Rebel News Podcast - SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ The Jasper fires were natural and mismanagement, not climate change

00:00:00.000 For government mismanagement, we're digging down into the Jasper wildfires.

00:00:18.520 I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gun Show.

00:00:30.000 Despite such hardship, it is worth celebrating that we have not reported any injuries or casualties.

00:00:45.480 Around 358 structures, or roughly 30% of the town, was lost to the fire.

00:00:51.420 But inversely, around 70% of the town was saved.

00:00:55.860 Years of preparation, force management, simulated evacuations, and firefighting efforts paid off.

00:01:03.920 That's our Environment Minister, Stephen Gilbeau.

00:01:06.800 He's actually the minister in charge of Parks Canada, which is the government department in charge of our national parks, including Jasper National Park.

00:01:15.980 And as many of you know, Jasper was hit with a devastating wildfire that not only ripped through the park, but through the historic town site, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, destroying 30% of the town, which included mostly the residential area.

00:01:32.800 So, a lot of damage to the town, a lot of people homeless, a lot of businesses destroyed.

00:01:39.680 But was this inevitable?

00:01:42.820 And is this a consequence of climate change?

00:01:45.680 Or something else?

00:01:47.280 Well, I thought it would go to somebody who has done the research on what happened in Jasper, but also what happened in other towns, in our forested areas, like Yellowknife, to get the truth, to cut through the BS, the fear, and the hysteria.

00:02:06.460 So, joining me now is Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science.

00:02:10.540 You know, anytime a politician says that something is climate change, I try to go to the experts, or at least the person who speaks for the experts, and digest the experts' reports in a way that normal people like you and I can understand.

00:02:29.060 So, I went directly to Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science, actually went directly to Friends of Science YouTube page, to see, does Michelle have a video yet, debunking this theory?

00:02:41.220 It's not even a theory anymore.

00:02:42.560 It's, I would suggest, according to the politicians, unquestionable science, that what happened in Jasper was a result of climate change and absolutely nothing else.

00:02:55.300 However, smarter people have different opinions, while they still can.

00:03:01.660 And so, joining me now is my friend Michelle Sterling from Friends of Science to tell us what the experts have been saying about Jasper for a very long time.

00:03:13.260 So, I guess I'll just turn it over to you.

00:03:15.340 You take it away.

00:03:17.160 Oh, well, thank you, Sheila.

00:03:18.380 Thanks for having me on the show.

00:03:19.820 And I do want to reiterate, I'm not a forestry expert, but I do work with forestry and wildland fire experts.

00:03:28.880 So, I get their information, and I try and translate it into something that is play language enough for most of the public to understand.

00:03:38.620 So, of course, the thesis is that the Jasper wildfires and that the 2023 wildfires were all caused by climate change, and the climate change was driven by human-induced GHG emissions from big oil.

00:03:54.340 So, there's actually, even on the heels of the Jasper tragedy, an open letter of 80 environmental groups blaming big oil for the Jasper wildfire, which is just ludicrous.

00:04:06.860 First of all, it's not true.

00:04:09.420 For the longest time, British Columbia and Alberta have been deeply infested by pine beetle, mountain pine beetle, and it gets into the bark of the trees and ultimately just kills the tree.

00:04:22.600 So, then you have, well, we now have like 18 million hectares of standing deadwood in British Columbia and Alberta, and it encroached into the park.

00:04:34.780 And I understand that some years ago, when it first hit BC, Alberta wanted to, you know, go in and aggressively take out that small patch because they were afraid it would spread.

00:04:47.640 But, of course, people like Sipporah Berman, who led the Tar Sands Campaign and also prior to that led the War in the Woods to stop logging in Glycott Sound, you know, they made it almost impossible for anybody to cut down a tree.

00:05:05.080 Because to these rabid environmentalists and climate activists, every tree is totally sacred, even if it's dead and life-threatening to your community.

00:05:17.500 So, it's not climate change.

00:05:20.580 It's because there are hectares of land filled with these dead trees, and you can see that they're dead because their needles go red.

00:05:29.000 Right.

