again. The fire is gone; people are back. Maybe their homes are rebuilt. That is often when mental health problems begin. By then, that national and international focus and that national and international support are gone. As the hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands said, it is a long, hard road to recovery.
The events are also less geography-bound, and the hazy skies over Ottawa today remind us of that. Calgarians know this very well. From 1981 to 2015, there were an average of 18 smoke hours per year in the city of Calgary. No year had over 100. Now we see hundreds of smoke hours routinely: 315 in 2017, 450 in 2018, 439 in 2021, 512 in 2023, and 2024 was only 200. Again, I will say that is compared to a 1981-to-2015 average that was far lower.
Such smoke presents serious risks. The concentrated air pollution that forest fires create can, on the mild end, cause headaches and coughs and inconvenience for the healthy. On the more serious end, it moves from asthma attacks and irregular heartbeats to heart attacks, strokes and birth defects.
Again, as we look to the effects across geography and time, we must prepare, adapt and recover. We need air filtration, both home and personal, for communities far from hot spots; mental health supports for the affected; and insurance, longer-term funding and support to rebuild when we lose communities and homes, as we tragically have and tragically will.
I want to close by saying that none of this can be done at the expense of responding to the moment of crisis we find ourselves in. For those affected, their governments, communities and first responders are with them. We will move heaven and earth to respond to this moment. Not all will be perfect, as nothing is in these moments, but these are the moments when we set aside all partisan thought and have no thought but for their safety. However, I ask that as this moment of crisis recedes, the House not lose sight of the chain, forward and backward, that it is part of: the imperative to address climate change, the imperative to think broadly about this challenge and the imperative to be there for people when the news cycle moves on.
My children have had too many smoke-filled days. Our country has seen too many evacuees flee their homes, unsure if they will ever return. Communities have seen too many lives unravelled by the long-term consequences. We have in our hands, as a Parliament, the power and responsibility to help our country prepare, adapt and recover. I hope we take that responsibility very seriously.