Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Thank you, Madam Chair and honourable committee members, for the opportunity to speak with you today regarding the impacts of the wildfires on our northern communities. The Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation, PBCN, is a large multi-community band located in Saskatchewan and has a popu

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Initially when we declared the emergency evacuation, we made contact with the province, social services, and emergency services to let them know that we needed to get people out of the community. They sent in school buses for the priority one patients. These were the elderly and

Indigenous and Northern Affairs committee  Yes, okay.

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.

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  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  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  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