00:05:29.140 So, it's not a maple tree, you know.

00:05:31.420 So, first they go kind of yellowish, then they go red, then they go gray, and then they go black, and then they burn.

00:05:43.680 So, these are very, very dangerous fuel loads that have built up.

00:05:50.460 And if we don't go in and log them out or burn them out with controlled burns, then we're going to have more wildfires like this.

00:06:00.700 And it's been known for a long time.

00:06:02.620 It's in Parks Management reports.

00:06:06.680 So, you know, of course, it's difficult when you're a tourist site because the reality is that people come there to see the trees.

00:06:14.640 They want to see it in a natural state.

00:06:16.440 They don't like it when there's a forest fire burning, if you're doing a controlled burn.

00:06:20.460 So, it's an awkward public relations issue.

00:06:22.940 So, it seems like it's gotten pushed off to the side quite a bit, you know, in the hope that people will love seeing all these dense conifers.

00:06:32.420 But if you watch our video, you'll see that back in the day, and the information comes directly from a Parks Canada report or report for Parks Canada.

00:06:44.940 You'll see that back in the day, there was much more mixed vegetation, more deciduous trees, smaller shrubs and such like.

00:06:53.320 These were burned off in the early days of Jasper, probably around the 19, 1913, I think it is, when it was called Fitzhugh.

00:07:00.460 So, there was a huge fire that just went all the way up and down that mountain parkway, if you like, and that's why all these stands are pretty much the same, because it burned off a lot of that vegetation.

00:07:18.140 And since then, we haven't allowed the kind of wildfires that would restore that vegetation.

00:07:25.500 So, now it's like all dense conifers, you know, very difficult to even navigate through these kinds of trees.

00:07:33.120 Yeah, the forest is all aging at once, thanks to artificial fire suppression instead of controlled burns.

00:07:38.540 And there's something so ironic in all of this.

00:07:42.900 The other side of this debate says that it is climate change causing the fires, but it really was the lack of global warming that caused the pine beetle to sort of be stopped in its tracks as it marched its way through our forests.

00:08:01.180 Because pine beetle suffers winter kill after extended minus 40.

00:08:06.700 And so, we got extended minus 40, and that stopped the march of the pine beetle through the forest, but it didn't eliminate the deadfall.

00:08:15.700 I went through the timeline, and I know you did a bit of it too.

00:08:19.380 So, what we know for sure is in 2017, Conservative MP Jim Aglinski, who was the MP there at the time, and the mayor of Jasper, were warning.

00:08:30.420 That's 2017.

00:08:31.100 Then 2018, there's multiple experts coming out and saying it, their words were, it's just a matter of time.

00:08:39.640 Then in 2020, we've got Parks Canada officials testifying at the House of Commons, I think it was the Environment Committee, saying that there was a dangerous fuel load level in the park.

00:08:53.520 And then in 2022, Parks Canada's own report says that not enough was being done to clear out the fuel load.

00:08:58.340 And here we are, two years later, and it would have been inevitable if they had done more, I think, to eliminate the pine beetle.

00:09:08.060 But as you point out, the left has made it nearly impossible to cut a tree in this country.

00:09:11.680 And, you know, it's also not easy to do a controlled burn, especially in that Jasper area, because we were just talking before we went on air there, Jasper's right in a basin of sort of three valleys.

00:09:26.660 The wind changes rather rapidly, and, you know, it can get away on you, and especially when you have all that dead wood all around that fuel load.

00:09:37.760 So it isn't easy to do a controlled burn.

00:09:41.720 But, you know, there are things that could be done, like logging companies could take all that dead wood out, and there may be a way to turn it into something useful.

00:09:51.400 Like, for instance, you could burn it to make electricity.

00:09:54.100 I think Grand Prairie has a biomass plant, you know, because it's not necessarily good for other things.

00:10:01.740 I don't know, maybe you could make it into kitty litter or wood pellets or something like that.

00:10:07.040 But what I'm saying is, like, get it out of there.

