44th Parl. 1st Sess.
June 5, 2023 11:00AM
- Jun/5/23 5:58:47 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present petition e-4281, signed by almost 2,000 Canadians. The petitioners point out that a major source of bird mortality is collisions with windows and buildings. The Canadian Standards Association has a bird-friendly design standard that is already practised by many architects, builders and municipalities. These designs significantly reduce bird mortalities, at minimal cost.
The petitioners ask that the federal government include this standard in the national building code, and they also ask for a national plan to reduce the mortality of birds from building and window collisions.
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- Jun/5/23 6:58:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I rise to ask for an emergency debate on the urgent and escalating wildfire situation in Canada.
I want to first say that our hearts are with the 30,000 Canadians who are still out of their homes and the many hundreds who have lost everything in these fires. I thank the firefighters on land and in the air for their brave and dangerous work keeping all of us safe.
More than 400 fires are burning right now across the country from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia. More than 3.6 million hectares have been torched so far this year, and it is only the first week of June. We have a long, hot fire season ahead of us.
Local and provincial first responders have been overwhelmed. It is clear that we need to re-evaluate the federal role in wildfire protection and response to develop a more proactive process, instead of the present reactive one, and we must do as much of this as possible as quickly as possible in the next few weeks, before summer truly arrives.
This process and support to affected parts of the country should be informed by the urgent debate of Parliament, so I therefore ask for an emergency debate tonight here in the House of Commons.
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- Jun/5/23 9:52:03 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member for Yellowhead mentioned gatekeepers, as a lot of Conservatives do. When I heard the Conservative leader give a speech on the budget last year, he gave a 20-minute speech entirely on gatekeepers and did not mention a single federal gatekeeper in his whole speech.
The member for Yellowhead mentioned gatekeepers around providing housing. I am wondering if he could point out where the federal gatekeepers are in that program.
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moved:
That this House do now adjourn.
He said: Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Griesbach.
I would like to thank the Speaker for granting my request for an emergency debate on the urgent and escalating wildfire situation across Canada.
I want to say first that our hearts are with the 120,000 Canadians who have been forced to flee their homes this year, 30,000 of whom are still out of their homes, and even more so with the many hundreds who have lost everything in these wildfires. I thank the firefighters on land and in the air for their brave and dangerous work in keeping all of us safe.
More than 400 fires are burning right now across the country from Vancouver Island to Nova Scotia. More than 3.6 million hectares of forest have been torched. Today, for the first time in my eight years as an MP, I woke to smoky skies in Ottawa, a sight I know only too well from my home in British Columbia, but it was a first for me here, and it is only the first week of June. We have a long and hot fire season ahead of us.
Local and provincial first responders have already been overwhelmed in Alberta, Nova Scotia and Quebec. It is clear that we need to re-evaluate the federal role in wildfire protection and response to develop a more proactive process instead of the present reactive one. We must do much of this as quickly as possible in the next few weeks before summer truly arrives. This process and support to affected parts of the country should be informed by the urgent debate of Parliament, and that is why we are here late at night debating this critically important topic.
This has been a wildfire season like no other. The area burned so far is 10 times the annual average. How many times have we heard that over the last decade? How many summers have been described as the “worst ever” for forest fires?
I was listening to Dr. Mike Flannigan, a wildfire expert from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops on the radio a couple of days ago, and he made some important comments that I will be repeating here tonight. One of the most important was his comment that this weather, these fire seasons, are not the new normal. He said that we are in a downward spiral when it comes to climate change and wildfire behaviour, and that our fight against climate change is a fight to keep things from getting worse and worse.
A paper published in the journal of Environmental Research Letters last month found that about 40% of the wildfires we are experiencing every year in North America can be directly attributed to the fossil fuel industry and its impact on climate change. However, while we are fighting climate change to keep things from getting worse, we must adapt to the changes that are already upon us because these changes are essentially permanent, since carbon dioxide takes centuries to leave the atmosphere, and those changes include more frequent and more intense wildfires.
An essential part of that adaptation will be an increased role for the federal government to play in wildfire management. First, we need to train and maintain crews of firefighters who will help us attack fires rapidly before they explode out of control. Second, we need to maintain a national stockpile of equipment that can be quickly sent to affected provinces so that we are not wasting valuable days while a fire or a cluster of fires gets out of hand. This could also include a squadron of water bombers that could be deployed quickly wherever they are needed. Third, we need better coordination of both resources and manpower. Finally, we need to work between fire seasons to reshape the forest surrounding our communities so that interface fires will not have the same destructive effects that they have today. I would like to cover all of these points in more detail, starting with firefighters.
Firefighters on the ground are the heart and soul of wildfire fighting in Canada. Wildfires are fought by both professional and volunteer crews based in small communities across the country. When I go to fire lines in my riding, I see crews from all over British Columbia. I want to thank those 90,000 volunteer firefighters from across Canada for that work, which goes completely unpaid. I want to put in a plug here for Bill C-310 from my NDP colleague for Courtenay—Alberni, which would provide more tax relief for volunteer firefighters.
Increasingly, international crews are coming to help us as we have helped other countries in the past. When I was in Chile for a parliamentary visit in March, there were Canadian personnel and equipment fighting fires there during the worst fire season that it ever had.
We need to consider the idea of creating a national firefighting service. Michael Flannigan has suggested that 20 crews of 20 firefighters each would be a great help in getting onto fires quickly. That rapid initial attack is the key to fighting wildfires. Once a fire gets beyond a few hectares in hot, dry windy weather, it very quickly becomes an unmanageable monster that can only be tamed by a change in weather or a change in the season.
