Staples: Trudeau’s wildfire strategy is to blame climate change

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If climate change is so hell-fire dangerous, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau regularly claims, why wasn’t more done to protect Jasper from its impact? Why weren’t credible warnings taken seriously?

Doubts about the federal government’s response are set to boil over following explosive testimony on Wednesday at a Parliamentary committee on the Jasper wildfire.

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Ken Hodges, the veteran B.C. government and private industry forester testified, giving his most damning public statements yet about the government’s inadequate response after he warned the Trudeau Liberals and Parks Canada in 2017 that an atomic bomb-like wildfire was ready to ignite in Jasper.

At that time Hodges saw that the pine beetle infestation had finally hit Jasper National Park in full, adding to the existing problem of an old, dry and dying forest, which hadn’t had a major forest fire in more than 100 years. The boreal forest usually burns about every 50 years as part of its normal life cycle, but successful firefighting had prevented that.

Asked if his warnings to then-environment minister Catherine McKenna were taken seriously, Hodges said, “They really didn’t respond well to us. They kind of pushed back at us, ‘We’ve got this.’ ”

If proper steps had been taken — such as more prescribed burns and tree removal south of town where the pine-beetle kill off of trees was worst — the loss of much of Jasper could have been prevented, Hodges said. “They had seven years to do it. That was plenty of time to do that.”

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A frustrated Hodges came to realize that Park Canada staff were lacking necessary experience and knowledge to grasp the danger of the situation or how to handle it. “They didn’t understand the magnitude of the fire that was going to blow up at them.”

Parks Canada and government officials have said in the last decade they took out 1,700 hectares of dead trees, had 15 prescribed burns, and cleared a buffer zone 500 metres around the town, along with setting up a high-powered sprinkler system in Jasper, spending part of a $79 million fire smart budget for all Alberta national parks in Jasper last year.

But 30 per cent of Jasper’s structures, largely at the south end of town, were damaged or destroyed by the July wildfire, leaving 2,000 homeless and causing almost $1 billion in damage.

Conservative MP Gerald Soroka questioned the government’s lack of results. “If you start clearing out a forest for $79 million, what were they doing it with? With tweezers or something?”

The issue came to a head in the House of Commons earlier this month, when Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre asked why credible warnings weren’t properly acted upon.

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Trudeau responded, “One of the jewels of Canada’s natural beauty burned because of climate change, and the leader of the Opposition’s focus is trying to blame Ottawa for that. That is completely irresponsible and shameful. If we do not act in fighting against climate change with everything we have, then there will be no economy of the future. There will be no Jasper to rebuild. There will be no future for Canadians.”

Trudeau’s base will likely nod their heads in agreement with his assessment, but blaming the Jasper wildfire fully on climate change is iffy science. Trudeau’s approach is also at odds with best practices for building up a social consensus to properly deal with wildfire.

After disastrous California wildfires, prominent climate scientist Judith Curry wrote a 2019 review on dealing with natural disasters, such as wildfire.

Essentially, Curry said, we’ve always had such extreme weather, we’ve always struggled with it, and it’s only getting worse because of our increasing population in susceptible locations.

But the link to climate change is uncertain, Curry said. “Owing to the large natural variability in extreme weather events, it is very difficult to discern any trends in extreme weather events that can be attributed to manmade global warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Extreme Events acknowledges that there is not yet evidence of changes in the global frequency or intensity of hurricanes, droughts, floods or wildfires.”

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Blaming all our problems on climate change is counterproductive, Curry said. It diminishes our understanding of the real sources of problems, which can include federal policies, and it can block bipartisan support for reasonable adaptation measures, bogging things down in acrimony.

She concluded, “With regards to wildfires, our forests are catastrophically overgrown and policy changes
are needed.”

Curry points to a sane way to build a consensus of the left, centre and right on how to deal with extreme weather. Is this reasonable path too much to ask from our political leaders?

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