00:10:10.400 And the mechanical extraction, especially on the off seasons, when A, there's not very many tourists around, and B, the risk of actually lighting a fire because of the sparks or such like that might come from using mechanical tools in that environment, you know, would be less.

00:10:30.960 Again, in that area, I'm not an expert, but we do know that we have to get rid of as much of this fuel load as we can.

00:10:39.020 Especially when it's near these precious sites.

00:10:44.500 Apparently, Banff is also primed for such a tragedy.

00:10:49.400 And I will say, I mean, I saw, I think it was a Calgary Aerold report about Banff, and that they had actually closed off one of the streets downtown to make it into a pedestrian mall.

00:11:01.260 Now, this is a kind of thing that happened in Paradise in California, where they decided to make their town a bit more quaint.

00:11:10.200 It used to have two lanes in and out, so they shut down one of the lanes on each side to make it more pedestrian friendly.

00:11:17.420 And unfortunately, when that fire hit, people couldn't get out in their cars.

00:11:23.660 You know, you had one or two cars that stalled or burst into flames, and there was no other path.

00:11:29.520 So, you know, you really have to take these unthinkable events seriously, because they can happen.

00:11:37.220 You know, while you and I are considering practical ways to deal with the forest, environmental NGOs, they've already started banding together.

00:11:49.740 As you say, some 80 NGOs and health and civil society groups have issued an open letter to the federal government and provincial leaders in response to the Jasper Park fires.

00:12:02.340 You write that their demands are not for more water bombers, not for more firefighters or bucket scoopers. 0.85

00:12:09.540 They want the Canadian government to cap oil and gas emissions and block financing to fossil fuel producers. 0.59

00:12:16.520 Yeah, it's just so ludicrous.

00:12:18.280 I mean, first of all, how do you fight a wildfire without heavy equipment, without water bombers, without choppers, without wildland firefighters?

00:12:29.340 How do you get them in and out of there safely?

00:12:31.240 How do you evacuate a town?

00:12:33.680 I mean, congratulations to Jasper and the emergency management people, because they did such a great job of getting everybody out, lickety-split and safely.

00:12:44.860 Like, it could have been much worse.

00:12:48.620 But how do you do that without fossil fuels?

00:12:51.320 You're going to run everybody out of town on AV?

00:12:54.020 Are you kidding me?

00:12:55.100 You know, you can't run heavy equipment on batteries.

00:12:58.820 So you need diesel. 0.89

00:13:00.560 And that's how they're doing all the fire breaks.

00:13:04.140 You know, they send in a big dozer and take out, I don't know, a mile fire break.

00:13:11.180 It's a lot of work.

00:13:12.340 And we have another video, actually, about Yellowknife and how last year, when the wildfire was encroaching on Yellowknife, there was a skeleton crew of volunteers left behind.

00:13:25.700 And these guys jerry-rigged all kinds of water cannons and sprinklers to protect the town.

00:13:31.540 They cleared something like 40 acres of land in just a few days, you know, really, like, working around the clock.

00:13:39.140 But it's amazing what they did.

00:13:42.000 And I think everybody can maybe look at that and get an idea of what needs to be done.

00:13:47.340 It doesn't look very pretty, of course.

00:13:49.220 They just did it to protect the town.

00:13:51.260 But think of how you could do that for your community and do it in a, you know, a pretty way.

00:13:58.480 You could maybe have a walking trail around the town that's in a fire break, for instance.

00:14:02.780 You know, just you could do something that is functional, a fire break, and useful to the community.

00:14:12.040 But you need to start doing it now and not when the fire is encroaching on your town.

00:14:17.960 Yeah, these environmental NGOs, where are they, by the way, when a fire hits a town?

00:14:25.180 They are squawking over here.

00:14:27.140 But what are the oil and gas companies doing?

00:14:29.440 Lending equipment.

00:14:30.800 Yeah.

00:14:31.600 Growing money.

00:14:32.960 Throwing money at it.

00:14:34.100 They're giving their rig camps to the emergency services so that they can act as fire camps for the firefighters that are being flown in to fight it.

