The town site of Jasper, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been lost to wildfire. Why did this happen? Why was it so bad? And what could have been done differently? That's what you're going to hear from Rebel reporter Sheila Gunn-Reed and videographer Kian Simone on the ground in Hinton, Alberta.
00:06:24.080I think they have like a cameraman, a sound guy, a producer, and then the journalist.
00:06:30.940Their cameras have to be hooked to the battery of the van and the van has to stay running so they can do the journalism that we are doing with this camera and this microphone and our cell phones.
00:06:45.300And then they wonder where all their like $1.6 billion of journalism bailout money goes.
00:07:07.960The drone that we have, you know, it can go about a thousand meters.
00:07:12.780And so trying to get close enough to Jasper Park, which I feel like we were like kilometers and kilometers away, you know, we're driving down logging roads, roads that I don't even think were logging roads.
00:07:24.640They were just gravel roads that someone made for fun, it felt like, at points.
00:07:28.700And then to put the drone up, which lost signal before I could even get past a mountain, like there is literally no way that you can see what's going on in there.
00:07:48.760The town of Hinton is teaming with RCMP, but it's also teaming with first responders.
00:07:55.260I think they're occupying most of the hotel space here.
00:07:58.700So there are teams of firefighters from all over the province, now all over the country.
00:08:03.820And it looks like from other parts of the world I saw, South Africa sent some firefighters.
00:08:08.960Military is in town also to help assist with the fires.
00:08:13.840And this is all, even though the fire is burning within the federal national park, the province has really moved every resource that they could into help.
00:08:27.940It's cool to see, you know, when we were driving at first and we saw, it felt like there was like a hundred cars.
00:08:34.520And just the spot that we were, I'm sure there's way more parked at other hotels and all over the town.
00:08:38.940But just seeing everybody like, I guess they're grouped together doing their morning meeting of how they're literally going to go fight a fire and save the rest of the town.
00:08:47.320Well, and it's not just the firefighters, as we were saying before we started rolling.
00:08:52.120Anecdotally, my cousin is moving rig camps up so that firefighters who are like not based near Hinton can stay closer to the fire to work.
00:09:03.880So it's not just first responders, it's heavy industry that has been mobilized to help fight this fire.
00:09:12.120And we've seen this time and time again.
00:09:13.620We saw it in Fort McMurray this year when it was a fire sort of licked up close to town.
00:09:19.280We saw it when Fort McMurray burned previously.
00:09:22.160We saw it when Slave Lake burned that heavy industry also mobilizes at the same time because we're Alberta and we're so close to the oil patch.
00:09:30.600We're uniquely positioned to deal with these things besides the fact that almost everybody has safety training because of their close proximity to the oil patch,
00:09:40.360which is, I think, how people seem to always make it out of town safely in an orderly fashion.
00:10:47.520Well, and speaking of expecting a fire, that's one of the reasons that we're here is it's now coming out.
00:10:55.780And I guess it came out before, but now it's top of mind again.
00:11:00.960What happened in Jasper should be a surprise to nobody, but least of all the people who are in charge of Jasper.
00:11:09.940In 2017, the MP, a conservative named Jim Aglinski, was raising the alarm bells about the amount of standing deadfall trees around Jasper that had been killed by the mountain pine beetle.
00:11:28.300I think it's Parks Canada data, 44% of the trees within Jasper had been touched by pine beetles somehow.
00:11:37.860And they need to be cleared away either through controlled burn or what they say is mechanically removed.
00:11:44.200So just going and logging them and taking them out.
00:14:39.760Yeah, we were on a press conference today.
00:14:41.560We raced down the logging road to try to get reception because we got an email saying that Stephen Gilbeau and the CEO of Parks Canada would be holding a joint press conference.
00:14:57.620Why isn't this press conference an announcement of you two resigning?
00:15:01.840But they never took my question, obviously.
00:15:04.800We listened to four people from the CBC ask questions from, like, CBC, CBC Radio Canada, CBC Edmonton French, and something else.
00:15:18.140And then at least three people from Post Media.
00:15:21.760David Staples, whom I like, asked a good question about, you know, if Parks Canada had been choosing nature over people, which I think they have been.
00:15:30.960And I think another mainstream media outlet, there were no independent journalist questions that were taken whatsoever.
00:15:39.780And I think they held that press conference to get out in front of that Black Locks article that was released today.
00:15:44.960We're recording this Monday night that said that Parks Canada and Stephen Gilbeau had plenty of warning about what was going to happen in Jasper.