Once tamed, they are actually put out by boots on the ground, with teams of firefighters doing the hard, dirty, hot work. A quick response with water bombers, skimmers filling from nearby lakes and helicopters bucketing water from ponds and temporary reservoirs can knock down small fires quickly. I have seen it happen from my back deck at home, since I live only a couple of kilometres from one of the main air bases for firefighting in British Columbia.
Too often, I have had bombers and helicopters fly low overhead as they fight fires in the forests and grasslands around my home in Penticton.
Prompt bombing with retardant dropped by larger planes, and the latest ones to arrive in Penticton are part of a new fleet of Dash 8-400s, can help set boundary containment for big fires but, again, that on-the-ground work is essential to really putting the fires out. We need quicker access to essential firefighting equipment that is available to regions in need. We saw that need last week in Nova Scotia, when local and provincial resources were overtaxed very quickly with wildfires on the outskirts of Halifax.
The federal government provided material but it took a couple of days to find that material and get it to the firefighters.
I would like to turn now to how we coordinate our efforts nationally and how we must be anticipating where fires will break out rather than reacting after a wave of thunderstorm cells paint the countryside with fires set in tinder-dry forests. Our weather forecasting is accurate enough to tell us with near certainty the general temperature and, to a lesser extent, the weekly precipitation trends across Canada.
This year, we knew the fire season would be extraordinary, after record-setting temperatures in almost all parts of the country. We should develop programs that develop the teams of firefighters and equipment they need and then use careful but prompt planning decisions to put all of that in place in at-risk parts of the country before firestorms break out.
We have to properly fund FireSmart programs to thin the forests that interface with our communities and even the trees and shrubs around our own homes, to reduce the chance of homes and infrastructure being lost to wildfire.
The community of Logan Lake, British Columbia literally saved itself in 2021 with a concerted program of forest thinning, FireSmarting backyards and even rooftop sprinkler systems. It can be done. Logan Lake worked at it for over 20 years but on the big scale needed it will take a lot of effort and, quite frankly, a lot of money. The federal government can and should play a big role there.
Things have changed dramatically in the forest fire situation in the last 50 years. When I was going to school in the 1960s in the Okanagan Valley, there were only two serious wildfires in a dozen years. Now we have several every year. This year, we have seen that pattern spread across the country, with huge destructive fires in the maritime forests of Nova Scotia and fires in the rainforests of Vancouver Island.
Wildfires are changing and wildfires are changing our lives. We must change, as well, in our response to these growing threats. The provinces have been doing admirable work in fire-prone parts of the country but it is clear from our experience so far this spring that no part of the country is immune from wildfire. The federal government must step up to provide necessary leadership for the future.
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- Jun/5/23 10:11:36 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think the provinces are certainly pulling their own weight.
Some provinces, like British Columbia, have been facing this for longer and more intensely than others, and have put more resources into it. For provinces like Nova Scotia, this is a new thing, so they are in a different place. The provinces have really been stepping up, but one difference between the provinces and the federal government is that they have less of an ability to invest large sums of money into projects and issues like this. The federal government is in a place where we could really help in a national sense.
The hon. member mentioned the Armed Forces stepping in. It would be a good idea to have a special force that would be there to fight fires and deal with other emergencies, a force that is specially trained exactly for that.
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- Jun/5/23 10:13:48 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, provinces are doing well. British Columbia has been facing large forest fire seasons, and since 2015 there has been a relentless series of bad forest fire seasons.
In British Columbia we have developed programs, techniques and processes that gradually get better. There are always things to learn about how to deal with people who have been forced out of their homes. That part of the process has been very disrupting to families, to people. We have learned a lot in British Columbia about that process. We are learning a lot about communication between different teams in the field. There are always things we can learn from each other—
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- Jun/5/23 10:15:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I could talk about this for a long time, but I have 30 seconds. I want to thank the member for Kitchener Centre for that.
Peatlands are extraordinarily important in storing carbon. Also, when they start burning, it is very difficult to put those fires out. They can release huge amounts of carbon dioxide over months as they burn. It is essential that we get at those fires, especially in the boreal forest, very quickly.
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- Jun/5/23 10:51:57 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, the member gave a good overview of the federal contributions to wildfire fighting in Canada.
In my speech, I mentioned the fact that a growing number of experts, including Mike Flannigan, have been calling for the formation of a dedicated firefighting service in Canada; something that would complement what the armed forces do, but people who are specifically trained for this. He suggested maybe 20 teams of 20 each, which is about how many people we bring in from other countries every fire season. I am wondering if the member could comment on that idea, which would be available to all provinces as needed.
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- Jun/5/23 11:21:30 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is wonderful to get that first-hand account of what not one, but two, big fires can be like in the one's neighbourhood. I know these are not everyday occurrences in Nova Scotia.
I would like to ask the member to give further detail on how Nova Scotia has been handling this. How has the federal government been helping? Can he share some ideas on how we can do this better in the future? We have parts of Canada that do not deal with fire on a daily basis. In the midst of it all, would it be better to have some federal resources to call on immediately? That way we would not have to wait a day or two, as Nova Scotia did, even though we were trying hard.
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- Jun/5/23 11:37:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for the update on the situation in Quebec, especially around Sept-Îles.
When I was getting prepared for my speech tonight, I was looking at the long-term forecast for the rest of the season across the country, and what really stood out for me were the areas that will be affected. The hottest, driest areas were in northwestern Quebec, northeastern Ontario and basically all of British Columbia. Until now, British Columbia has largely escaped fires, at least west of the Rockies, except that one started just north of my hometown this afternoon.
I am wondering if the member could perhaps talk more about the mid-term and long-term consequences of a fire season like this. What do we need to do to be more prepared?
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