00:14:43.060 They are using their rig moving trucks to, they're pulling them off projects where they could be making money and giving them over so that they can move heavy equipment and rig camps in so that the firefighters can stay.

00:14:56.420 And what are the environmentalists doing?

00:14:58.000 Just running their mouths.

00:14:59.140 One of the, Robbie Picard always makes a really great point when I talk to him about the fires in Fort McMurray.

00:15:06.040 And he said the reason Fort McMurray, nearly 100,000 people, was able to be evacuated so quickly during the first fire with one fatality, and that was a traffic accident on the highway, is the close proximity to oil and gas in that community.

00:15:23.100 As in everybody, as in everybody, has safety training.

00:15:26.440 Everybody knows how to evacuate.

00:15:28.260 Everybody knows to get to a cluster point, to keep calm.

00:15:31.660 Everybody is confined, almost everybody is confined space trained, H2S respirator trained.

00:15:39.400 Being in proximity to the oil and gas industry makes our community so much safer.

00:15:44.840 Right, and I'd say another thing about the ENGOs.

00:15:49.660 You know, one of the groups listed on here is Equitair.

00:15:54.400 And you'll see this in our Conflations on Conflagrations video that we just put up about half an hour ago.

00:16:02.280 So, so Equitair is a charitable status environmental group that was founded by Stephen Gilboa, and it gets 41% of its revenues from government, in addition to being an ENGO.

00:16:22.920 So, you know, when you have these 80 groups here all nattering away about big oil and shutting down the industries that actually bring in revenues for Canada,

00:16:35.100 maybe these guys should be offering to donate 10% of all the money that they have to these damaged communities like Jasper.

00:16:45.120 You know, they already have charitable status.

00:16:49.720 They're already taking tax subsidies from every single taxpaying Canadian.

00:16:54.740 But whenever there's a crisis, they never seem to step up with their volunteers or their money.

00:17:00.400 The same as what happened out in BC when the atmospheric rivers hit and all of the Sumas area was flooded.

00:17:11.260 You know, there's lots of big environmental groups out there.

00:17:13.960 I didn't see a huge campaign from them to get their volunteers out clearing the road or to put money together for the communities.

00:17:23.120 I mean, even the Jasper Food Bank, I just noticed this before I did the video, the Jasper Food Bank had just shut down earlier this summer

00:17:30.440 because they were trying to reorganize and they were unable to deal with the demand at the time.

00:17:36.140 And it used to be in the basement of the Anglican Church, which is...

00:17:38.960 So, you know, this is one of the vital services that needs to be restored.

00:17:45.580 So maybe, maybe these 80 groups could put together a food bank drive for Jasper rather than nattering on about climate change.

00:17:55.580 Maybe they could do something actually tangible, practical and good for the community.

00:18:00.700 They talk here a lot about health.

00:18:03.280 Well, you know, the CAPE doctors, the Canadian Association for Physicians for the Environment, are one of the signatories here.

00:18:11.360 Well, these guys have been funded by the McConnell Foundation for about half a million dollars to push climate change.

00:18:18.200 And they're the ones who are behind the Competition Bureau push to stop fossil fuel advertising because they were claiming that, you know, fossil ads make us sick.

00:18:29.980 Well, it's ludicrous.

00:18:31.200 You can't have modern medicine without fossil fuels.

00:18:35.180 You're going to be back on the kitchen table.

00:18:36.860 So, you know, they're really, like, misleading the public and they're exploiting this tragedy of Jasper for their own proxy benefits for the green cronies who back them. 0.71

00:18:49.160 You know, it's really disgusting, actually.

00:18:51.880 Yeah.

00:18:52.160 I mean, they will not be around to help the people of Jasper rebuild in the same way that whenever a flood hits, you know, they're not the ones mucking out the basements.

00:19:02.340 They're the ones crying to the politicians.

00:19:05.080 And we know there are a lot of them involved.

00:19:07.820 If they need to block a street or have a celebration for Greta Thunberg down at the legislature, they come out by the thousands sometimes.

