- Member of Parliament
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- NDP
- South Okanagan—West Kootenay
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
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- May/3/24 12:13:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, wildland firefighters have tirelessly kept our communities safe against devastating wildfires, but despite this dangerous and life-saving work, wildland firefighters are not considered firefighters under the national occupational classification, and this impacts their retirement and pensions. It is absurd that the Liberal government and the Conservatives before them have done nothing to fix this.
Will the Liberals immediately change this, so wildland firefighters can retire with financial security?
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- Apr/30/24 7:14:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I appreciate the funding put in to help volunteer firefighters and the training of firefighters, but the real point here is to create a deployable force that could go to where the firefighting is needed.
A recent Abacus Data poll found that 70% of Canadians are in favour of a national wildfire fighting force. The public is ready for this. They know it would be a good investment, not only to save money fighting fires but also to stop fires before they become the catastrophic monsters that consume vast forests and communities and to save the human cost of evacuations and the loss of homes. Yes, having a national firefighting force would save money and valuable time. It would save forests, livelihoods and lives. We need one in Canada as soon as possible.
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- Apr/30/24 7:07:12 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this adjournment debate stems from a question I asked earlier about how we deal with wildfires in Canada: When will the federal government create a national wildfire-fighting force?
As we all know, last year was the worst year ever for wildfires in this country. This year, all predictions point to an even more disastrous fire season. We have already had evacuation orders in British Columbia and Alberta in April. Last year, we had fires all across the country, from Halifax to Yellowknife and Vancouver Island.
I want to pause here to pay tribute to all the firefighters and other first responders who worked so hard to keep Canadians safe during last year's firestorms. Eight firefighters in the prime of life lost their lives in last year's battle against those fires, and I attended the memorial service for one of those young people in Penticton.
It is clear that local and provincial wildfire-fighting services were overwhelmed last summer. Even in British Columbia, where we unfortunately are very accustomed to catastrophic fires, the BC Wildfire Service, one of the best in the world, had to bring in crews from all over the world to help out. Indeed, thousands of firefighters from Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, South Africa, Costa Rica, Chile, Spain, Portugal, France, Brazil and the U.S.A. came to Canada last summer to help us deal with that crisis.
We are grateful for that international help, but it comes at a cost: the cost of paying the crews, the cost of bringing them to Canada and, perhaps most of all, the critical cost of time lost in making those arrangements. Provincial and municipal forces become overwhelmed and costs are exploding. B.C. spent about a billion dollars last summer fighting fires, last year alone.
We need to have a homegrown response that is both timely and cost-effective. In response to this accelerating crisis, experts have been calling for the formation of a national wildfire-fighting service.
Dr. Mike Flannigan, from Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, is Canada's foremost expert on wildfire behaviour. While firefighting is normally a provincial area of authority, Flannigan points out that the last few years have put us in uncharted territory. He has suggested a national wildfire service of a few hundred well-trained members divided into teams that could be deployed to parts of the country that face clear and imminent fire threats.
We have the modelling power and the expertise now to know where fires are likely to become problematic in the coming days and even weeks. We should have teams on the ground so that they are there when fires ignite and can be extinguished. Fires not caught in those first few hours can become the catastrophic firestorms that destroy huge areas of forest, as well as homes and livelihoods. Getting those crews to the fires quickly is essential, and we can do that with a national force.
That force could work year-round. The fire season is growing longer and longer. It is already year-round in California. We could put this force to work in the Canadian winter, working to thin forests in the interface with communities across the country, doing FireSmart inspections or being mobilized to other countries that are facing a wildfire crisis.
The government is proposing training local residents to fight interface fires. That is important and useful. We already rely on volunteer crews to cover structure protection. However, a national force would be a game-changer, and we really need to change the game on wildfire fighting in this country.
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- Apr/29/24 5:17:21 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, of course residents of Nunavut are really at the pointy end of climate change as well. Things are changing there much faster. Yes, we have to put everything we can into fighting climate change, fighting our emissions and adapting to climate change.