00:15:54.860You sat there with me as I sat through that press conference.
00:17:51.780Let's just say I don't want to out him.
00:17:54.860But you are right to raise the DEI issue.
00:17:58.800Because a controlled burn in Banff National Park last year got out of control.
00:18:05.560And it was their DEI all-women firefighter unit that did it.
00:18:11.180And the CEO of Parks Canada, he's always lecturing Canadians about bigotry and, you know, celebrating pride in the national park.
00:18:24.460So if you are a visible minority, if you're a person like me who identifies as having a disability, if you are neurodivergent, like my daughter is, if you are a member of two-spirit LGBTQ2 community, or someone from one or more equity-deserving groups, please know this from your Parks Canada family.
00:18:51.580We see you, we hear you, we value and love you, and we need you.
00:18:59.520There will always be a place for you in Parks Canada.
00:19:02.940We are stronger together, not despite our differences.
00:19:07.280We are stronger together because of our differences.
00:19:17.000And really, they should have been just doing the basic environmental stewardship that needs to be done when you want people to live in harmony with nature.
00:19:39.700And it's just so bizarre that that was the focus.
00:19:43.340And I do believe the blame for this hangs squarely around the CEO of Parks Canada's neck, Stephen Gilbeau, because the buck stops with him,
00:19:52.320and Catherine McKenna, the previous environment minister, who basically laughed off conservative warnings in 2017.
00:19:59.900But, like all liberal scandals, I think they're probably going to skate.
00:20:06.120And it is interesting that Stephen Gilbeau, who loves to run his yap about Premier Daniel Smith and how she doesn't care about the environment,
00:20:16.140his incompetence caused destruction to the environment just now.
00:20:22.540And it was Daniel Smith bringing all the resources she possibly could to help him out of the mess he created.
00:20:31.320Parks Canada has been taking care of Jasper National Park now for almost a century.
00:20:38.620The park was officially, became an official national park in 1930.
00:20:42.680We have, as both Ron and I have mentioned, we have Parks Canada staff who live there, who call Jasper their home, quite a number of them.
00:20:54.340And to think that over all those decades, we would not have deployed all of the resources necessary to try and do everything that is humanly possible to protect a town from a forest fire is simply not true.
00:21:08.460Ron talked about prescribed burns, clearing dead trees, clearing a wide buffer zone around the town of Jasper.
00:21:19.280But as we are seeing in Canada and all around the world, we are seeing more and more aggressive forest fires.
00:21:27.840And we certainly saw that in the summer of 2023.
00:21:34.580And the fact that we were able to protect 70% of the town speaks to all of those measures we have put in place over the years.
00:21:42.980And frankly, I think that they focus so much on like the hot topics of like, you know, fighting oil pipelines or bringing in hybrid or electric cars that I wonder if this was just at the bottom of their list.
00:21:56.200And it always was like Catherine McKenna, maybe she's like, you know, I'm on my way out.
00:22:00.120I'm not going to care about the pine beetle needles in the pine needles in the Banff and Jasper or whatever.
00:22:07.720Again, it just it sounds like to me coming from my Ontario part of my mind that's like, oh, I'll deal with that later.
00:23:37.860Is that we knew that we needed to get some of the equipment and change some of the practices, as Minister Lowen had mentioned.
00:23:45.000We declared the start of forest fire season early.
00:23:48.780We had all of our personnel hired and in place by April 15th, which is May 15th.
00:23:54.080By May 15th, and in addition to that, because of the amount of damage that we saw last year, when I when I first came in, we had a billion dollar contingency.
00:24:06.500My first budget, we increased that to a $1.5 billion contingency.
00:24:11.060And this budget, we increased to a $2 billion contingency.
00:24:14.060So there is no limit to the amount of money that we will spend to make sure that we have the resources that we need and to make sure that we have the money available to assist with the recovery.
00:24:25.280So I would say that we've looked at the lessons of the past and we made the appropriate amount of investment in this budget here.
00:24:34.880We're here in a campsite just outside of Hinton.
00:24:41.140We're staying in my little tiny travel trailer and we're eating beef out of my freezer.
00:24:46.580So our costs are really quite low for this, although it is very hard work and it's definitely not a vacation.
00:24:52.340The real reason we're here is because we want to raise funds to help the people of Jasper rebuild, because what has been taken from them can never be replaced.
00:25:02.620But we can help them build something new and we invite our viewers to support our efforts at helpjasper.ca.