00:19:16.680 But to help, actually, their fellow man, even if they believe it's climate change, why wouldn't they do something tangible to help people rebuild?

00:19:24.340 They never, never do.

00:19:26.200 Never do.

00:19:26.700 Yeah. 0.86

00:19:28.300 Yeah, no, it's really ridiculous.

00:19:30.020 And also in one of the articles that they link in here, they claim that that vapor pressure deficit is caused by big oil.

00:19:42.940 They make this as a scientific claim.

00:19:45.420 And this is sort of the hot, windy, dry ratio that's measured as to how flammable or how combustible wildfire scenario is.

00:20:00.020 But it's kind of transient.

00:20:01.920 So it's mostly caused by sea surface temperature and atmospheric oscillations.

00:20:07.740 But these guys try to pin the blame on, it's called VPD in short, vapor pressure deficit.

00:20:13.720 So the vapor pressure deficit in Jasper was just fine right up until about the 1st of July.

00:20:20.340 And then it got super dry and very combustible.

00:20:24.940 In fact, to the point where our wildfire expert suggested that it might be that the park should have been closed.

00:20:32.540 That's how dangerous it was.

00:20:34.300 But, you know, you can't tell me that big oil was not responsible for the safe ratio of VPD running up to July the 1st, but was responsible for the extreme VPD after July the 1st.

00:20:51.860 It's just ludicrous. 0.79

00:20:53.200 So, you know, even the scientific references that they come up with are ridiculous. 0.91

00:21:00.040 And, you know, like when you ask them, like, what would be the tipping point?

00:21:03.800 What was the thing?

00:21:04.480 Was it me?

00:21:05.220 Did I fire up my, was I the tipping point?

00:21:07.660 I sparked up my Jeep and then boop, that tipped us over from good to bad.

00:21:11.140 It had absolutely nothing to do with the atmospheric weather conditions in and around the region.

00:21:16.940 And I know that the, sorry, go ahead.

00:21:20.860 I was just going to say, I'm pretty sure that it was the COP conference in Bonn that did it.

00:21:25.280 You know, there's a pre-COP, there's about a thousand conferences, climate conferences that they have every year before the big conference of the parties in late fall.

00:21:35.640 So they had a big one in Bonn, and I'm pretty sure that's what tipped it over.

00:21:39.920 That'll do it.

00:21:40.660 It could have even been Dr. Joe Vipond of Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment fame going to the last climate change conference.

00:21:51.120 It could have been his flight.

00:21:53.100 I think that's what I like.

00:21:54.720 Yeah.

00:21:55.640 Yeah.

00:21:58.860 Now, I know that Stephen Gilbo, our environment minister and Parks Canada CEO, whose name is Casey right now,

00:22:07.980 they make a big deal about Jasper being the first so-called fire smart community decades back.

00:22:15.100 But, and being fire smart, as I'm sure you'll explain better than me, is just a series of steps to make, not to fireproof your community.

00:22:24.760 I think that's nearly impossible, but to mitigate the speed at which a fire would rip through a community and to move, you know,

00:22:31.020 debris away from buildings and combustibles away from buildings.

00:22:34.840 But, and that may be true, but you cannot leave a stand of dead trees around the community and then simultaneously claim that you fireproof the community.

00:22:47.080 I mean, it's just impossible.

00:22:48.060 You know, we've been looking at some maps and Google Earth photos prior to the fire, and it appears like there is a median that was full of dead trees, you know, which was on the approach to Jasper.

00:23:07.120 I don't know if that was cleared out.

00:23:09.100 It may have been an old photo.

00:23:10.240 There's also another patch just kind of across the highway from there, which was also looking all red and dead.

00:23:19.460 I don't know if that was cleared out.

00:23:21.020 You know, obviously those are areas where people would want to see trees, you know, as tourists.

00:23:26.340 But if that means your town is going to burn down, you better get rid of those trees and plant some new ones, you know, and plant maybe some deciduous ones because they are a bit more fire resilient.

00:23:38.320 It's not what people, you know, if people are looking for the black forest kind of image, it's not what you're going to see, but maybe be safer.