My riding is in the middle of all those wildfires we hear about, and there are floods everywhere as well. Therefore, we have to spend more on preventing climate change, doing our bit not only to bring down emissions, but also to adapt to climate change. I mentioned the wildfire fighting force. We have to do more things on the ground ahead of time to make sure communities are safe from the floods, from fires and from other disasters being fuelled by climate change.
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- Feb/29/24 3:13:04 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, last summer's wildfires devastated communities across Canada. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness has admitted that the upcoming wildfire season will be even worse.
Canadians want their government to take decisive action. According to last week's Abacus poll, 74% of them want to see this done through a new national wildfire fighting force, but the Liberals are taking a go-slow approach. The wildfire season is already starting.
When will the government act to create a national wildfire fighting force?
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- Sep/21/23 5:37:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, this adjournment debate arises from a question I asked early last June, a question that pointed out that natural disasters, fires, floods, hurricanes and tornados are making it increasingly difficult for Canadians to afford, or even obtain, home insurance.
Since then, we have had a terrible summer, a summer that was off the charts. Catastrophic wildfires raged from Nova Scotia to Northwest Territories and to British Columbia and Vancouver Island even. Floods and a tropical storm followed the fires in Nova Scotia, and tornados hit Alberta and other provinces. It is impossible to ignore that we are living in the effects of climate change, and those effects are costly. In 2022, insured damages from extreme weather events in Canada were over $3 billion. The 2021 heat dome and atmospheric river events cost more than $5 billion in British Columbia alone.
These annual costs have more than quadrupled over the last 15 years, and all the projections are that they will continue to increase until we manage to eliminate our carbon emissions. Even if we eliminated those emissions tomorrow, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere would remain constant for centuries, and the current level of extreme weather would continue. While many individuals and governments seem reluctant to make sufficient investments in climate action to reduce those emissions, it seems they are also reluctant to acknowledge the costs of inaction.
For an increasing number of Canadians, the impacts are life-changing, with the loss of homes to fire or flood, or the loss of crops and income to drought or frost. However, all of us will see rising costs as climate change intensifies. One sector will lead that way, and that is home insurance. As insurance companies face higher claims year over year, they will have little choice but to increase premiums.
That has already started to happen. Even more concerning is the increasing trend in the United States, especially, to simply not offer home insurance at all. In California, major companies such as Allstate and State Farm have stopped selling new home insurance policies because of the frequency of catastrophic fires. Similarly, in Florida, insurance companies are not taking on new customers or renewing existing policies because of flooding associated with rising ocean levels and stronger storms. Those who can get insurance are paying an average of $4,000 per year.
The residents of Port aux Basques here in Canada who had their homes washed out to sea by hurricane Fiona did not receive anything from their insurance companies because storm surges are not covered. I met with the Insurance Bureau of Canada earlier this year, and it pointed out that it is becoming difficult to buy a home in fire-prone areas of the country during the summer. Most companies simply will not provide new insurance when there is an active wildfire close to home, which is 25 kilometres to 100 kilometres in some cases. In many recent years, this stopped home sales in the Okanagan Valley, where I live, as one cannot get a mortgage without insurance. It is also becoming harder to get flood insurance on homes. In fact, over 10% of Canadian homes are in high flood-risk areas and cannot be insured.
Climate change impacts are not limited to fires and floods. I have been talking with people in the wine industry in the Okanagan Valley about the effects of last winter's early frosts that cut this year's grape harvest in half and killed many vines outright. I am hoping we can find support from the federal government to keep this important industry moving in British Columbia.
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- Sep/18/23 3:18:08 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this summer over 16 million hectares of forests burned; more than 200,000 Canadians were forced to flee their homes. To call this wildfire season unprecedented is an understatement, and with off-the-charts global temperatures, we can expect climate change to deliver even more extreme wildfires.
