Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The resources that are needed in each of our communities, especially the ones with road access.... I'll talk about structural fires as opposed to forest fires. For structural fires, basically what you need is a fire hall and a fire truck, as well as trained personnel and the prop

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  It's very important that we become engaged in any of those strategies to address emergencies, whether it's fires, flooding, or whatever. It is very important that we have input into any kind of management strategy for fires and the suppression of those fires. Peter Ballantyne be

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  My experience is that, yes, there are a lot of social media messages that tend to differ greatly from what's really happening on the ground. In this instance, we provided information to those evacuees who were in the evacuation centres in the hotels. We had our personnel go there

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I'll start with the evacuations. Obviously, we mentioned what was wrong right off the top, but one of the things we appreciated was the communications we had later on in the process of the evacuations. We were able to talk to emergency management officials in the province. We als

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We did run into that. It's fresh in my mind that we did try to get our certified firefighters.... They're called level three firefighters. Level one are the initial attack crews funded by the province. They're very well-trained men. You also have the first nations firefighters at

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In terms of the agreements with the province, we were not aware that there was any kind of discussion going on between the province and the federal government in terms of the funding required to facilitate our being able to respond to forest fires. I think there has to be some

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The way it was structured was that they would have their meetings, whether it was a teleconference among themselves or in a face-to-face meeting. After that, they would join in to our conference call with them. They did their management strategies with the fire and so on within t

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  In the case of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation health services, the emergency response coordinator was a funded position through the Prince Albert Grand Council. I believe it came from the first nations and Inuit health branch, FNIHB. That funding is coming to a close. I believe tha

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  I want to make a very quick point. It's extremely rare in Saskatchewan to be having that type of situation. We're into August and it should be starting to cool off and you wouldn't be expecting forest fires.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  That spring we had very high water levels.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Nobody was thinking about forest fires at all until we hit July and we hit extremely hot temperatures and no rain, right through August. That's when they started, at the beginning of August, I believe. They were aware of this; some of them started August 5 or 8. We had hot weathe

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We went from one extreme to the other.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Priority one patients are chronic care patients. They could be diabetics who need dialysis services two or three times a week. These are people who need that service. They have to be taken out of the community. Some of the other ones are chronic heart patients or people with very

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  The province. I'm not sure which agency that would have been, whether it was the Red Cross or the emergency management organization. I don't know exactly who made that call, but they sent in school buses.

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  We had conference calls with the province, social services, wildfire management, and other agencies within the province that we work with in emergencies. This isn't the first one we've been through. One of those agencies would have ordered those buses.