00:23:46.920 I think Logan Lake is actually the best example of FireSmart.

00:23:51.780 FireSmart is a nationwide set of recommendations.

00:23:57.140 They are also split down by provinces because every province is a bit different, you know, different trees and different rules and regulations.

00:24:04.240 But in general, it gives people constructive, practical tips for the community, for a homeowner, for a region, you know, how to fireproof your home, how to move debris away from your house, move trees back, how to put sprinklers on your roof.

00:24:23.460 I think that's where Logan Lake had real success.

00:24:27.600 And they worked very, very hard on it.

00:24:29.600 They saved their entire town and they were, like, surrounded by an enormous fire in D.C.

00:24:35.440 But that story hardly gets headline news.

00:24:39.100 It hardly gets mentioned when there's a wildfire.

00:24:42.460 It's always, oh, no, climate change caused this, you know.

00:24:45.460 And people may say, well, why are you mocking climate change?

00:24:49.440 Okay, let's say it has some elemental impact.

00:24:53.840 We have had some warming.

00:24:55.460 Most of it's in winter.

00:24:56.480 But, okay, let's say there is an element of it.

00:25:00.720 Look at it this way.

00:25:01.900 If we put $40 billion into an EV battery manufacturing plant in Ontario to stop climate change, but $32 million to B.C. for firefighting, don't you see some disparity there?

00:25:17.740 Because the problem with the climate change mantra is that all these green crony projects, like wind farms, solar farms, flying cars, direct air carbon capture, carbon capture and storage,

00:25:34.580 all these very expensive, not very practical, green crony projects will take all the money when we need it for practical things, like clearing out the forest, like better wildfire equipment, more water bombers, whatever the wildfire community tells us that we actually do need.

00:25:54.920 Let's listen to them and put the money there, you know, rather than saying, oh, look at this, climate change is causing all kinds of financial burdens on Canadian society.

00:26:06.200 Well, because of wildfires and floods, you know, it's the same with the Toronto floods.

00:26:11.900 Everyone went, oh, it's climate change.

00:26:13.920 No, it's not.

00:26:14.660 You can see our Toronto flooding video.

00:26:16.840 We've got all the information from Robert Muir, who's a professional engineer working in that area.

00:26:21.700 And you can see very clearly that there's no increase in precipitation, but there is an increase in population, and there is an increase in paving over, and there's no significant increase in infrastructure to manage the water flows, both for public sanitation, both for flooding when there's a rain.

00:26:43.260 And so, you know, we keep throwing money at the wrong thing, and a lot of it, you know, we're not talking about a few million that have gone to some climate project like tree planting.

00:26:53.680 We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars.

00:26:57.900 Yeah, well, Michelle, come on. 0.99

00:27:00.560 Practical solutions that would protect people's lives and property, that's not going to make the green capitalists rich. 0.99

00:27:08.360 True.

00:27:08.840 And I use capitalists quite loosely, because I don't know if you can actually be a capitalist if your business revolves around government subsidies.

00:27:18.320 That's right.

00:27:19.040 Well, you know, like with the McConnell Foundation funding CAPE, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, you know, it's interesting to note that McConnell has a $10 million investment in a BlackRock renewables fund.

00:27:31.840 So, obviously, you know, you can make the connection that, well, hey, if CAPE is denigrating oil and gas, yeah.

00:27:42.960 Follow the money.

00:27:44.000 Yeah.

00:27:45.220 Always, always follow the money.

00:27:48.220 Speaking of money, you guys don't have a lot at Friends of Science.

00:27:52.600 How's that for a segue?

00:27:53.500 You really are just the little association that could, spreading the truth and trying to alleviate some of the fear and hysteria around climate change.

00:28:12.200 But you really do it on a shoestring budget.

00:28:14.260 You source actual scientists and engineers, which, as we know, the left, the green left, really doesn't like to do.

00:28:22.700 So tell us how people can get involved and help you, you know, stretch their dollar a little bit further to get the truth out there.

00:28:33.900 Thank you.