It is clear Canada's wildfire response was overwhelmed. Waiting for help from overseas costs valuable time and money, and the Liberals do not seem to be rushing to fix the system.
Will the minister support our call for a national wildfire-fighting service, which can be deployed immediately where needed?
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- Sep/18/23 2:16:18 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, for hundreds of thousands of Canadians, it has been an anxious, stressful and even tragic summer. Wildfires have ravaged forests from Nova Scotia to Vancouver Island. Sixteen million hectares have been burned, and 200,000 Canadians have been evacuated from their homes.
I want to thank all the firefighting crews on land and in the air for the difficult and courageous work they have undertaken to keep all of us safe. Tragically, four firefighters have lost their lives in that work this summer.
We need to support the thousands of volunteer firefighters across Canada, and we need a national wildfire fighting force to augment the local and provincial teams that have been overwhelmed, a well-trained force that could be deployed quickly wherever needed.
We need to act to stem the climate crisis that has overwhelmed all of us. With skyrocketing temperatures on land and sea, the planet is warning us that we are in uncharted territory and must act with the urgency and strength that this catastrophe demands.
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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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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 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/2/23 11:49:12 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, natural disasters, including wildfires and floods, fuelled by climate change are making it difficult to get home insurance. Canadians cannot buy a home when there is an active wildfire within 50 kilometres and that covers most of the summer in B.C., and 10% of Canadians cannot get flood insurance. Canada is the only major country where the government does not have a backstop for earthquake insurance.
Canadians cannot afford to wait while their homes and businesses are destroyed.
Will the Liberals act to make sure Canadians have the insurance protection they need?
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- Dec/8/22 7:39:39 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we are living the effects of climate change. There are real effects on people and real effects on our economy.
Last year, in British Columbia, we had a series of catastrophic wildfires, one of which burned down the town of Lytton. At the same time, a heat dome brought temperatures in the high 40s to southern B.C., killing over 600 people in metro Vancouver.
That fall, an atmospheric river destroyed every highway connecting the southern B.C. coast with the rest of Canada, and some of those highways have only now just been reopened. Floods devastated the towns of Princeton and Merritt, numerous first nations communities and some of the best agricultural lands in the province.
The true costs of those events have yet to be calculated, but the federal government has pledged $5 billion in support to British Columbia to help communities rebuild. This year, B.C. has largely been spared, but this spring, it got a storm track, which is now called a derecho. We have had to learn a whole new taxonomy of climate disasters. It caused almost a billion dollars in insured damage losses to parts of Ontario and Quebec.
Then in the fall, hurricane Fiona became the strongest hurricane to make landfall ever in Atlantic Canada. Houses were washed out to sea and lives were lost. Again, the federal government has promised aid to the tune of over $300 million.
The Canadian Climate Institute reported in September that the impacts of climate change will slow Canada’s economic growth by $25 billion annually by 2025. That is half of the projected GDP growth in 2025 and 12 times all insured weather-related losses in Canada in 2021. Those impacts will increase to almost $100 billion annually by 2050.
My question to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the question that triggered this adjournment debate, was based on that report. The Canadian Climate Institute report also found that proactive measures that help communities and Canadians adapt to climate change could reduce the impact of climate disasters. In fact, the report notes that a combination of global emissions reductions and Canadian adaptation measures could reduce the negative impacts by 75%.
Shortly after I asked this question, the government tabled its national adaptation strategy. The strategy included $1.6 billion in new funding to broadly address climate adaptation. About a third of that amount is to top up the disaster mitigation and adaptation fund. That fund has been chronically underfunded and oversubscribed. Many communities trying to rebuild after fires and floods do not get the help they need.
Will the government stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and redirect those billions of dollars to help communities prepare for climate change?
We will save many times that investment by reducing the direct impacts of extreme weather on Canadian communities, and more importantly, reduce the tragic consequences of these climate disasters on the lives and livelihoods of Canadian families.
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