00:28:34.620 Well, we're not a charity, so we don't issue charitable receipts, but you can become a member.

00:28:40.440 It's $40 for one year and $80 for three years.

00:28:44.440 And that will also get you our CLI-SI, which is about new climate information, or our extracts, which are snippets about things going on with the IPCC and all the climate conferences, things you probably wouldn't see in the mainstream news.

00:29:02.340 So $40 a year or $80 for three years, you can make a donation.

00:29:08.800 You can send us an e-transfer to contact at friendsofscience.org.

00:29:14.820 And, you know, if you aren't able to do that, you can also just share our materials and share them with whoever you think really needs to see them, not just send it to your social media with no purpose, but you can purposefully send them to people who you think really need to see it.

00:29:36.680 And that would be helpful because, you know, we are a very small organization in terms of human resources as well.

00:29:43.740 So we put the material out there.

00:29:46.220 We rely on the public to share it with whoever they think needs to see it.

00:29:49.760 Well, and I have to tell you, you put an incredible amount of work into the videos that you make.

00:29:56.820 They are in video, almost like a video PowerPoint, where you take these big, purposefully complicated ideas, I think.

00:30:05.360 They overcomplicate them so that normal people are just sort of overwhelmed with the jargon.

00:30:10.840 You cut right through it, you go to the sources, and you explain it to people in a way that not only can they understand, but they can digest it and take those arguments out into the world to debunk the hysterics around them.

00:30:23.260 So I really do appreciate that.

00:30:24.440 I cannot recommend your YouTube channel enough.

00:30:27.500 Long videos, short videos, there's something there for everybody.

00:30:30.960 Michelle, thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:30:32.840 And as always, cutting through the BS from the green left in the government, but I don't know if I need to make a distinction between those two groups. 0.52

00:30:46.060 Well, we've come to the portion of the show wherein I invite your viewer feedback, because without you, there really is no rebel news or no gun show.

00:30:54.620 Unlike the mainstream media, I actually care about what you think about the work that we do,

00:30:59.400 because if you don't support us or like us, well, we just disappear the way the mainstream media should, but won't,

00:31:06.640 because they have all of your money, thanks to Justin Trudeau.

00:31:10.740 So I give you my email address right now.

00:31:12.900 It's Sheila at rebelnews.com.

00:31:14.780 Put gun show letters in the subject line so I know why you're emailing me, because I get a ton of emails every day.

00:31:21.580 Not just every week, but every single day.

00:31:24.780 Day in, day out.

00:31:26.440 365 days of the year.

00:31:28.200 But also, maybe you are watching a clip of the show on YouTube or Rumble.

00:31:34.580 Leave a comment there, and I'll go looking over there sometimes.

00:31:37.840 Sometimes you guys are interesting or funny over there.

00:31:40.920 I'll draw from that pool, too.

00:31:43.700 But this week's gun show letter comes from the mailbag.

00:31:48.360 So Sheila at rebelnews.com.

00:31:49.840 And it was on last week's show, which I filmed with my videographer, Kian Simone.

00:31:56.340 We were in Hinton, which is the next town to the east of Jasper, where it's the staging area for all the firefighting efforts.

00:32:05.420 And we were in the town to find out what the locals think about what happened in Jasper.

00:32:13.180 Did they believe it was a matter of time?

00:32:17.860 Spoiler alert, they did.

00:32:19.140 And we also were, we wanted to show you what the town was like.

00:32:24.440 We showed you, you know, the police checkpoints.

00:32:27.140 We went on a little adventure trying to put a drone up, not into the national park, because I realized that's illegal, but just to see what we could see.

00:32:34.260 We went to the command center, so you could sort of see the firefighters working.

00:32:39.880 And then we talked to the locals.

00:32:42.260 And we also talked to an evacuee once we got back to Edmonton.

00:32:45.560 So we were there for a bit.

00:32:47.520 We got a lot of work done in the fewer than 48 hours that we were there on the ground.

00:32:52.780 And Mark sends me an email.

00:32:56.980 Mark writes,

00:32:57.720 Hi, Sheila.

00:32:58.480 Jasper was one of my favorite places to visit.

00:33:00.400 I first visited Jasper in 2018 when I was hauling asphalt oil.

00:33:04.260 Around Alberta, BC and the territories.

00:33:06.640 Even though I was only staying on the highway, I immediately was awestruck at the beauty of Jasper.

00:33:10.600 So in 2019, I took a few days exploring and my daughter loved the town site as I did.

00:33:16.280 We spent a day wandering around the town and even enjoyed some Jasper pizza.

00:33:21.060 We also visited Myatt Hot Springs and toured down the Icefields Parkway.

00:33:25.420 It was a trip I won't forget.

00:33:26.920 Now back in 2018, I noticed all the dead trees from the pine beetle infestation and remarked,

00:33:33.200 Why not take those trees down and remove the fuel? 0.68

00:33:36.760 I'm sure logging companies in the area would have considered taking the trees or Parks Canada could have used the wood for their own campgrounds.

00:33:44.300 Definitely raises questions as to why they did nothing.

00:33:48.360 Is this negligence?

00:33:49.380 I think so.

00:33:49.920 Even removing a couple hundred feet of dead wood adjacent to the town on all sides could have, in my mind, prevented this disaster.

00:33:59.060 It also raises questions as this is the third Alberta town to catch fire in as little as 13 years.

00:34:05.700 I have my theories that this could be deliberate.

00:34:07.760 My heart breaks seeing the devastation on this favorite place of mine, and I only hope the residents can rebuild.

00:34:15.140 Thank you to Rebel News for covering this event.

00:34:18.460 And let's keep up the good fight.

00:34:20.820 Alberta strong.

00:34:21.660 Thanks, Mark.

00:34:22.560 You know, Mark, if you want to donate to my 100% charitable crowdfund, you can make a donation at helpjasper.ca.

00:34:31.240 That will go to a charitable partner working on the ground to help the evacuees.

00:34:36.300 None of that money comes to Rebel News.

00:34:38.020 It's completely a charitable crowdfund.

00:34:40.480 But anybody who's visited Jasper in the last 10 years has seen those dead trees and thought, boy, they should probably do something about those.

00:34:50.280 Now, as to whether or not this is deliberate, I truly think it's a consequence of fire suppression in place of controlled burns.

00:35:02.020 We seem to be suppressing fire at all costs.

00:35:04.460 And that leaves the forest all one age.

00:35:09.200 And a forest that's all one age burns all at once instead of allowing controlled burns so that you have a forest that has multiple ages.

00:35:19.120 And so a fire doesn't rip through everything.

00:35:22.120 They described it as a wall of fire going into Jasper.

00:35:25.860 And yeah, if you've been in Jasper, all the trees are the same height.

00:35:29.440 Everything is the same.

00:35:31.560 And that's worrisome.

00:35:33.320 And I think fire suppression to preserve nature is unnatural.

00:35:42.340 We should manage a fire, but we shouldn't be suppressing it at all costs.

00:35:46.120 Because, yes, Slave Lake, Fort McMurray, Fort McMurray again, now Jasper.

00:35:50.700 It's time we learn.

00:35:55.880 And to be fair, I think we're learning in Alberta.

00:35:58.320 I think we've learned.

00:36:00.700 But not Parks Canada.

00:36:03.860 I think they had chosen to preserve nature over people.

00:36:09.980 And now they have neither.

00:36:14.120 Okay, well, everybody, that's the show for today.

00:36:16.660 Thanks so much for tuning in.

00:36:17.640 Thanks to everybody who works behind the scenes at Rebel News to put the show together for me.

00:36:21.000 I think that's it.

00:36:24.020 We'll see everybody back here in the same time, in the same place, potentially.

00:36:28.160 Sometimes I travel.

00:36:28.960 But remember, don't let the government tell you that you've had too much to think.

00:36:33.780 We'll see you next time.

Rebel News Podcast - August 07, 2024

SHEILA GUNN REID ｜ The Jasper fires were natural and mismanagement, not climate change

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